e-Cruising Guides

[jimbim]

Is any publishing company offering cruising guides for e-readers, whether the ipad, kindle, sony, whatever? What is the quality like? The format?

[GordMay]

Yes, Amazon (Kindle).
Ie:
➥ Amazon.com: The Cruising Guide to Central and Southern California: Golden Gate to Ensenada, Mexico, Including the Offshore Islands eBook: Brian Fagan: Kindle Store
➥ Amazon.com: Cruising Guide to The Dominican Republic - Kindle Enhanced eBook: Frank Virgintino: Kindle Store
➥ Amazon.com: Cruising Guide to the Hawaiian Islands eBook: Bob Mehaffy, Carolyn Mehaffy: Kindle Store

[donradcliffe]

I purchased a few of these guides-price is a small fraction of the paper books, and quality isn't bad. Not to mention that they don't take up so much room and are available world-wide. I hope we are looking at the future.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by jimbim

Is any publishing company offering cruising guides for e-readers, whether the ipad, kindle, sony, whatever? What is the quality like? The format?

ActiveCaptain is free on the web:
https://www.activecaptain.com

Navimatics Charts & Tides is available for iPhone and iPad (one purchase works in both places) keeping all ActiveCaptain offline and synchronized back to the web site when you have an internet connection. Recent independent review of it is here:
http://sailing.about.com/od/equipmen...gation-App.htm

The price of Navimatics is about half the cost of a single guidebook. It would take about 4+ guidebooks to cover the area making it about 15% of the cost - with better data and charts for navigating!

It's also available under Coastal Explorer, MaxSea Time Zero and announced by Furuno, Nobeltec, and Nutiteq for Android. There is another Android product coming out and a low cost PC, Mac, and Linux chartplotter product will full ActiveCaptain support (about a week away).

We're underway on our boat. Between the ActiveCaptain data for marinas, anchorages, bridges, locks, hazards, and many other things, it provides us with all current info. If I want more information about a particular place or town, I use Wikipedia or the town's web site or so many other independent places on the web. The data is better, more current, no has none of that pesky advertising. You've always got to wonder if a guidebook isn't pushing you to a particular restaurant or marina because they paid for editorial content. Actually, it's not a wonder; we have invoices from marinas requiring editorial copy for purchasing ad space from other guidebook salesmen.

And of course, accessing all the web content is free.

So instead of spending money on any of those dinosaur guidebooks, spend money beefing up your internet capabilities. That'll give you a lot more cruising power and information.

[jimbim]

Thanks for the responses. I was hoping there would be something available in the epub format so it would work on my wife's sony reader, my netbook or on the ipad I expect to buy when we sail away from Korea.

My curiosity is as much for professional reasons -- just an idea as I consider what the hell I'm going to do for a living when we get home

Activecaptain looks interesting, though internet afloat is a tall order. Will watch you with interest.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by jimbim

Activecaptain looks interesting, though internet afloat is a tall order. Will watch you with interest.

That's why you don't need an internet if you use one of the third-party products. They offload all of the ActiveCaptain data onto your phone, PC, Mac, etc. and you don't need any internet connection to access any of it. When you have an internet connection, you can synchronize the offline data with the server to have the very latest details, reviews, hazards, etc.

Of course, accessing the free web site needs an internet connection and most people wouldn't be doing that from offshore. But today, 60-80% of our users access the data outside the web site without an internet connection.

[jimbim]

This really was what I was thinking about, free guides, just not in pdf format.

Free Cruising Guide

The editing and design is not polished, but I suspect it is the future.

[savoir]

Free Cruising Guide is seriously bog ordinary and for good reason too. You gets what you pays for.

[jimbim]

Very true. But money is not the only way to pay for something.

[savoir]

Sure . There's always rum. Been done before.

[jimbim]

Or looking at advertising.

[savoir]

Not as much fun.

[ActiveCaptain]

Originally Posted by jimbim

Very true. But money is not the only way to pay for something.

There surely are other ways than actually paying money. But what you have to really watch for is whether the content is being tainted by the invisible payment you're making.

For example, it's one thing if you have to be subjected to some annoying "noise" surrounding the things you're looking at. I don't believe that really works for the advertiser but it's obvious that advertisers think differently because so many do it. It's a whole other thing though when the content is being changed BECAUSE of the advertising. That's when you have to question the value of anything you're reading in the reference because it's impossible to know what is true and what is advertising.

As an example, we accept Coke having commercials on the ABC Evening News. But if a news story was shown about how many people loved the new taste of Coke's products because they were paid to broadcast it, the value of the news program goes away. Journalistic ethics prevents that from happening with a reputable news organization.

It's this exact type of thing that happens today in so many aspects of traditional cruising information. There is no journalistic ethics. The trail of what really happens is shocking as we've been the pawns of manipulation by some organizations, often times having to even pay for this tainted information.

[savoir]

When I logged in I received an advertisement for an electrical store quite close to my house.

I hate that. It proves that big brother really is watching.

[ActiveCaptain]

Go to this web site and it shows where the web thinks you are:
http://whatismyipaddress.com/

Any web site can get that information and have a pretty good idea of your general location.