JDBaluch.com

Sorry I haven’t been posting very much but I’ve been hard at work on the new site. After sketching up a very demanding mock-up, I’ve been trying to build up a good xhtml data structure and code up the various css code blocks.

Thanks to some excellent trickery by Mr. William Green, we have managed to get our hands on the USGS topo map overlay for our project. Even though it won’t always provide us the most detailed topo maps, it will give us country-wide topo and that, to me, is a good start.

My hope is to provide functionality in phases, the first of which will be the trail section. After we go live with our trail mapping function, we’ll branch out to climbing routes, points of interest, and local gear vendors.

There’s only two of us working on the initial product so there’s really no rock-solid timeframe for completion. Hopefully we’ll have something to show for in about 2 months. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

CragBeta.com

My latest project comes from personal frustration with the climbing/hiking guide community. Sure, some guide books are great, but they’re a snapshot in time. Trails.com is okay but it just seems a bit outdated. I wanted something more. Enter CragBeta.com.

I’ve been itchin’ to collaborate with a good programmer for some time now on a project and this just seemed like the perfect opportunity. Willo and I plan on bringing the Outdoors community the greatest trail/route collaboration tool EVER! yes, I said EVER!!! haha.

Also, another first for me, we’ll be using Expression Engine as our content manager for the site. The hope is that it will be flexible and speedy enough to deliver our content, while leveraging ee’s extensive weblog/user manager support.

Stay tuned for more from us! It’s gonna be grrreeaaattt!!!