09/10 SITE UPDATES

Here's a summary of what is new on SnowJapan for the 2009/2010 snow season:

• Real-time resort weather voting system
• New Town Maps
• New Town map website www.snowjapanmaps.com
• Zao Now! daily reporting section
• Rusutsu Now! daily reporting section
• New photo uploading system (automatic resizing / pics up to 8MB)

Details of each of the new updates can be found here:

Real-time resort weather voting system:
http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/331606/09_10_SITE_UPDATES_Real_time_r.html

New Town Maps:
http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/331605/09_10_SITE_UPDATES_New_Town_Ma.html

New Town maps website:
http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/331604/09_10_SITE_UPDATES_SnowJapanMa.html

Zao Now!
http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/331603/09_10_SITE_UPDATES_Zao_Now_dai.html

Rusutsu Now!
http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/331602/09_10_SITE_UPDATES_Rusutsu_Now.html

Photos section
http://www.snowjapanforums.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/331601/09_10_SITE_UPDATES_Photos_Sect.html

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That lot took the best part of six months to create/prepare.... as much as we have tested the new content, with such a huge volume of new and often complex work going online at the same time there may well be some initial issues/problems. We will be dealing with any issues we find as quickly as possible over the coming days. If you do find any obvious errors or problems please email us at editor@snowjapan.com or send me a PM. (We would prefer you do that than post these issues on the Forums).

It will also take a short while to get the new pages all linked up properly and fully integrated into the site from the relevant pages/sections. We will be getting that done as soon as possible.

The updates for the season aren't finished yet - we will be updating a fair amount of the general and travel information on the site in the coming before the ski season begins.

I would like to thank the friends who took time to test and give us feedback over the last few months. Your support is appreciated.

We hope you like the new content and features. Here's to a great season.

This thread is open for discussion......

Give me a week to get through all that lot!!

No Yokohama now section?

Only taken a quick look but... great work. Having the hotels on the maps is a huge thing, they look great. Will look forward to seeing/using that weather thing in action.

Cool. Nice work SJ..

Just wondering, with the town maps thing, do you want any restaurant suggestions or anything?

the restaurants will need to pay to be listed. There's no free lunch

Great updates there, been working hard I see.

It is great to see where the hotels are as well, that was kind of lacking until now. Big improvement.

Hope people use the weather thing properly, it's like the Yahoo j-site weather thing + archives. Nice one.

Excellent stuff guys. I thought I knew what you had planned but didn't know a few of those. Sent you a mail with a few very small fixes. Hope you can enjoy a good rest soon after all that.

Interesting stuff there. Agreed on the map things would be good to get some regional ones too sometime in the future. Will help with the Madarao / Nozawa reports. Good to hear from Zao too.

We are experiencing a few small issues with the weather voting thing. It will get sorted soon, but that won't be today. (I'm actually surprised at how smoothly it all went considering...)

Should be really useful that. Really like the idea.

Who's the plonker who clicked on blizzard for Myoko?

Not sure, but know where they posted from.

There are obviously a few issues that we have with this particular feature and we will be thinking it all through carefully. With something like this there was always going to be this kind of thing happen to some degree. But hopefully in the long term it will be masked out by all of the real and useful data that people with good intentions vote for. We don't have our full editing functionality backend up and running as yet but will soon be able to pluck those obviously 'joke' votes out. It's slightly annoying of course but we're all tired here so perhaps not in the mood for that kind of fun joke so soon after putting it up. I suppose at the beginning there may be people clicking on something as they don't know exactly what it is yet. Anyway, thinking hats back on tomorrow.


Hopefully it will have settled in fairly soon and if enough real people vote and keep the jokers out it will become a useful and fun thing for everyone.

Here's hoping!

Excellent !
Lot's of essential information. What a great site. The maps are really good to have. Keep adding them when you have the time in the future.
I was thinking about Zao.

I think we have to do a "Thank you SJF party" in the future, too.

Indeed - a massive party in Yuzawa.

Let's hire out a hotel.

We do plan to add more maps in the future. Realistically, it will be next year before you see them, but it is in the plans.
Our new maps are very easily changed/adapted as well and so we can quite easily make changes to them.

Thanks for the comments both on here and in messages sent, much appreciated.

Nice. For a noob who's never been to an area (like me), the maps are super helpful. It's great being able to see how close you are to the lifts.

Anything we can do to help SJ with regards to maps?

Looks great.
Happy to hear from Zao as well this season.
Must go there.

Nice one, I'll post a few votes from Hakuba every day.