ActiveCaptain background...
I'm "the guy who put together ActiveCaptain." We're just about to start our 5th year with it and currently reach about 100,000 boaters with the data.
I'm happy to answer questions that are coming up here. This is all obviously a topic that I'm interested in and have a lot of experience working with. I also have learned to be very careful on this forum - and I'm happy to do that. I completely realize and respect that this is a not a place to make commercial promotions. I'll do my best to keep the information factual and a little vanilla. Anyone is welcome to contact me off-thread for more specific information.
First, my wife and I run ActiveCaptain. I'm a software developer and wrote all of the software for the Flash user-interface on the web site, Windows Mobile & Palm chartplotting software, server back-end software, and server interfaces for third parties. My wife is an MBA in marketing and previously worked for Apple. Together, we've been building companies and products for 25 years - mostly in the medical world. We have 9 FDA approvals for medical products - hardware and software - and have had companies of ours acquired by some of the largest public companies in the medical device world.
After an acquisition in 1995, I started dabbling in chart software, new user-interfaces for boats, and the future of using a computer on a boat. I pitched an idea to Raymarine (Raytheon back then) who hired me as a consultant to provide advice on their next generation. I built a Windows 95 prototype and put together hardware and software designs for what I thought they should do - touchscreen. It was laughed at by some and loved by others within the company. For a variety of political reasons, the project couldn't get off the ground. Many of the ideas were incorporated by Garmin's touchscreen products - 8+ years later! I always wondered what would have happened if Raymarine had a little more guts and had fewer internal kingdoms threatened by the new ideas.
Believing that "touch" was the secret sauce missing in chartplotter user-interfaces, I pitched a simple chartplotter product on a Palm Pilot to Maptech. They loved it and sold it as Outdoor Navigator. I did 100% of the product development and owned the products (Palm, Windows Mobile touchscreen, and standard/non-touchscreen). We sold the product to 10,000 people - about 50% for boating and 50% for hiking/outdoor use. It supported all NOAA charts and USGS topo maps. It was nice to have another company selling a product of mine (my first experience with that) but it was terribly frustrating too. Maptech exploded and dissolved about 4 years later for good reasons although I had already pulled the product away from them since I owned it.
Outdoor Navigator taught me some very valuable lessons that weren't obvious - boaters wanted more than just charts and position for chartplotting. They wanted POI information - point of interest. Not waypoints - those are easy. What was missing were the things beyond the chart that are critical to planning. You had to be cruising to understand that. And few people at Maptech (or Raymarine) even owned a boat let alone used it.
By this time we were cruising for most of the year. We were using all of the normal chartplotter products and guidebooks and grew very frustrated by the tools available. Guidebooks seemed to be more about pushing the marinas who advertised and less about interesting anchorage information or honest information. Guidebooks were out of date the moment they were printed and the paper medium was all wrong for the features I felt were needed. At the same time, meeting other boaters and becoming part of the community made us realize how much information and experience was within each person who was actually out there and in their boat.
It all came to a head when we were heading south on the Chesapeake toward Norfolk and came upon a classic Chesapeake thunderstorm. We had planned to anchor at MM 0/Hospital Pt but decided that the new forecast was too rough. We called every marina in the guidebooks and they were all booked solid. One marina had the wrong phone number listed. So with thunder and lightening all around, we called stores in the neighborhood and found a shop nearby who knew the new phone number of the last marina. We called and got the last slip available.
Over dinner, Karen and I discussed all of this and it all came together based on that one event. Why was that phone number wrong? Our guidebook was brand new. We started realizing all of the other problems that the guides had and saw how the lessons learned about POI's work really well into providing a complete solution needed for cruising.
I had been speaking about handheld computers and cellular internet at TrawlerFests for a couple of years. At one lecture, Skipper Bob attended - another frequent speaker at TrawlerFest. I worshiped his guides, especially the anchorage one that also gave shoaling information on the ICW. We used them much more than any other guidebook in our real cruising use. We departed from TrawlerFest in the Fall and cruised the Winter in the Bahamas. While in Florida, I built a prototype of what Skipper Bob would be if he met the internet. The idea was to put his text information over maps and charts and have a way for people to contribute instantly with each other. It was crude but it worked. It was mid-December and we had decided to wait until after the new year to pitch it to Bob. Unfortunately, Bob passed away that Christmas and the discussion never happened. Instead, we released ActiveCaptain on January 26th, 2007 in pretty much the form I had created to show Bob.
The web site took off immediately. There were many things that have developed over the last 4 years but the following basics are fixed:
- Access to the data has to be free because there can be no barriers to getting user input and information.
- There are two types of data - factual and opinion. Both are important.
- Factual data has to be verified and validated. Opinion data shouldn't be touched although there has to be standards.
- The reader should have a way of judging the experience and reliability of the person leaving the opinion data.
Over multiple years as we were growing the web site and adding capabilities, I was also directly pitching the ideas to Navionics (as well as other major players). Sitting back and watching what has developed over the last few years has been quite enjoyable. I need to write a book some day! I'm quite pleased to see that Navionics released UGC in October. It's a wonderful validation about what we've been doing. I think they're missing some key elements that make the data have value though. Time will tell.
Since the very first user registered on our site, every detail/factual update they make goes through a back-end validation and verification process that are internal only. This back-end is very complex and provides us with a lot of tools to be able to verify information. Opinions are reviewed for being "family friendly" and are never touched otherwise. We get lawsuit threats about once a month about marina reviews - used to be once a week - but have never changed a single word in a review based on the threats. We've recently been writing articles in Marina Dock Age magazine about how marinas should work with the internet. A major article about dealing with negative reviews is in this month's issue.
Today we receive about 1,800 detail updates every day not including the opinion reviews. We maintain information about marinas, anchorages, local knowledge (bridges, inlets, locks, boat ramps, etc), and hazards. Marinas and anchorages have reviews - the opinion part. Hazards have comments from boaters who have been through the hazard and can give their own personal experience.
In addition to the people who access the data for free over the web site, we have API's for downloading and synchronizing the data offline for other third party products. Today products are shipping for the PC and iPhone/iPad along with a major initiative by Furuno to integrate the data into their devices. These shipping products are coming up on a year of availability with little to no changes to the synchronization facilities - they work fantastically well. A variety of new products are coming out soon including low cost PC, Mac, and Linux software, Android apps, and expansion of the iPhone/iPad apps. The data is in the hands of major chart producers who are evaluating the incorporation onto their chart data. I'm actually surprised to see the article in Cruising World. There is a more major piece coming in Yachting that should provide some screen shots of these upcoming products with ActiveCaptain support.
And ActiveCaptain isn't complete. I view that we're at the end of the beginning right now. I'm about to release a new "route" capability to the web site and synchronization software. It allows you to upload your routes from other chartplotters or the third party products supporting our data. On ActiveCaptain the routes can be archived, modified, and especially shared with others and downloaded. Routes can be created on the web site too for planning, distance measurement, etc. And of course, once you provide a route, we can use the POI data in really unique ways (where's the least expensive place to get fuel, what specials are occurring at marinas along the way, what bridges do you need lifted, what hazards are in your way, etc). All of that and a lot more is coming with routes.
I've gone on much longer than I should have. I hope this provides some background though. I tried to be bland and non-commercial. I sincerely apologize if I've crossed any line - I'm trying to be respectful. I'm happy to answer questions about any of this.
