Guy Kawasaki, the man who coined the phrase software evangelism is a rabid hockey fan. Although he only picked up the sport four years ago, he's now on the ice five days a week.

I didn't know these details about Guy's hockey participation until I emailed him to make him aware of RinkAtlas. All I knew was that he'd mentioned hockey on his blog a number of times over the past year.

Anyway, he checked out RinkAtlas and liked it so much that he posted a very favorable blog entry about it:

In case you hadn’t noticed, I love hockey. A buddy named Dave Aiello just told me about a website that he created called RinkAtlas.

He used the Google Maps API and verified and corrected the geocoding to over 1,800 rinks in the fifty states and Puerto Rico. If you ever need to find a rink, this is the site to use. It’s the first mashup that I’ve found useful. :-) ....

Guy's blog entry caused an immediate jump in our traffic. I didn't expect to receive such a rave from a prominent member of the Silicon Valley community. All I can say at the moment is "thank you, Guy."

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.