phresheez

This list is pretty much a joke. no Tahoe resorts and most especially Kirkwood? When you drive by Carson Spur midwinter after a big dump and you see the 30' berms, you start to get a feel for just how much snow we get. Normally at least :|

Ok... I can see from here that it had quite a bit of activity from the accelerometer which may have been contributing to this problem. As you probably know, phones vary quite a bit manufacturer to manufacturer on Android due to hardware and OS driver bugs. Once I cut that out, I can get you a new release... heck maybe I'll work on it now since I'M NOT SKIING TODAY Mike

@phillycore -- do you possibly have your "Track Precision" set to "High Resolution"? It looks a lot like that here. If so, turn it back to "Normal", and you'll probably get better battery. That's going to get deprecated in the next version of the app as it was really an experiment adding the accelerometer data that we've never really gotten around to supporting and it's a *real* battery sucker. Mike The Blackberry -- which we're not developing for anymore -- was funny: some of them were really, really good with the battery, but things like the Torch were really atrocious. Same app/software on our end, so it was pretty obviously bad optimization in the BlackBerry OS. It's one of the many reasons we gave up with those guys... what a mess. Mike

yeah, the battery sucked really badly on the 3G but really since about the 4 it's not been much of a problem for us even when it's really cold. Good to hear that the 4s is good too. Now who knows what it will be like when Apple finally does 4G which I've heard is a real battery pig.

it good to see you all out there... it's about time! if it makes you happy, it's all man made out here in the Sierra, though I heard from Whistler that they're 100% open.

not sure, but it's $.99/day $1.99 for 7 days $4.99 for 31 days and $9.99 for the year. the first 2 hours at a resort are free, so you can get a pretty good idea of what you'll get before you decide.

yeah, good idea. the app will remind you though ;-)

name and i'll shame on nanog

Yeah, the BB app still works fine as far as I know. It's just that it has the same limited UI. The real answer is that your employer needs to get with the 21st century Mike

Ok, I just mailed them... Usually those generic addresses are black holes for any reason, but if you've got a response from it maybe there's something on the other end it probably wouldn't hurt for them to get your feedback too... the more they hear the better! Mike Rootdjk -- are you planning on getting a non-blackberry any time soon? We've given up on them as they're both impossible to work with and they're dying (don't get me started about them requiring a business plan for free app). The experience on iPhone and Android are miles better... not sure if you've seen the emulator on our website but you might want to check it out to see what it looks like. Mike

Justo -- we did ads last year. The only people getting rich off of ads are google and apple, IMO -- sure not us. What we really want is for resorts to pick up the tab for our users like Sierra-at-Tahoe is doing now. Vail has EpicMix but Phresheez is much better and has way more content. Considering that it's rumored that Vail dropped about $25M into EpicMix, a resort using Phresheez as their answer is a *vastly* cheaper alternative, and we've been at this for 4 seasons now so it's not like it's just vapor... we could literally have Blue Mountain up and running to give their guests free Phresheez in minutes. And yes, the promo possibilities for them are limitless. That's why we'd love if some of you got the word out for us Mike

we changed our model this year so that you get the first two hours of skiing/riding free, and then you can use in-app purchase to buy the day (or season). so you'll always get to see you and your friends results now. check it out, it's a lot easier and friendlier. Mike

If you come out to Tahoe and ski Kirkwood, you're almost sure to find us up there with our swag-bag... testing the app, of course ;-)

Hey all, Just thought I'd drop by and let you know that we've inked a deal with Sierra-at-Tahoe to give you Phresheez completely free when you ski or ride there. So if you're coming out to Tahoe this season, definitely check out Sierra not only because it's a fun place, but now because of Phresheez too. Best of all is that we've built a resort-wide leader board so you can compete with everybody else running Phresheez on the day that you ski/ride there! That said, we know that you all have literally put Pa on the map for us. If you know folks at resorts in your neck of the woods that we could talk to... we'd love to get the same deal for you all in Pa too. If you can share some contacts, and/or introduce us, that would be great. Contact me off-list at mike@phresheez.com if you have any ideas. Can't wait for you all to start getting out there... Pray for snow! Mike

yes, and it can total it over the entire season too. and much, much more. Mike

Oh, yeah that's going to look pretty boring. Once a second and you can actually start to make out individual turns. What's really cool is that when you friend people, on our web site you can add them to the animation and watch both of you zipping around the hill at the same time. It's pretty neat. Another cool thing we get out of our digitization: we know when you're in a lift line, on a lift, or on a run so we can tell which resorts have the most waiting time. One interesting thing that came out of that is how dramatic a difference high speed quads make: even resorts with hellacious lines are not terrible when you compare them to a normal lift with no/little lines. Of course no one likes lift lines, so there's that subjective factor Mike

It varies, but typically 1/second while you're moving. Anomalies can be a problem especially in really dense trees, etc, or where you might get into multipath situations, but the surprising thing with the zillions of tracks our users have made is how accurate they are on the whole. We also do our own filtering which does a pretty good job of dealing with outliers. I've literally seen tracks from somebody around Squaw who made a quick sidetrip to Spokane and back in a few minutes... uh, no You should check out if you can get output from your SPOT tracker in GPX format (the standardized format for interchange) because you could upload those files to Phresheez and see the tracks. You can do all of this from phresheez.com. Mike

It's a little of both but mostly using maps, yes. The zigzaggy line is just trying to show that it's that whole area, rather than just a line. Note that all you're seeing is the run traces, not the actual polygons that define an area. The polygons in the system are actually what determine whether you're on a run or not. It works fine with no cellular coverage: GPS is a satellite system that doesn't require cell service at all, and we just store the points in the flash memory until we can call home... that day, a month from then, whatever. So only real thing that the dead spots on the hill affect is our Friend Finder -- if you're out powder spelunking, they may have to wait a bit before you're back on the radar Mike PS: if you have a garmin or other handheld GPS, you can use that too and upload it to Phresheez... not as convenient, but still works.

It's definitely something of an art doing this digitization, and we rely heavily on the resort's own maps to be correct. In the case of the in betweens, we usually label them as in between the two adjacent runs, but it depends how close they are together... GPS is only accurate to 10' at _best_ so we usually leave a fair amount of the trees on the side of runs in the run itself to not accidentally trigger you being in the trees. Also: above the tree line in big open bowls where there are three or four runs, it's sort of a fiction to say that this is where one "run" ends and another begins -- maybe there is some topography that divides the two in some cases, but often it's completely arbitrary. So I expect that most of the time we get it as right as any other opinion of where these imaginary run bounds are, but it's completely possible that we get it wrong in some cases too. And yes, there are tons of locals' names for areas that we usually don't know about. The really cool thing about our digitization project is that it has the potential to actually capture those names and areas for posterity. Another interesting aspect is that while we use the resort's difficulty of a run at face value, for our gaming we have the ability to adjust what we call the run's challenge rating (if you're any sort of D&D geek, yes that's where we got a bunch of the ideas for Top Dog) which can in theory can level out differences in rating between the resort's (often bloated) designation, and what could be called a consensus of its rating ("that ain't no double diamond!"). Mike

So I looked this up on Whitefish's map and... not surprisingly the trail map is misleading. Elephant's Graveyard was an error, but the map sez that 1000 turns is Advanced, so we just do what the resort says. The Snow Making Ponds shows a black diamond there so again, it's their map that's wrong and frankly dangerous because it should show it as closed. Funny... James Nieheus maps are usually really good. Mike

We get it from their trail maps and from figuring it out with google maps. That said, if we make mistakes and people tell us, we definitely fix them. Also: their maps get out of date and/or have discrepancies in them, so it's not always clear which is correct. So local knowledge is always helpful Note that our maps are not to tell you where to go, they're to tell you where you've been. We're not trying to be a paper trail map replacement in any way. So although the ponds should really be closed, the only thing it really affects is if some bonehead happened to go in there for his own bone headed reasons. Mike

Oh, sorry. In order to work some of our magic, we need to digitize the resorts. That way we know what run you're on, its difficulty, etc, etc. It's a very laborious task, but we're up to about 300 resorts finished now. Mike

Hi all, I just wanted to drop by and say that we've finally digitized the last of the PA resorts that our users have been to (Ski Sawmill), so all of PA is now ready to go for next season. I have to say you Pennsylvania skiers and riders -- and I suspect this forum in particular -- were a major driver of getting your resorts digitized. Good job! We also have pushed out a new Android and iPhone app in the last week, so give it a look -- the nav should be quite a bit easier. Oh, and pray for snow Mike

Heh.. sounds like we need a dollop of mark^H^H^H^Hinstruction in the app SnowQuest games challenge both you as well as all of your friends. Top Dog is a game about the difficulty and distance of runs you're on. Ski/ride harder runs, get more experience points (XP). It's also scored like a video game with levels: the higher level you are, the harder it is to get XP on whimpy runs. We also have Scorched Snow which tracks your fastest speeds over the season, The Long Slog which tracks who puts in the most miles, and our funnest is Slacker... Last one down the Mountain wins! Slackers winners are the ones who always make people wait at the bottom of the lift, taking their time going down... to not win slacker, once you're on a run, keep going. When we say The Game is Real, it's because you really have to get out and go for it... no vid games pretending to be... it's really you! They all require that we get your resorts completely digitized which is why we're hard at work on PA right now... Seven Springs is almost done now. And all of your game points will be updated once we're done. cheers MIke

Heh... I just noticed that we had Big Boulder as Big Shoulder Blue Mountain is now done. Seven Springs next... we'll get to jfbb soon... frigging holidays what with and our weapon of mass digitization who'll be snoozing today on an 8 hour trip to Mt Bachelor. Mike