A lot of people who commented on Guy Kawasaki's blog posting about RinkAtlas want to know when we plan to begin building our Canadian rink database. I've decided to start building it immediately, but I'm changing the order in which rinks are entered.

When we built the U.S. rink database, I compiled a list of rinks in each state. All rinks in a given state were entered in alphabetical order according to the city in which they are located.

We entered all the rinks in the Atlantic District of USA Hockey first (rinks in New Jersey, Delaware, and Eastern Pennsylvania). After that, I continued with the rinks in the New England, Southeastern, and MidAm Districts, and continued to enter rinks from east to west until we hit Alaska and Hawaii.

This process ensured that all of the rinks were entered in a logical order, but, it also meant that the West Coast wasn't completed until a few days ago.

I'm going to try to enter rinks in Canada by beginning with the arenas where NHL, AHL, and ECHL games are played. After that, I will add the rinks where teams in Canadian Major Junior Leagues play. Finally, we'll add the rinks used for recreational hockey, figure skating, and speed skating.

I hope that doing this improves the experience of using RinkAtlas while our Canadian database is under construction. At least there will be some rinks in the Western Provinces that appear in the database early on in the construction phase.

If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions about how to improve our database development process, feel free to leave a comment here or email me at daiello [at] rinkatlas.com.

I've put some effort over the last twelve hours into improving the appearence of The RinkAtlas Blog. I did this because I connected the blog to the front page of RinkAtlas.com for the first time.

I feel strongly that the user interface of the entire RinkAtlas website should be as consistent as possible. I hope you like the new look.

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Dave Aiello
RinkAtlas.com
+1-267-352-4305 office
+1-609-815-0405 mobile
daiello [at] rinkatlas.com

"RinkAtlas" On-Line Directory of North American Ice Rinks Successfully Launched

New Website Provides Door-to-Door Directions to Over 1,800 Ice Sports Facilities in the United States

Newtown, PA -- October 12, 2006 -- RinkAtlas, a new Internet-based directory of ice sports facilities, is up and running as of today. RinkAtlas is the only website that can provide door-to-door directions to any of the 1,800 ice sports facilities in the Continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. The website is on line now at http://www.rinkatlas.com/.

Dave Aiello, an experienced technology entrepreneur, is the lead developer of the RinkAtlas website. He is a 16-year veteran of the information technology consulting business and currently serves as president of Chatham Township Data Corporation.

RinkAtlas has a number of unique features that differentiate it from other Internet-based sources of ice rink information. RinkAtlas uses Google's Internet map technology (Google Maps) to provide accurate, high resolution maps for each ice arena in its database. This technology also allows RinkAtlas to provide turn-by-turn driving directions and satellite photos of each of these ice rinks. These features significantly improve RinkAtlas users' ability to locate arenas that they have never visited before.

One of the keys to making RinkAtlas.com the most popular rink directions website is to make it easier for webmasters operating hockey-related sites to provide maps and directions on their own websites. Over the past few days, I've built two widgets that do just that:

RinkAtlas Rink Information Widget

The RinkAtlas Rink Information Widget is the size of an IAB Vertical Rectangle ad unit (240 x 400). It lets you display a location map, the name, address, and telephone number for a pre-selected rink. In the lower left corner of the widget is a "Get Directions" button. If the Get Directions button is clicked, a new window is opened to the page on RinkAtlas corresponding to the selected rink. Door-to-door directions can be obtained from there.

You specify the rink to be displayed by the Rink Information Widget by inserting the Global Unique Identifier (guid) parameter in the widget configuration screen on the Widgetbox website. The guid for any rink in the RinkAtlas database can be found by looking at the URL produced by the "Link to this Page" button on the RinkAtlas toolbar.

The RinkAtlas Rink Information Widget is intended to be used on team information pages within hockey league or hockey news-related websites. It can also be used on a team's own website, or the website of a college sports information department.

RinkAtlas Rink Search Widget

The RinkAtlas Rink Search Widget is the size of an IAB Small Rectangle ad unit (180 x 150). It provides a text field and a "Search for Rink" button. If the Search for Rink button is clicked, a new window is opened to RinkAtlas and a search is performed using the contents of the text field as the search paramters.

The Rink Search Widget is perfect for inclusion on the sidebar of any hockey-related website or blog, particularly since this widget is the same size as many ads that appear in the sidebars of websites.

We believe that these widgets will meet the needs of most of the webmasters of hockey-related websites. However, we realize that some sites may have special needs or may want to integrate even more deeply with RinkAtlas. If your RinkAtlas integration plans go beyond what you can do with our widgets, contact Dave Aiello at daiello [at] rinkatlas.com.

RinkAtlas is partnering with Widgetbox for widget integration services. We think that the services available at Widgetbox.com to help webmasters place our widgets on to their web pages are very helpful.

The best way to see the Widgetbox widget integration services is to go to the RinkAtlas pages in the Widgetbox Widget Gallery, preview our widgets, and try one or more of them out on one of your web pages. Here are the Widgetbox Widget Gallery pages for RinkAtlas Widgets:

• RinkAtlas Rink Information Widget
• RinkAtlas Rink Search Widget

For more detailed information about the RinkAtlas Widgets, please refer to RinkAtlas Widgets Help Hockey Webmasters Provide Directions to Rinks.

Question: How do I find the global unique identifier (guid) for a rink in the RinkAtlas database?

Answer: The easiest way to find a single guid with RinkAtlas is to:

1. find the rink using the search function,
2. copy the link from the graphic on the toolbar. The resulting URL will be of the format:

http://www.rinkatlas.com/?guid=nnnn&source=linkto

3. pick the number (shown as four bold n characters) out of the guid parameter. The guid may is one to four digits long.

If you need to find dozens or hundreds of GUIDs at a time, because you are building a sophisticated interface to RinkAtlas, contact us for help by sending an email to support [at] rinkatlas.com.

I'm pleased to announce that College Hockey News has integrated RinkAtlas maps and directions into its comprehensive schedule of NCAA Division I mens' college hockey games. This qualifies them to be our first website partner under the RinkAtlas Partners Program.

I was really impressed with how quickly the integration was implemented by CHN, but their blog article announcing this partnership indicates that they've been wanting to provide good maps and directions for a long time. They said:

We've been looking to do something like this for some time, and when we learned about RinkAtlas, it seemed like a no brainer....

If you've seen Google Maps (and by now, who hasn't), RinkAtlas will be very familiar to you. In addition, what we like most about the site is that its accuracy comes through verification of satellite coordinates, so you don't have to worry about having the correct street address for an arena.

CHN is one of the largest hockey news sites in the United States and we are honored that they chose to partner with us.