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.

I'm pleased to announce that the Eastern Collegiate Hockey Officials Association is a RinkAtlas partner. The ECHOA is a hockey officiating organization that is responsible for officiating all of the games of the Eastern Collegiate Hockey Association, a Division I college club hockey league.

The ECHOA replaced hand written directions to 12 rinks where ECHA teams play with corresponding links to RinkAtlas. This makes sense because ECHOA members live anywhere between Northern New Jersey and Northern Virginia, so typical rink directions are far less useful than door-to-door directions generated by computer.

If you have a website that provides rink directions, and you'd like to replace them with links to RinkAtlas, we make it easy. Refer to How Do I Link to a Specific Rink in the RinkAtlas Database? for more details. Please email us at support [at] rinkatlas.com if you need additional help.

I'm pleased to announce that HockeyRefs.com has become a RinkAtlas Partner Website. HockeyRefs.com is an internationally-known resource for ice hockey officials.

I've been reading HockeyRefs.com for several years to keep informed about officiating issues in higher levels of hockey in North America. They also do an excellent job of covering hockey officiating in Europe and Asia, as their coverage of Bob Langdon's trip to Northern Europe clearly indicates.

HockeyRefs.com is providing RinkAtlas with valuable exposure to a large and influential Canadian audience. It also exposes us to audiences in parts of the United States where we haven't been able to do much marketing. I'm sure that this will help increase the buzz around our site.

I'm pleased to announce that The Suburban High School Hockey League located in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA, has joined the growing list of RinkAtlas Partner Websites. The SHSHL is the first USA Hockey-sanctioned high school ice hockey league in the Atlantic District to become a RinkAtlas partner.

We think that the parents and coaches of players in the SHSHL will find RinkAtlas rink directions particularly helpful when their teams play "cross-over games". These are games played against teams in other USA Hockey-sanctioned high school leagues in Southeastern Pennsylvania, often in unfamiliar rinks that are a good distance from their home ice.

We'd like to establish the same relationship with all of the USA Hockey-sanctioned high school hockey leagues in the Southern New Jersey, Southeastern Pennsylvania, and the Lehigh Valley. If you can help make this happen, please email me at daiello [at] rinkatlas.com.

To Ken Haas, Rick Gallagher, and the rest of the administrators of the SHSHL, thank you for your confidence in RinkAtlas, and welcome to the team.

It's my pleasure to announce that The Atlantic Amateur Hockey Association has just become a RinkAtlas Partner Website. The AAHA is also known as the Atlantic District of USA Hockey and is the governing body for most amateur hockey in New Jersey, Delaware, and Eastern Pennsylvania.

The AAHA recently redesigned their website and made it look a lot more professional. I'm pleased that they've chosen to let us provide rink location information and directions to their customers.

RinkAtlas now supports social bookmarking through our "Bookmark & Share" button on the toolbar. This feature allows you to bookmark rink locations in Digg, Del.icio.us, Facebook, MySpace, and about 30 other sites.

This feature is made possible through AddThis, a company that specializes in social network integration tools. AddThis is a local company in my area, and I've met with two of the company's executives in recent weeks. I like what they're doing, and I think it provides real value to RinkAtlas users.