Bluemapia

January 18th, 2010

Bluemapia sponsors People’s Boat

We are now a new happy sponsor of People’s Boat, the new Alex Alley’s boat to participate to the next Ocean Global Race.

The cost to run the campaign is high and Alex needs more sponsors.

Entry level to buy a pixel 5×5 cm on his boat is 25 £.

He is a great guy and at the end of the race the boat will be sold and a donation will be made to charity.

That’s the main reason why we decided to sponsor his adventure.

Join us and buy your space!

December 10th, 2009

New widget to embed nearby places by bluemapia in your website/blog

Dear bloggers, website developers, friends,
if you were wondering how to include bluemapia places in your website, here is the answer.

We have developed a new widget that for a given latitude/longitude will return the nearest places found in the bluemapia database. You can also define the number of columns and rows.

Here is an example:

And this is the code to embed into your page:
<iframe src="http://www.bluemapia.com/widgets/nearby.php?lat=42.6&lng=10.6&cols=1&rows=3" marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=no width=610 height=250></iframe>

Parameters are latitude (lat), longitude (lng), number of columns (cols) and number of rows (rows).
The width of a column is 300 pixels.

Have Fun!
Amerigo

November 27th, 2009

We are ready to hear from you!

In the first year at Bluemapia we’ve observed our community’s growing interest.
Many of you just registered while others actively contributed with the creation of content for the simple reason that it is useful to other sailors. What a satisfaction, indeed!

But we want to do better.
We know we can do better with your help.
So we thought it’d be a great idea to open up to hear your feedback.

We simply ask you to add a comment to this post with your ideas about the site, the content, the mobile applications, what you miss most, what you hate and what you like. Anything that could help us understand how to make Bluemapia the best open cruising guide and social mapping site for boaters on the web.
For the benefit of all of us.

We count on you.
Add your comment below.

Have Fun!
Bluemapia Staff

November 2nd, 2009

Windfinder weather forecast for your favourite marina now available on Bluemapia

After Bluemapia Mobile, wind and weather forecasts are now additionally available on the Bluemapia web site and iPhone application.
Jonas Kaufmann at Windfinder has developed another of his fantastic widgets and thanks to their new forecast capabilities, we are now able to embed weather forecasts in the Bluemapia web pages.
To achieve this, all the Bluemapia marinas and ports locations have been imported into the Windfinder weather forecast database so that weather forecasts for the same exact locations are now available at the bottom of the Bluemapia pages. You can see here below how the page looks like.

For all the other placemarks and pois, the page shows the weather forecast from the nearest weather station, few miles away in most cases.

What if your favourite marina is not on Bluemapia yet?
Well, just register for a Bluemapia account and create a placemark or POI for that marina. Windfinder is web integrated with Bluemapia and their weather forecast database is periodically updated to include our new marinas.

Weather forecasts are also available on Bluemapia for iPhone. Another step to bring information straight to the cockpit of your boats. Search for a place by name or using the nearby function and open the details page of a place. The forecast is there just after the comments.

And our effort is not over. Bluemapia content will be soon integrated into Windfinder pages.

Stay tuned!

October 16th, 2009

Bluemapia for iPhone now on the AppStore

We have finally released it.
Bluemapia for iPhone is now available on the AppStore!

With Bluemapia for iPhone boaters can now use their GPS enabled iPhone to send pictures and location information straight from the cockpit of their boats, or even view localised photos and information contributed by fellow users.
Bluemapia for iPhone includes:

GPS - see the current latitude and longitude as well as speed and direction.

UPLOAD - take a photo, add a title and some text to describe the place and then upload your content to the public map to share this place with all the other boaters. Good descriptions such as the type of bottom for an anchorage or the services available in a marina will be highly appreciated by the rest of the community.

NEARBY - find places near you visited and uploaded by other sailors: Placemarks and Points of Interest in the range of 1, 5, 10 or 50 nautical miles with distance and direction from your current position.

SEARCH - enter the name of a place to find Placemarks and Points of Interest in the Bluemapia public map.

SETTINGS - change the measurement system from Imperial to Metric and select between different coordinate formats.

Through Creative Commons licensing, everything you upload to Bluemapia is yours.
We simply provide the platform, and hope it inspires you and your friends to keep sailing and share your adventures with the world.

Go to the AppStore now and download it!

July 5th, 2009

Windfinder weather now available on Bluemapia Mobile

For those who still do not know Windfinder, Windfinder is a website that provides real time wind reports and forecasts for hundreds of spots around the world available in several formats including mobile pages and SMS.

I’m therefore where happy to announce that thanks to the joint effort with Jonas Kauffman by Windfinder, it is now possible to view on the map the Windfinder weather stations with Bluemapia Mobile. Once displayed on the map, you can open the Windfinder mobile page of each single station to analize current and forecasted weather data provided by Windfinder.
Take a look at a video to see how it works:

Bluemapia Mobile Beta2 June 2009: View Windfinder weather stations on Bluemapia from Bluemapia on Vimeo.

You don’t new to upgrade the Bluemapia Mobile software to have access to this new feature. Just be sure you have the latest Beta 2 version and start a search to update the list of services.
We are working to add some new and exciting services, so stay tuned to keep you up to date.

Buon Vento (Fair Wind)

Marcello

June 6th, 2009

A new Bluemapia Mobile version is now available

Download Bluemapia Mobile 0.9.6 Beta 2 (June 2009)

Dear friends,
We are very pleased to announce our latest and improved version of Bluemapia Mobile.

What’s new on Bluemapia Mobile? After extensive planning and development, a list of new features have just gone live.
Here’s a quick rundown on what’s new:

New Search
You can now search by entering the name of a place. If a result is not found on bluemapia, then we search for that place in google and return the result on the map.

Wikipedia’s georeferenced articles
Just select Wikipedia in the “Others” field of the search dialog and you will see the wikipedia icon on the map to indicate a georeferenced article that you can read directly on your mobile device.

Application Programming Interface for external layer providers
In addition to the Wikipedia layer, we have now an API to make new layers available from Bluemapia Mobile. Please contact info@bluemapia.com if you want to propose your layer service to Bluemapia.

Update Web Servers URLs
You can now choose “Update” to get the latest definitions of the web map server URLs that we keep up-to-date on the bluemapia server. By default only OpenStreetMap is available after the installation. Also, if you know the address of a good web map server, you can now manually add that URL to the list of the available servers following the bluemapia format specified here:

Single Create Placemark command including Send
You now have a consistent and rapid way to shoot a photo that will create a placemark at the current coordinates (that is also your current position if the GPS is active) and send the placemark to the bluemapia site or decide to save it locally on your phone. All in the same operation.

The new Bluemapia Mobile is now available here for download.

With these new features Bluemapia Mobile is now the best Geo-Browser available for Windows Mobile. The Bluemapia Mobile Open Source project is still hosted by sourceforge, with a GPL license based uniquely on open source portable libraries.

Register now to get full access to the bluemapia mobile features!

And if you need support please send us an e-mail at support@bluemapia.com or post a message on our GetSatisfaction page.

June 1st, 2009

Follow Nick Cross the Pacific

Those who have followed Bluemapia in the last several months on the site’s blog and Twitter already know that Nick from Bigoceans who is working for Bluemapia managing and moderating online content, is now departing for his solo crossing of the Pacific ocean.

Bluemapia decided to sponsor his trans-Pacific voyage and keep him sailing.
If you’re not sure what Nick is attempting to do, he’s sailing singlehanded from Europe to Australia. In 2008, he departed Europe, and sailed to New York via the Caribbean - Now, in 2009, the voyage will continue on, with a solo crossing of the Pacific on his British sailing vessel named ‘Constellation, a Contessa 26′ from 1972.

We are following his crossing on this page, updating the map with his last known position and placemarks.

Click on the placemark icon to see what Nick reported.

identifies the last updated placemark.
Pacific Crossing at Bluemapia

Click icons to view more - Map created by Bluemapia

Here Nick is in San Francisco, out of Golden Gate, during his final sailing tests before departing to Hawaii beginning of June.

BUON VENTO NICK
Marcello & Massimo

Check this explanatory page to discover how you can embed maps on your site’s pages, like we have done here.

March 31st, 2009

New Features in Spring 2009

Today we have two such items we wanted to tell you about: A big upgrade and enhancement to Bluemapia.com, and a campaign to help solo sailor Nick Jaffe, cross the Pacific.

Firstly, what’s new on Bluemapia.com? After extensive planning and development, a big list of features have just gone live. Over the past several months, we’ve listened to feedback, and watched how users interact and play with the site. We put all those ideas down on paper, chose the best ones, and today we’ve put them public, drastically extending functionality and usability - Here’s a quick rundown on what’s new:

New Features in Spring 2009

Track Management

• Draw overlay Tracks on your trip maps
• Upload GPX files to your trips (GPS Exchange Format, direct from your GPS)
• Total Miles for each trip
• View Trip tracks and placemarks in Google Earth (every trip displays a ‘View trip in Google Earth’ link)
• Tracks are now included in all embedded maps

Enriched Trip Info

• Show your Boat Name
• Show details of the model & type of boat
• Boat Report

WikiPOI Creation - An exciting addition to all members, users are now able to add WikiPOI’s (Wiki Point of Interest). A WikiPOI covers an area as opposed to a point like a Placemark - For example, an entire bay or marina with highly detailed and localised information. Using a Wiki-methodology, users can edit and add to the WikiPOI’s of other users. If you see a mistake, misinformation, or wish to add your own experience to a WikiPOI - You can now simply edit or even create it!

Usability & Interface

• A cross now indicates the position of the center of map with scrolling lat/lon coordinates at the bottom
• Improved search, allowing you to search for any place. If we can’t find it in the Bluemapia Database, we find the closest place instead via Google.
• Enhanced usability through tabs.
• Easily share content on other social media (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc) - Rollover the ‘Share’ button on all trips.
• Improved ‘Friend List’
• Comments are now sent via email to the owner of the trip, or placemark, as well as to all prior users who have commented.
• About you - Tell the world more about yourself, and your experiences.

Bluemapia Sponsorship Campaign

Bluemapia.com is launching a challenge for lovers of the sea, and its internet users: Register on our website www.bluemapia.com, contribute placemarks and WikiPOI’s, and assist Nick Jaffe in his solo crossing of the Pacific ocean.

Our aim is to produce 300 new user registrations, and 600 new Placemarks by the end of March for the first round of sponsorship, or 2000 new users & 2000 new placemarks by the end of April for the second. If these goals are met, Bluemapia will financially support the remaining funds required for the long voyage from San Francisco, to Nick’s home country of Australia, aboard ‘Constellation’, a 26ft Contessa sloop built in 1972.

All registrations and contributions up until May 1st count towards our goals, so if you’re receiving this newsletter - Help him out with a few additional placemarks, or get your sailor-friends onboard and registered!

Thank you everyone for your continuing contributions and feedback - Last year was a great year, and this year is already turning out to be even better.

See you on the sea!

From everyone at Bluemapia.

March 9th, 2009

Pacific Crossing Sponsorship - Press Release

Translated from the original Italian.

Milan, March 3, 2009 - Bluemapia.com, the web & mobile platform for photos, videos and information related to recreational boating, is launching a challenge for lovers of the sea, and its internet users: register on the website www.bluemapia.com, and contribute to the solo crossing of the Pacific Ocean by Nick Jaffe, who currently works for Bluemapia, managing and moderating online content.

Sailors and dreamers have yet another reason to contribute to the 100% free online boating guide! The aim is to produce 300 new user registrations, and 600 new Placemarks by May. If these goals are met, Bluemapia will financially support the remaining funds required for the long voyage from San Francisco, to Nick’s home country of Australia, aboard ‘Constellation’, a 26ft Contessa sloop built in 1972.

‘We are proud to be able to contribute to assisting Nick in his crossing, in return for his valuable contribution to Bluemapia in recent months’ says Massimo Cortinovis and Marcello Ferrero, founders of the online platform. ‘We do this in line with the philosophy of Bluemapia. While 600 Placemarks by May is an ambitious goal, we also think it is possible. Through this campaign, we support both Nick, as well as contributing to the broader online community and world of recreational boating, whereby users are able to provide points of reference and first-hand port information, while also exchanging tips and ideas beyond those covered by traditional guides.’

Both web professionals, Massimo Cortinovis and Marcello Ferrero are united by a passion for sailing, and created Bluemapia.com to give users the ability to track their location in real time, get in touch with other users, and to create, share & edit their own georeferenced content.

All services through Bluemapia for free via a web browser, but also on the go thanks to the ‘Bluemapia Mobile’ application (currently available for Windows Mobile, with versions for iPhone and Symbian coming soon), that users can download from www.bluemapia.com or directly from their phones. Allowing direct access to the online platform, Bluemapia Mobile also interfaces with your mobile phones onboard GPS and camera, giving you simple and comprehensive geotagging & position update capabilities.