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Introducing SnowJapanResorts www.snowjapanresorts.com   Last season we introduced an improved Resort Search feature on our main site. While that was an improvement, we still wanted to try and find

Unexpected. It whizzes round and images flying around like magic! Will play with new toy tonight. Take a rest!!

Looks great but aren't a lot of people going to be put off by having to install Silverlight (or unable to due to work policies). I'm also kind of surprised to see you any new site roll out using Silve

  • SnowJapan Moderator

It should work fine on both Windows and Mac, and on all modern versions of the major browsers.

So don't know why you seemed to have a problem there Black Mountain... Case by case stuff is difficult to work out without knowing more. But glad you got it going.

 

Mobile is another story, but this was not made with mobile in mind, as noted on the Help page.

 

Hope people like it, keen to hear more feedback.

 

Thanks.

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I recommend turning off and on again. ;)

 

Stupendous work, and to think we already have these new Forums and the Route map thing too.

Mad amount of work.

 

But this is something else, very cool idea and implementation.

Can't say I have seen anything like this before.

Great way to search though.

 

Hope you can take a recharge after all of that lot.

 

:)

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  • SnowJapan Moderator

We did consider that, but there are problems regarding snow depth data - and I presume by that you mean historical data per month.

First of all, often only the main big resorts publish that info. And even some of them don't. It would be impossible to get data for probably more than a third of the database, probably much less in reality.

The other big problem is the reliability and meaningfulness of the data itself. Where is the data coming from? The top or base of the resort? etc.

This application really needs data for all of the resorts in there for it to work nicely.

While snow depth data might be another good bit of data to search on, it just wasn't realistically possible.

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  • SnowJapan Moderator

There's both a "map page" and a "Route Finder" page for every resort on our site.

 

They are linked to from each of the resort pages on the site, for example;

http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/resortdetail.php?resid=16

 

Within SnowJapanResorts, to the top right of every image there is a small icon and link that takes you to the resort page on SnowJapan.

Clicking on the resort name on the right hand side of the page will also take you to that page.

 

Here is the map page for that resort:

http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/resort_map.php?resortNo=16

and the Route Finder page:

http://www.snowjapan.com/e/route-finder/ski-resort-route-finder.php?resortNo=16

 

You can also get straight to those pages from the Prefecture listing pages sorted by resort name:

http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/atozlisting1.php?prefecture=Niigata

or the Prefecture listing pages sorted by town name:

http://www.snowjapan.com/e/resorts/prefecturedata.php?prefecture=Niigata

 

Hope that helps.

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That is whole lot of fun.

I too have never quite seen a site like that, very interesting the way it all works.

Thanks for all the obvious efforts you guys put in to the cause.

Domo!

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  • SnowJapan Moderator

Thank you.

Yes aware of that problem @tokyo --- we couldn't test those links before going online as we didn't want to "share" ;)

We will try to get that fixed up.

 

Just to follow up on this, been trying to find a fix for that Send button issue where it doesn't appear properly, but can't find a solution right now - energy levels are low and so for the time being we have taken that link off the bottom left of the site.

I don't think it's too hard to share the site anyway if someone wants to.... after all, other than the About and How to Use pages, the whole site is essentially on one page -- http://www.snowjapanresorts.com

My colleague will take another look at that again sometime in the near future.

Thanks

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Looks great but aren't a lot of people going to be put off by having to install Silverlight (or unable to due to work policies). I'm also kind of surprised to see you any new site roll out using Silverlight given that there have been rumours of its demise for a while now.

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  • SnowJapan Moderator

If some people are put off because of Silverlight.... Well, perhaps that is unavoidable. Although I do believe it is a small (free) price to pay to enable someone to use this and be able to enjoy this functionality. If they wanted to enjoy such functionality.

 

Further development of Silverlight not happening? That might turn out to be the case, but that does not in any way affect what we have created. It works, and I am happy to say lots of people seem to be enjoying it. The (very) early stats look pretty encouraging, I would say, and we havent even linked it up and announced it from the main site yet. And the fact that it works would not change in the slightest even if ongoing development of Silverlight by Microsoft finished tomorrow. People would not suddenly be unable to use it.

 

It is not as if we were unaware of these issues when we decided to do it.

When we created our iPad App, we realised that only people with iPads would be able to use it.

When we created our Android App, we realised that only people with Android mobile devices would be able to use it.

Etc.

 

Basically, if you want to use it, great.

If you don't want to use it, that's fine too.

 

And remember, even if you do not like it or don't want to use it for whatever reason..... you are in no way worse off with the SnowJapan experience now than you were before SnowJapanResorts existed.

 

We have also this season completely overhauled these Forums and introduced another new functionality with Route Finder, so this is not the only new toy. I think those things in themselves are major updates.

 

:)

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I have no doubt that you guys put tons of thought into it all - that much is obvious by looking at the quality of the thing.

So it seems not quite right telling you 'how it is'. ;)

 

I believe that 99% of people do not give a crap about, understand or want to understand what Silverlight is pr any underlying technical issues. People simply do not care. The only people getting hung up over things like that are developers, fanboys, geeks and tech-heads who read into things way too much. No-one else is in the slightest bit interested.

 

If people see something, from a trusted source, that they want to see.... they will have no problem spending one minute to get it going.

Apart from the fact that lots of people will have it ready to go in their browser anyway.

 

:party:

 

Way to go I say.... know what you want, find out what does it, and create a very cool application.

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Worked straight off for me.

Great idea, still playing around with it but found some unusual results.

I had never heard of that spring ski place with the maximin elevation.

Some of the verticals are surprising too.

:thumbsup:

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Me too, I simply don't care.

I had to download it on my browser but did so without a thought. Took probably 30 seconds to get it done.

 

It's only when an obviously dodgy site asks for something like that when I might be put off.

SJ is quite obviously not dodgy and is certainly trustworthy.

I can't really see many people who are interested in the subject matter balking at doing that.

 

Love it though guys, excellent idea and really well pulled off too.

Quality.

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I'm certainly not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. You guys are doing a great job, I enjoy this site tremendously and I appreciate all the hard work that you put in.

 

I only mentioned it because I'd hate to see you have to spend time and effort reworking it later. You're obviously comfortable with it, so I'll shut up now ;-)

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  • SnowJapan Admin

Sorry about there being no banner ads, zebedee.

 

This new project is not funded by any kind of sponsorship or advertising. That enables us to do whatever we please without having to always consider commercial aspects of it. I rather enjoy that feeling and we have tried to create something that is really useful and also fun to use. Something that we would want to use and have. Hopefully we have achieved something close to that.

In fact, that's really how we go about all our site development. While I believe that we take good care of the people who do advertise on our site, we have never sat down and developed something major primarily because of it's revenue potential - the direction is always coming from what would be cool to have on the site, rather than what could possibly bring in more money.

 

You do bring up a fair point jondreads. We certainly discussed it carefully before making any decision, but decided that it was the way to do what we wanted to do.

From the feedback that we have got, people seem to generally like it. So that's good.

 

:friend:

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  • SnowJapan Admin

I would prefer we spend our time creating a quality product/service that people want to be on, rather than spending that time endlessly flogging something of less quality.

I'd also much rather we have fun, really enjoy what we are doing and produce something of value than just chase after money.

 

Now, if only we could get more time skiing! ;)

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Here's hoping you can.

 

A very unique take on things, I think it is a mighty fine toy to play with.

And play with it I will.

 

Sort of a pity about the snow depth but totally understand that it's just not possible. (Silly resorts!)

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