GEOSAP - new forum threads

Getting Flickr photos to show up

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:39:06 +0000

I uploaded my first image into Flickr, and I cannot get it to display in GEOSAP. I added the tags "geosap bestof sundayriver", but it doesn't show up on either the "Best of" page or the Sunday River one. Any ideas?
Once I figure this out, do I delete the "sundayriver" tag so it only shows up in the "Best of" section?

Hostfile uploading

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:11:41 +0000

I've now uploaded all files in Canada, the Midwest, and the norhteast through New Hampshire. If everyone could hold off on uploading maps until I finish with the site, that would be great. I'll post here when I'm done. This will make it much easier to make sure all maps are hosted on hostfile and are downloaded correctly.

The 1st 15 files I uploaded received 70 hits in about a week. People are downloading from us, which is really cool to see.

Hosting of .kmz files

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:59:51 +0000

Since the beginning we've been hosting the KMZ files on the space the wikidot provides us. That's good and all, but it doesn't allow for download statistics. Plus, if the site goes down then all the downloads go down as well. I searched around on the web for a while and finally found www.hostfile.org. The site is a little tacky, and the guys who runs it is…interesting, but it looks like it will provide us with what we need. I registered on it (andy, i'll PM you the user info) and I changed the mohawk mountain kmz link over to the hostfile site. I think I'll let it go like this for a while and see how reliable the site is and how the download statistics work out, but I think this is ultimately the direction we want the downloads to go in. Any questions about this, post here or feel free to PM me. I'll update the GEOSAP Submissions guide as soon as we officially move to the hostfile site.

Backup Log

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:54:35 +0000

1/10/08 - 12.04 MB
2/1/08 - 41.63 MB
3/1/08 - 50.7 MB

Loss of Forum Function

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:53:25 +0000

This afternoon, 2/1, the forums went down. Single posts were still accessible and the main forum page was accessible, but not categories would load. I posted on the Community Forum with the problem and Craig Macomber posted back telling me to create a page with the code

[[module ForumCategory]]

The page was titled forum:category
This solved the problem. I'm just recognizing Craig for his help and posting this so that if anything similiar happens in the future we'll know what to do.

-David

GEOSAP Email Addresses

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:58:45 +0000

Does the package you got from godaddy include email addresses? in order for GEOSAP to be registered and tracked by alexa, an email address from geosap.org needs to be entered. Plus, it would just be convenient to have.

teachski.com maps

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:34:51 +0000

I talked to LaurieP on Snowjournal, teachski is her site. She gave us permission to use her images as long as a credit is given. She also wants us to contact her if the image is credited to someone else. I'll place a blanket credit on the homepage and do my best to update credits on the images themselves. Easier to do now rather than later when there are a lot more of them.

Recent issues

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:44:06 +0000

David, thanks for fixing the states I created last night; adding zoom level was something I'd been too lazy to do. I saw something was messed up with the maps across the site, too, but I couldn't fix it because I've forgotten the login info to update the quikmaps. Could you post it again? I'll then add the areas I've mapped recently (and try to update the # of areas mapped on the state pages and front page, as well—something I've been remiss in doing, sorry).

PIctures

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:21:25 +0000

What would you think of having a small gallery of images for each area that gets mapped? I'll try and work that into a copy of the template and see how it looks, but I think it would be a good idea. We could even make it user-submissable, too.

"White Trails" Images

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 04:17:33 +0000

We need to decide what we want to do about them. I like them alot, but they seem rather complicated to explain the creation of in the standards page and the submissions page. I could write up an explanation, but we don't want to make it too complicated for people to submit maps. My current opinion would be for us to go through submitted maps and add the "white trails" image later, but that might be a lot of work. Opinons?

we also need to decide on what we're going to call these pictures.

Messed up .org

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:18:18 +0000

The org. displays the page location alright now, but it gets stuck whenever I try to load a page other than the home page. It just gets in an endless reload loop. Anyone else experiencing this problem?

Problem Solved!

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:47:48 +0000

Andy, you solved the multiple maps problem. Creating a new map for each state in Quikmaps was going to be a big problem because whenever a new map was created, both the state map and the main GEOSAP map were going to have to be updated. In addition, creating that many maps on the quikmaps account would be unwieldy. The updating problem would have led to the map for a state not being created until the state was finished, which would have been disappointing. However, when you created the quikmapslat and quikmapslong system, you solved the problem. You prob. know, but all we have to do now is zoom the main GEOSAP map to state view which we want (will require some checking because the quikmaps viewer is larger than the statebox viewing pane), copy the map number for the main geosap map into the quikmapsnumber field, then copy the lat and long numbers from the bottom of the map viewing page into their respective fields, and then save the main geosap map. This results in a statebox map which shows only the state, and a main view on the home page which shows everything. If you already know this, great job, and thanks alot!

Collapsible Text

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 21:57:44 +0000

I was thinking about how we're gonna utilize the drop-down menu once we have more content. Check out this page:

Collapsible Test

We could have regions in the drop-down menu and then the region page could ahve collapsible state/province names.

State pages

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 14:25:52 +0000

I love the ski area templates—any chance we could get one for state pages as well?
It would be nice if it integrated the quikmap, but would stay zoomed to that particular state regardless of how the zoom level changed on the main page.

The GEOSAP Theme

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:01:19 +0000

Right now, I'm using the forum to test the new theme which I coded tonight. Eventually i'll split off a new category to use for testing the custom theme, but right now the forum is most convenient.

Currently, the only change to the custom theme from the Cappuccino Theme we were previously using is the addition of the loge and the larger text. What do you think about this theme? I'm gonna work on diverging it more from the Cappuccino Theme in the future to make our site identifiable. Any suggestions on that?

I also think that I'm going to keep the css category locked down to admins only, just because the code is very finicky.

GEOSAP Views

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:56:54 +0000

For the week of March 10 to March 16, 2008

EditGrid Spreadsheet by user/geosap.

Maximum Daily Views: 801 on January 11
Maximum Unique Visitors: 106 on January 11
Maximum First Time Visitors: 92 on January 11
Maximum Returning Visitors: 23 on January 29

suggestions for future standards

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:28:14 +0000

I think we should further define how subfolders can be used to better organize areas. For example, on the Sunday River map I tried to break down the area into separate peaks. This can make it more difficult to find a trail you're looking for (especially for ones that are not clearly associated with one peak), but without it the trail list can become unwieldy. If this is permitted, should lifts be separated by peak as well?

Another case where I think subfolder organization might help is in managing trail boundaries vs. centerlines. When I want to turn trail boundaries on/off, I usually want to do it for all trails at once, and since they are not in a separate folder from the trail centerlines, which I usually leave on, it is a very tedious process. Is this view shared by others?

I think it goes without saying that planned expansions should be in a separate folder so they can be turned on/off with one click.

We also should consider whether/what kind of points of interest (lodges, bars, tourist attractions) should be allowed in the kmz files.

Downloads

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 05:27:31 +0000

Andy, as of right now, when i click to download a KMZ, Firefox tries to parse it and I get a jumbled mess of crap. I have to right click>save link as in order to download a file. I put this info up on the front page. Is it the same for you on windows? I sent an email to wikidot support asking about this after checking the forums and seeing that it was the proper thing to do.

New Areas Mapped

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:03:02 +0000

Just finished Discovery Basin in Montana. Tricky map, with alot of bowls and chutes. Nice high-rez imagery though. Check it out on the Montana maps page.

Areas in Progress

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:26:52 +0000

I am currently working on mapping Bretton Woods and Wildcat in New Hampshire, and Discovery in Montana. Just so no one starts/completes any of those. Discovery will be done most likely by Wednesday and Bretts and Kitty sometime in the near future.

Opening GEOSAP

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:22:56 +0000

http://community.wikidot.com/forum/t-34241/geosap-the-google-earth-open-ski-areas-project

Post in the wikidot forum announcing the site and looking for new members. Feel free to spread the word.

Page Rating

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:32:59 +0000

In order to be able to rate the map uploads, at this point we'll need to make a page for each area, and have users rate the page using the GEOSAP rating system. If this is the system we're gonna be using, we need to split each download off into it's own page. I'm gonna look around for an easier system for rating, do you know of anything andy?

Standards Version

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:27:43 +0000

Considering that we are currently mapping and posting areas without a set-in-stone document to define out standards, I propose that we create a GEOSAP Standards 1.0 which will be the goal of our work on the standards page. When that page is done, we will post it as GEOSAP Standards 1.0. Any changes to the standards will be reflected in a revision page. When a map is posted, it should be marked as to what standards version it applies to. All work done now should be marked as GEOSAP Standards 0 to reflect the lack of a concrete standard which was followed.

GEOSAP Domain name

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:48:50 +0000

For the present, I have registered www.geosap.tk, but the site places a banner on the site. It's viewable now at www.geosap.tk. I think in the future we should consider paying a service like godaddy or similar to set up a domain forward. Continuing to host at wikidot makes sense, but a forward from www.geosap.com would be excellent. We could also monetize the site with Google Ads (wikidot makes this very easy) and that could be used to pay for the domain name. Opinions?

colors

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:16:24 +0000

This seems like an independent, if not official, source for which green/blue we should use:
http://skiing.about.com/od/safetyforskiers/a/skitrailratings.htm
(click the green square then click "next" within the popup to see the blue square)

… it's pretty close to another site I found:
http://www.alpinemtsp.org/Ski_Safety.htm#How_Trails_Are_Rated

Trying to mimic the first one, I find RGB values of 0,150,0 gets close to the green, and 50,110,200 gets close to the blue. The black is obviously going to be 0,0,0.

Please provide opinions—once we make this decision it will be a *lot* of work to change.

wiki visit statistics

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:34:16 +0000

Does wikidot allow us to see reports about how people are using the site? I know the site isn't done, but I'm curious how many people are already downloading the maps we've created.

Priorities

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 18:05:14 +0000

I think I'm going to hold off on generating new trail maps for now. Since it looks like you're working the standards section, I'll do some work toward getting a "proof of concept" statistics calculation working, or at the very least I'll do enough research to know exactly what we need help with.

File organization

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:47:00 +0000

I assume we'll start by providing one area at a time, but how many kmz "packages" of the trail maps should we eventually aim to create?

Is it important to be able to download them all at once, or state by state? Is there a way we can have the map on the start page include an interface to download?

What info should be on the state pages?

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:40:50 +0000

I think we should list information about the quality of the files (version info, standards compliance) as soon as we can come up with something that makes sense.

Unless we get to the point of generating our own data, I don't think it adds much to post the published ski area statistics—there are lots of sites out there that have that, and it's more stuff we'd have to keep up-to-date.

Thoughts?

where to put the standards

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:38:05 +0000

David, I just saw your guide to mapping ski areas. It makes the one I started look pretty lame… nice work!

Should I move my info "inside" your page, or do you think a more "rigid" definition should be develped, with your page being a more user friendly, overview-type page?

purpose of the forum

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:55:12 +0000

I'm going to propose that we use these forums to ask questions and host any debates that may arise, but that we use wiki pages to actually write up the standards instead of the forums. I think that it will be more readable that way—any thoughts?

How to

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 01:13:34 +0000

Andyeich, over on SnowJournal you posted saying that it would be fairly easy to make add-on programs which would generate statistics for the trails and lifts. Would you mind posting on how to do this? I assume it's part of the Google Earth API?