9 ms·

Review my side project: www.recreationparks.net

18 points by tectonic 18y ago

tectonic 18y ago
I'd like to get everyone's thoughts about this project. I'd also love to know about other data sources that I should mash into this. I think there is value in exposing public data sources in a structured ways, plus, you know, it'd be cool if the AdSense went somewhere.
- johns 18y ago
  I'd love to see an API on this as it is something we could potentially integrate into our products.
- lawrence 18y ago
  Hey Tectonic, I just sent you a note via Iteration Labs. We've got a bunch of park reviews you could drop in, and we're looking for a launch partner for a new consumer ratings API. Let me know if you want to talk.
qhoxie 18y ago
I like the site quite a bit. It is very functional and serves a good, specific purpose. The search appears to work well, which is nice. Something to consider, though not trivial, would be tracking local websites to note events at the different parks. Also, an easy thing to mash in would be weather with regard to outdoor activities. Nice job!
- tectonic 18y ago
  It does have weather, but I think I will move it up in the interface.
rokhayakebe 18y ago
Serves a purpose. Simple as that. Good job.
rksprst 18y ago
The voting was confusing. I saw a list of things and a checkbox and assumed that a checkbox meant that that park has that item. Maybe have "yes" and "no" instead.
- tectonic 18y ago
  Thanks, good suggestion!
tectonic 18y ago
Is anyone with IE having issues?
- PStamatiou 18y ago
  doesn't everyone using IE have issues? zing
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Great site! Simple idea, simple design. I like it. Having said that, the "Google Search" looks messy -- a lot of word-wrapping going on. Some better way to display that? Also it seems like you can easily run into lots of data sources with something like this. You might end up using a device like a tab. Just a thought. Some of the links didn't give me any information (YouTube videos in the area) until I clicked on the link. I shouldn't have to click to find out the answer is "nothing here". That's probably impossible to do, but users are like that. Finally the weather forecast could've used some icons. Seems like people expect icons with weather information. Just my two cents. Keep up the good work. Awesome idea! A little more tweaking and some SEO work, right?
inrev 18y ago
If you chose a state, say CA, a page that shows all the parks in California appears. The page is rather long and it takes some time to load. My browser actually wanted to stop the script. Maybe you can first show all the counties in CA and then the parks in a specific county. Besides searching for a park near you, it might be interesting to search for a park near you that has a certain activity, say rock climbing.
- josefresco 18y ago
  Same issue for me, FF3 wanted to kill the script when loading CA. MA was fine but the list was smaller .. maybe pagination?
  - tectonic 18y ago
    Thanks guys, I will fix this.
johns 18y ago
Under Park Activities, there's no mention of playing fields, tennis courts, etc.
brandnewlow 18y ago
Looks great! What are you using to geotarget?
arnorhs 18y ago
i'm in iceland.. tried to find a park here.. didn't find any.. so i'm of no use to you, good luck anyways!
markbao 18y ago
It's down right now. 502 gateway.
ejs 18y ago
502 Bad Gateway dead for me...?
ken 18y ago
I could see this being useful someday soon... I'm not a fan of the big popup of state abbrevs. First, because some state abbrevs aren't immediately obvious to me (MD and ME I have to stop and think about). Second, because mine is always way at the bottom. (Then I get a mostly-alphabetical list, again sorted by county name.) I wish it would just show me a map and let me click where I am, even just the simplest USA.jpeg with an imagemap to pick a state. If I type "wa" in the box and click "search", I get the standard Rails "something went wrong" page. If I type "washington" in the box, I get a bunch of "Washington, DC" parks, followed by a bunch of parks with "Washington" in their name. I admit my forefathers didn't pick the most creative name for my state, but it would be nice if it was a little more forgiving, and show me some Washington parks when I search for "washington". I can't find either of the parks I usually visit, nor a way to add a new entry. I guess that's version 2. I'd also like to be able to search by what features a park has, which is probably also version 2 (after users have had time to vote!).
josefresco 18y ago
Your IP detection showed parks over 80 miles from my actual location. For these cases, have the radius be much larger, or have the Google Map show locations surrounding the target area.
figured 18y ago
Dude, the very first thing I did, was press the first button I saw (the search button). "The page you were looking for doesn't exist." Needs a little more testing
chime 18y ago
Finally a HN project that isn't about technology or social networking but rather something more refreshing, nature. I browsed through the site for about 10 minutes and here is what I think. Please do not feel I am being critical for the sake of being critical. I am an avid kayaker and love camping, hiking, and exploring in federal and state parks around the US South East. Every Friday night, I'm online looking for my next destination. I would love to have a 1-stop-shop to find where to go next. 1. Competition - http://www.floridastateparks.org/ http://www.floridastateparks.org/ - This is my current favorite parks site and the official source for Florida State Parks. I love most of the features on this site and despite plain-jane design, it's very well developed. I am a kayaker and this site lets me find the parks at which I can go kayaking. However, it does not have an advanced search where I can say "parks with +kayaking, <100 miles from zipcode 33708, +picnic tables" or something similar. If you had a similar search for entire US, that would be wonderful. You already seem to have a lot of the data. 2. Localization - most people want to look for places around their hometown. You have a great start by using ip-location to find my local parks. However, presenting a plain list of 50 parks around my county doesn't help much. You need to tell me what I can do where, easily. While this: http://www.floridastateparks.org/FindaPark.cfm?dist=Southwest http://www.floridastateparks.org/FindaPark.cfm?dist=Southwes... may seem messy, it is better than no activity information because last thing I want to do is end up driving 3 hours to find there is no kayak launch at a park despite the proximity to a river. 3. The front page should have at least one "featured" local park with pics + text. Thay would definitely entice me to give this random park a second look. You can tally up the searches or popular pages for each county/state to determine how to automatically feature a park. 4. State list needs to have names and not just abbreviations. 5. "Related Google Search results" is pretty useless for pages like: http://www.recreationparks.net/FL/seminole/lower-wekiva-river-preserve-state-park-sanford http://www.recreationparks.net/FL/seminole/lower-wekiva-rive... - at least to me. It takes up valuable center-screen space. I understand this is an easy way to provide a link to the official site of a park but it doesn't always work and seems very cluttered. I would rather see 'key' park activities or Flickr pics there. Or a featured comment by a user. 6. Can you classify/filter by types of parks? I would rather not see baseball parks and only focus on state parks while someone else would rather see sports parks but not nature parks. Too many parks spoil the google map view. Would be much better to fine-tune the kind of parks that I am interested in. You could have a toggle bar in the header area with: Show "nature parks", "wildlife preserves", "sports parks" and enable all of them by default. If I make a change, save it in a cookie/session and apply it to all the search results. I know this kind of feature is easy and works because I made it for sched.org and users loved it. 7. In addition to type for each park, give each park a type-icon. So it's easier to identify and put it in every place the park is mentioned. 8. A few dream features I have are distance-based. Sort the county list based on the distance from my home county. Sort the search results based on the distance too. Allow me to easily set my home zipcode. Save that in a cookie/session and use that for every page. 9. Contact info - this will be difficult for you but as a user, I want the phone number for any park I am looking at to make sure the river is in navigable condition or to find the parking rates. If you can bring in more information like that into one system, wonderful. If not, figure out a way to link to each park's official site. I would love to know the park hours, entrance fees etc. on your site but I can dig in given the park's official site. If I have to go to Google to find that, I might as well go to other sites like http://www.floridastateparks.org/wekiwasprings/default.cfm http://www.floridastateparks.org/wekiwasprings/default.cfm that have a lot more information already. 10. Great work so far. Like I said above, do not think I am being critical just to be critical. Me and my friends at http://www.clubkayak.com/greenwave/default.asp http://www.clubkayak.com/greenwave/default.asp would love more resources for parks around the nation. However, given existing valuable sites like http://www.floridastateparks.org/wekiwasprings/default.cfm http://www.floridastateparks.org/wekiwasprings/default.cfm you have quite a challenge to become our favorite destination. I have only listed Florida-centric links but I can assure you most states have their own recreation park guides and that is what people use. Trying to be a central destination for something that very local is not an easy task. You can accomplish it successfully, if you become a better, easier-to-navigate resource than the local sites. I understand a lot of your site information will come from users/volunteers so hopefully with time, the value of your content will appreciate. Till then, you will have to get some of that data yourself (hopefully you will pursue legal, moral methods - e.g. NO SCRAPING). You have a long way to go and best of luck with it all.

18 points by tectonic 18y ago

I'd like to get everyone's thoughts about this project. I'd also love to know about other data sources that I should mash into this. I think there is value in exposing public data sources in a structured ways, plus, you know, it'd be cool if the AdSense went somewhere.

johns 18y ago
I'd love to see an API on this as it is something we could potentially integrate into our products.
lawrence 18y ago
Hey Tectonic, I just sent you a note via Iteration Labs. We've got a bunch of park reviews you could drop in, and we're looking for a launch partner for a new consumer ratings API. Let me know if you want to talk.

qhoxie 18y ago

I like the site quite a bit. It is very functional and serves a good, specific purpose. The search appears to work well, which is nice. Something to consider, though not trivial, would be tracking local websites to note events at the different parks. Also, an easy thing to mash in would be weather with regard to outdoor activities. Nice job!

tectonic 18y ago
It does have weather, but I think I will move it up in the interface.

rokhayakebe 18y ago

Serves a purpose. Simple as that. Good job.

rksprst 18y ago

The voting was confusing. I saw a list of things and a checkbox and assumed that a checkbox meant that that park has that item. Maybe have "yes" and "no" instead.

tectonic 18y ago
Thanks, good suggestion!

tectonic 18y ago

Is anyone with IE having issues?

PStamatiou 18y ago
doesn't everyone using IE have issues? zing

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

Great site! Simple idea, simple design. I like it. Having said that, the "Google Search" looks messy -- a lot of word-wrapping going on. Some better way to display that? Also it seems like you can easily run into lots of data sources with something like this. You might end up using a device like a tab. Just a thought. Some of the links didn't give me any information (YouTube videos in the area) until I clicked on the link. I shouldn't have to click to find out the answer is "nothing here". That's probably impossible to do, but users are like that. Finally the weather forecast could've used some icons. Seems like people expect icons with weather information. Just my two cents. Keep up the good work. Awesome idea! A little more tweaking and some SEO work, right?

inrev 18y ago

If you chose a state, say CA, a page that shows all the parks in California appears. The page is rather long and it takes some time to load. My browser actually wanted to stop the script. Maybe you can first show all the counties in CA and then the parks in a specific county. Besides searching for a park near you, it might be interesting to search for a park near you that has a certain activity, say rock climbing.

josefresco 18y ago
Same issue for me, FF3 wanted to kill the script when loading CA. MA was fine but the list was smaller .. maybe pagination?
- tectonic 18y ago
  Thanks guys, I will fix this.

johns 18y ago

Under Park Activities, there's no mention of playing fields, tennis courts, etc.

brandnewlow 18y ago

Looks great! What are you using to geotarget?

arnorhs 18y ago

i'm in iceland.. tried to find a park here.. didn't find any.. so i'm of no use to you, good luck anyways!

markbao 18y ago

It's down right now. 502 gateway.

ejs 18y ago

502 Bad Gateway dead for me...?

ken 18y ago

I could see this being useful someday soon... I'm not a fan of the big popup of state abbrevs. First, because some state abbrevs aren't immediately obvious to me (MD and ME I have to stop and think about). Second, because mine is always way at the bottom. (Then I get a mostly-alphabetical list, again sorted by county name.) I wish it would just show me a map and let me click where I am, even just the simplest USA.jpeg with an imagemap to pick a state. If I type "wa" in the box and click "search", I get the standard Rails "something went wrong" page. If I type "washington" in the box, I get a bunch of "Washington, DC" parks, followed by a bunch of parks with "Washington" in their name. I admit my forefathers didn't pick the most creative name for my state, but it would be nice if it was a little more forgiving, and show me some Washington parks when I search for "washington". I can't find either of the parks I usually visit, nor a way to add a new entry. I guess that's version 2. I'd also like to be able to search by what features a park has, which is probably also version 2 (after users have had time to vote!).

josefresco 18y ago

Your IP detection showed parks over 80 miles from my actual location. For these cases, have the radius be much larger, or have the Google Map show locations surrounding the target area.

figured 18y ago

Dude, the very first thing I did, was press the first button I saw (the search button). "The page you were looking for doesn't exist." Needs a little more testing

chime 18y ago

Finally a HN project that isn't about technology or social networking but rather something more refreshing, nature. I browsed through the site for about 10 minutes and here is what I think. Please do not feel I am being critical for the sake of being critical. I am an avid kayaker and love camping, hiking, and exploring in federal and state parks around the US South East. Every Friday night, I'm online looking for my next destination. I would love to have a 1-stop-shop to find where to go next. 1. Competition - http://www.floridastateparks.org/ http://www.floridastateparks.org/ - This is my current favorite parks site and the official source for Florida State Parks. I love most of the features on this site and despite plain-jane design, it's very well developed. I am a kayaker and this site lets me find the parks at which I can go kayaking. However, it does not have an advanced search where I can say "parks with +kayaking, <100 miles from zipcode 33708, +picnic tables" or something similar. If you had a similar search for entire US, that would be wonderful. You already seem to have a lot of the data. 2. Localization - most people want to look for places around their hometown. You have a great start by using ip-location to find my local parks. However, presenting a plain list of 50 parks around my county doesn't help much. You need to tell me what I can do where, easily. While this: http://www.floridastateparks.org/FindaPark.cfm?dist=Southwest http://www.floridastateparks.org/FindaPark.cfm?dist=Southwes... may seem messy, it is better than no activity information because last thing I want to do is end up driving 3 hours to find there is no kayak launch at a park despite the proximity to a river. 3. The front page should have at least one "featured" local park with pics + text. Thay would definitely entice me to give this random park a second look. You can tally up the searches or popular pages for each county/state to determine how to automatically feature a park. 4. State list needs to have names and not just abbreviations. 5. "Related Google Search results" is pretty useless for pages like: http://www.recreationparks.net/FL/seminole/lower-wekiva-river-preserve-state-park-sanford http://www.recreationparks.net/FL/seminole/lower-wekiva-rive... - at least to me. It takes up valuable center-screen space. I understand this is an easy way to provide a link to the official site of a park but it doesn't always work and seems very cluttered. I would rather see 'key' park activities or Flickr pics there. Or a featured comment by a user. 6. Can you classify/filter by types of parks? I would rather not see baseball parks and only focus on state parks while someone else would rather see sports parks but not nature parks. Too many parks spoil the google map view. Would be much better to fine-tune the kind of parks that I am interested in. You could have a toggle bar in the header area with: Show "nature parks", "wildlife preserves", "sports parks" and enable all of them by default. If I make a change, save it in a cookie/session and apply it to all the search results. I know this kind of feature is easy and works because I made it for sched.org and users loved it. 7. In addition to type for each park, give each park a type-icon. So it's easier to identify and put it in every place the park is mentioned. 8. A few dream features I have are distance-based. Sort the county list based on the distance from my home county. Sort the search results based on the distance too. Allow me to easily set my home zipcode. Save that in a cookie/session and use that for every page. 9. Contact info - this will be difficult for you but as a user, I want the phone number for any park I am looking at to make sure the river is in navigable condition or to find the parking rates. If you can bring in more information like that into one system, wonderful. If not, figure out a way to link to each park's official site. I would love to know the park hours, entrance fees etc. on your site but I can dig in given the park's official site. If I have to go to Google to find that, I might as well go to other sites like http://www.floridastateparks.org/wekiwasprings/default.cfm http://www.floridastateparks.org/wekiwasprings/default.cfm that have a lot more information already. 10. Great work so far. Like I said above, do not think I am being critical just to be critical. Me and my friends at http://www.clubkayak.com/greenwave/default.asp http://www.clubkayak.com/greenwave/default.asp would love more resources for parks around the nation. However, given existing valuable sites like http://www.floridastateparks.org/wekiwasprings/default.cfm http://www.floridastateparks.org/wekiwasprings/default.cfm you have quite a challenge to become our favorite destination. I have only listed Florida-centric links but I can assure you most states have their own recreation park guides and that is what people use. Trying to be a central destination for something that very local is not an easy task. You can accomplish it successfully, if you become a better, easier-to-navigate resource than the local sites. I understand a lot of your site information will come from users/volunteers so hopefully with time, the value of your content will appreciate. Till then, you will have to get some of that data yourself (hopefully you will pursue legal, moral methods - e.g. NO SCRAPING). You have a long way to go and best of luck with it all.