Official liveSCUBA News

I want to thank everyone who came out to the Shark Water screening at Studio 35! We had a small, but intimate group, and the discussion afterwards was excellent!!! In addition, we raised $200, which was split evenly between PADI Project Aware and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.

If you have not seen Shark Water, I highly suggest it. It opened many people\'s eyes, and it would be great to have more people learn about the problems that many countries are facing with illegal fishing, shark finning, and the destruction of protected marine areas. Contact the guys at sharkwater.com and your local independent theater and see if they will bring it in.

Hi everyone! Please spread the word to all your SCUBA clubs, shops and environmental organizations...

Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 5PM

liveSCUBA.com, in association with Studio 35 in Columbus, OH, is presenting a featured screening of Shark Water on Saturday, February 2nd, at 5 PM. The event will be immediately followed by an after-party with food and drink. FREE tickets to this event are available for liveSCUBA members by e-mail to kris@livescuba.com.

We will be taking donations for PADI Project AWARE at the event, and we are attempting to get Jack Hanna or another known conservation personality to say a few words, followed by a quick word from Rob Stewart, producer of Shark Water.

Shark Water, a recent winner of 22 International Film Awards, is a true documentary that follows a group of ocean conservationists on their investigation into the illegal killing of sharks in the marine reserves of the Cocos Island, Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. Their documentary quickly becomes not only an expose of exploitation and corruption of illegal fishing, but also the desperate battle for their lives as the Sea Shepherd and its conservationist crew endure pirate boat rammings, gunboat chases, mafia espionage, corrupt court systems and attempted murder charges. Through it all, Stewart discovers these magnificent creatures have gone from predator to prey, and how despite surviving the earth's history of mass extinctions, they could easily be wiped out within a few years due to human greed.

Please join us and help spread the word about the fragility of our ocean ecosystems! Please share this with anyone you feel would be interested. The more people we get, the more we can educate people about the true story of sharks and their beauty and necessity in our oceans. The more people learn, the easier it is to promote change!

Download the event flier and give it to your friends!

More information on Shark Water is available at http://www.sharkwater.com.
Information on Studio 35 is at http://www.studio35.com.

Remember, free tickets are available for liveSCUBA.com members by e-mailing kris@livescuba.com. If you are not a member, what are you waiting for? Join today for free!

Thanks!
-Kris

We just finished a major upgrade to the liveSCUBA Mapping System! From the excellent recommendation of ComputerJoe, the mapping system now saves its location while you are viewing it. That means that:

1. You can now save bookmarks of the map (This is something that even Google Maps doesn't do!!!)
2. The map view stays saved when you surf away from it. If you come back to it within 1 day, the map will automatically load to your last view. (Again, Google Maps doesn't do this either)
3. When you visit a location page on the map, hitting back will take you back to your last view of the map.
4. The forward and back buttons now work when viewing the map, without immediately surfing you away from the map page.

If there is ANYTHING that anyone wants to see on this site or improvements that can be made, do not hesitate to send me a comment, message, e-mail, or phone call.

Thanks!
-Kris

It's been a busy two months... Kris went to the annual DEMA show to meet with lots of individuals and companies in the dive industry. Then it was back to work and continuing development of liveSCUBA.

We just finished a major update to the mapping system. A few of the easily visible improvements are a new crosshair cursor to help you more easily hit the mark you are looking for when adding new locations, zoom-in and out using your mouse scroll-wheel, and a cleaner interface that allows you to use the entire web page for your map.

A number of new members have joined within the past two months as well, and we now have ~160 products, 154 dive sites, 50 dive shop, and 1 resort in our system.

Here are a few of the projects that we are currently working on:

• A "Help" Section
• Groups (complete with calendars and communication tools)
• Photo and video comments
• A cleaner search system
• And too many improvements to list

Feel free to send me a message or an e-mail anytime! I always welcome your feedback!

Thanks!
-Kris

We have been traveling around Columbus, OH talking with local clubs about liveSCUBA. These are some great groups of people, so if you are in the Columbus area, please check them out.

I am spreading the word about liveSCUBA, so if you like what you see and would like to have liveSCUBA attend a meeting with your club or organization, we are more than happy to visit your event. Please e-mail Kris at kris@livescuba.com or call us at 937-684-8798.

We will be attending the 2007 DEMA show in Orlando, FL. If you would like to meet with us at the event, please e-mail Kris at kris@livescuba.com.

TA Dive Club
Mid-Ohio Divers
Buckeye Divers
Columbus Seanags

-Kris

The day has finally come! We started our public launch on Wednesday and are recruiting divers to BETA test our website. Right now, we are focusing on the Mid-West so that we can work through any bugs before we go nation-wide. (One of these bugs I will talk about at the end of this newsletter.).

To celebrate our BETA launch, we have a special offer for you. Help grow our community, and let us help you show your community pride with an Official liveSCUBA T-shirt!
This is all you need to do:

• Get 10 new members to join and become your buddies
• Add 3 pieces of gear to the Gear Reviews and write reviews for them
• Add your favorite dive site and dive shop to the Map

Do all this by October 15th, 2007 and the T-shirt is yours. (At present, there are only 4 liveSCUBA T-shirts in existence, so you will be the envy of your friends, guaranteed.)

Now, to the bug... Some of you have been telling me that your passwords stopped working. We now have the problem fixed. However, you will have to reset your password when you log in by clicking on "Forgot your password?" on the login page. You will automatically have a temporary password e-mailed to you so that you can log back in and reset your password.

As always, if anyone sees any issues or has any questions, you can reach us at info@livescuba.com, or myself directly at kris@livescuba.com.

Thanks, and safe diving!

-Kris

Welcome to liveSCUBA! Our website is here to help SCUBA divers research the products that they want to buy and find the retailers who are selling those products. Beginning today, we are officially online! There is not much content here yet, but given that we have designed this site to be visitor-driven, we will hopefully have plenty of content up within a short amount of time.

Remember to tell your friends about us! We have a lot of projects that are currently in the works that we are very excited about, and we can't wait to share them with you.

Until next time... Safe diving!

-Kris