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Today the bulk of our new site updates for the new season have been put online.
Other threads will go through more details but I wanted to explain a few general things about what we have done. For those interested, I think it is worth explaining everything so here goes....
Site design
The first thing you might notice is that we have a new main site design. It has actually been a fair few years since we changed the 'look' of SnowJapan. We still like those curves so they stay but the top and side images as well as some navigation buttons have changed to give it all a fresh look. Actually, we have multiple new looks as we have created a number of variations and will be rotating them every week to keep the site looking fresh.
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Boring database stuff - what we have done
Around April we started work on reworking a part of our foundations - ski resort data. We have basically gone through our resort database twice:
The first time was checking the exact location of each ski resort so that our new maps functionality will be accurate. We have pin-pointed each resort to either around the base of the resort or, in the case of a resort having a few different main bases, where they connect. Each one has been done manually, so there may be a few variations on that basic idea - we just chose what we thought was best. We are now confident that the resorts are accurately positioned on all of the maps on our site.
The second time was checking up on town/village/city names. Over the last few years a lot of towns and villages in Japan have changed names or either merged together or into nearby cities. There were a fair few in our database that were out of date. They are now up to date.
With there being just so many, there is a chance of some small oversights still - if you find any please do let us know.
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Boring database stuff - what we still need to do
Once these updates have gone online, the next job we have is to go through our resort information once again in order to update it all for the 2010/2011 season....things like lift ticket prices and other resort-specific data, just to make sure it is all correct and up to date. This will take some time as there are over 500 sets of records to check and update. We plan to have all of this done before the end of December 2010 when everything should be up to date.
We are also still deciding what to do about ski resorts that were, but are no more. That will also be sorted by the end of December 2010.
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Rebuilding from scratch
This season a fair few main sections of the site have been completely re-built from scratch and hopefully you can notice some big improvements in layout and navigation. There is a lot to see so please do have a wander round the main site to have a look round and check everything out.
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About Maps
We have used a lot of maps this season. This is something we have wanted to do for a while but it needed that database sweep that I explained above to pull off effectively. We hope that these maps will make everything that much more visual and really open things up a lot for many people.
It's worth mentioning.....
We know that some towns and villages have more detail (smaller roads etc) than others.
We know that some places have more English written on them than others.
Unfortunately, we are not in control of the basic maps themselves - as you can see we are using Googlemaps for this functionality.
I would hope though that even those who cannot read any Japanese will be able to get a lot from the maps - if not just getting a visual idea of 'where things are' and taking a look at satellite images of resorts and terrain info.
In order to aid their usefulness, we have tried to put icons on maps and make them as useful as possible and intend to go back and build on what we already have.
We think they are pretty cool though - you can zoom in, zoom out, move around the maps, check out Satellite view, Hybrid views and also Terrain views. You can even view photos and move along roads using the Street View functionality where available. Again, we have no control over that availability.
For more information on our Maps and how to use them, please check this page out:
http://www.snowjapan.com/e/maps/using-maps.html
The previous maps from last season are still online on our SnowJapanMaps website. The reason for this is because on those pages you can view the maps in a wider area of the screen.
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About Search
This season we have introduced a brand new Places to Stay Search and also re-built the Resorts Search with increased functionality. Results from both searches are now plotted on maps in addition being displayed as a sortable list.
Recommendation:
When using both the Searches, we recommend that if you do know a Prefecture or Town then you make sure to one or both from the drop down - that way the resulting map will be zoomed in on the relevant area. If no town or prefecture is chosen, all searches will show the results on a wider map of Japan.
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SnowJapan Apps
In June we decided to create some Apps for SnowJapan - both on the iPhone/iPod touch and Android mobile devices. It has been a real learning process and taken way longer than imagined - they have only just been put up online - but we are pleased with our first effort. If you do have one of these mobile devices please do download and let us know your thoughts.
The iPhone App can be found here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id393489843?mt=8
The iPad App can be found here:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id399769555?mt=8
Search for "snowjapan" for the Android in Marketplace.
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What next?
We're not done yet! Here are some things we have planned to do in the coming weeks and months:
- resorts data will be updated by the end of December 2010;
- Travel Information section with much more info will be relaunched hopefully by mid-December 2010;
- daily resort status/snow depth reporting will begin in December 2010;
- our Now daily reports will be be updated more frequently as the winter approaches and then become daily once the season starts.
- ???
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Have fun
We really hope that you like the changes that we have made.
Feel free to post comments in this thread or email us at editor@snowjapan.com - always good to get feedback.
Thank you.
And all the best for the season.
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