We've just completed the database for the State of Maine, giving RinkAtlas.com coverage of all of New England. This brings the total number of rinks in our database to exactly 600 and provides full coverage of the following states:

• Maine
• New Hampshire
• Vermont
• Massachusetts
• Rhode Island
• Connecticut
• New York
• New Jersey
• Pennsylvania
• Delaware

This corresponds to the New England, Massachusetts, New York, and Atlantic Districts of USA Hockey.

We will proceed with building the database for the Southeast District next. This should be a much quicker process, since there are so many fewer rinks in that area at this time.

After I finished entering the rinks in New England, I knew that the rest of the East Coast would be done quite quickly. This morning I finished entering the rinks in Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, so now the RinkAtlas database covers all of the Southeast, the Mid-Atlantic States, and New England.

For those of you who need more specifics, the database includes all rinks in the following 23 states (listed alphabetically):

• Alabama,
• Arkansas,
• Connecticut,
• Delaware,
• The District of Columbia,
• Florida,
• Georgia,
• Kentucky,
• Louisiana,
• Maine,
• Maryland,
• Massachusetts,
• Mississippi,
• New Hampshire,
• New Jersey,
• New York,
• North Carolina,
• Pennsylvania,
• Rhode Island,
• South Carolina,
• Tennessee,
• Vermont,
• Virginia, and
• West Virginia.

We just completed entering all of the rinks in Michigan, so now RinkAtlas.com includes over 950 rinks from Houghton, Michigan and Springdale, Arkansas east to the Atlantic Ocean. Next stop: Illinois.

A little while ago, RinkAtlas.com hit 1,000 rinks in its database. For the record, the 1,000th rink was Hoffman Estates Park District Community Center & Ice Arena in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

We're about half done with Illinois now. The database contains now contains rinks in the following states (listed alphabetically):

• Alabama,
• Arkansas,
• Connecticut,
• Delaware,
• The District of Columbia,
• Florida,
• Georgia,
• Illinois [partial],
• Indiana,
• Kentucky,
• Louisiana,
• Maine,
• Maryland,
• Massachusetts,
• Michigan,
• Mississippi,
• New Hampshire,
• New Jersey,
• New York,
• North Carolina,
• Ohio,
• Pennsylvania,
• Rhode Island,
• South Carolina,
• Tennessee,
• Vermont,
• Virginia, and
• West Virginia.

We just finished entering over 100 rinks in the State of Wisconsin into the RinkAtlas.com database. This means that all of the rinks in states that are entirely east of the Mississippi River a re in the database.

So far 1,137 rinks are in our database.

We completed the entry of all rinks in USA Hockey's Central District. For those of you who are not familiar with the district boundaries, the Central District includes:

• Illinois
• Wisconsin
• Missouri
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Nebraska

This blog will probably go quiet for a while now, because we will be working on the entry of rinks in the State of Minnesota. There are almost 500 rinks in that state, when you count indoor and outdoor rinks.

I'm pleased to announce that we finished entering all of the currently usable rinks in Minnesota today. I phrase it that way because I decided to skip about half of the outdoor rinks that are maintained by city parks and recreation departments. There's no way that those rinks can be used before late October or early November anyway, and I wanted to move on to complete the database for the rinks in the western states.

Once we're done with the entry of rinks in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Districts of USA Hockey, I'll come back to Minnesota and enter the remaining park rinks. I'm very confident that this can be completed before the outdoor skating season starts.

As long as I can find time to work on RinkAtlas database building, we should rapidly approach completion of the database now that we have Minnesota under our belts.

Today we completed the entry of all of the indoor rinks in the Minnkota and Rocky Mountain Districts of USA Hockey. These districts include the following states:

• Minnesota
• North Dakota
• South Dakota
• Oklahoma
• Texas
• Montana
• Wyoming
• Colorado
• New Mexico
• Arizona
• Utah
• Idaho

This phase of RinkAtlas database development went pretty quickly. Most of these states (apart from Minnesota, North Dakota, and Texas) had 40 or fewer rinks. Some states (like Idaho and New Mexico) had a seven rinks or less in the entire state. I guess there's a lot of room for growth in ice sports in those states.

We hit a major milestone with RinkAtlas today. With the entry of Fort Wainwright Ice Arena on the military base of the same name outside of Anchorage, Alaska, we completed the RinkAtlas database of U.S. indoor ice rinks. We can now move on to review the database to make sure that we didn't miss any rinks that should be there.

We're now going to start marketing RinkAtlas a lot more intensely. I feel like this is a real product now that we have a nationwide database.

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'm pleased to announce that the RinkAtlas database now includes all of the rinks used by the Maritime Junior 'A' Hockey League, the Ligue de Hockey Junior AAA du Quebec, and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. These are the eastern-most junior hockey leagues in Canada.

An example of the recent additions is the Centre recreatif Joe Juneau that is home to the St. Lawrence Lions of the Ligue de Hockey Junior AAA du Quebec. The Centre recreatif Joe Juneau is in Pont-Rouge, Quebec (which is former RPI and Montreal Canadians' star Joe Juneau's hometown).

We are now moving on to building the database of rinks used by Junior teams and leagues in Ontario. We hope to be able to announce the completion of those additions to our database soon.

I'm pleased to announce that the RinkAtlas database now includes all of the arenas in The Ontario Hockey League (OHL). The OHL is one of three Major Junior "A" hockey leagues in Canada that are collectively called Canadian Hockey League (CHL). There are 20 teams in the OHL, including 17 that are located in Ontario, two that are located in Michigan and one that is located in Erie, PA.

We previously the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League to our database. See RinkAtlas Adds the Rinks from MJAHL, LHJAAAQ, and QMJHL for more information.

We can now move on to the Western Hockey League to complete our Major Junior "A" rink database.

I'm pleased to announce that the RinkAtlas database now includes all of the arenas in The Ontario Provincial Junior Hockey League (OPJHL or OHA), Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League, and Superior International Junior Hockey League. These are the Ontario-based member leagues of the Canadian Junior A Hockey League.

We previously added The Maritime Junior A Hockey League and Ligne de Hockey Junior AAA du Quebec to our database at this level of Juniors. See RinkAtlas Adds the Rinks from MJAHL, LHJAAAQ, and QMJHL for more information.

We can now move on to the leagues in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia to complete our Canadian Junior Hockey rink database.

After a long layoff from database additions, I'm pleased to announce that the RinkAtlas database now includes all of the arenas in The Manitoba Junior Hockey League (MJHL). This is the Manitoba-based member league of the Canadian Junior A Hockey League.

We can now move on to the leagues in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia to complete our Canadian Junior Hockey rink database.

I'm pleased to announce that the RinkAtlas database now includes all of the arenas in The Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League (SJHL). This is the Saskatchewan-based member league of the Canadian Junior A Hockey League.

We can now move on to the leagues in Alberta and British Columbia to complete our Canadian Junior Hockey rink database.

Once in a while, RinkAtlas discovers new rinks that never made it into our database of U.S. ice facilities. Today we discovered three rinks nearby in Philadelphia that don't appear in most rink directories:

• Scanlon Ice Rink
• Laura Sims Skate House
• Tarken Ice Rink

We found these rinks because of an announcement by The Philadelphia Flyers and The City of Philadelphia that The Ed Snyder Hockey Foundation will take over hockey programs at these rinks originally slated for closure due to anticipated city budget cuts.

The Ed Snyder Hockey Foundation is one of the things that makes The City of Philadelphia a great city. It helps underserved youth in this area learn how to play hockey while instilling life-enhancing values such as teamwork, positive self-esteem, the importance of hard work, and respect for themselves and their teammates.

We updated the RinkAtlas database this morning to reflect changes to the home pages for 22 rinks in Massachusetts that are managed by FMC Ice Sports.  If you are a RinkAtlas user in Massachusetts, then this may help you to get more information about the rinks that FMC manages for the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation from Plymouth to Greenfield.

Please note that searches for Bill Gray's Regional Iceplex in Rochester, NY are not working correctly through the search box at the top of the RinkAtlas home page. We are aware of the problem.

You can find this arena by visiting the following URL:

http://www.rinkatlas.com/?guid=149&source=linkto

We're sorry for the error and we will work to correct the problem soon.