Things have been pretty busy for me lately, so I haven't done as much development this last month than I have in the past.

I want to thank everyone who made it out to the Shark Water event and fund raiser for PADI Project AWARE and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. We had 33 people there, and we raised $200 in donations that were split evenly between Project AWARE and SSCS. I considered it a great success. If you haven't seen Shark Water yet, you need to. It definately opens your eyes to the problems with illegal fishing and shark finning. I had no idea it was as widespread of a problem as it has become.

* www.sharkwater.com *

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

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 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 dangerous investigation into the illegal killing of sharks in the marine reserves of the Cocos Island, Costa Rica and the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.

Read more about the event by clicking on "News" on the menu bar!

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

We just finished one more improvement. You can now leave comments on other user's photos and videos, and we have a bunch of other things in the works as well.

Coming soon: A how-to section, and tagging videos to map locations.

Make sure you tell your friends about liveSCUBA and get them involved. Tell your dive buddies, blog about us, tag pages with digg or del.icio.us, send friends links to things they might find interesting, etc. It can only become great if we get lots of people playing on the site!

To invite your friends - click on "Invite friends to liveSCUBA" from your page, and enter their e-mail address in the "Invite friends by e-mail" form.

As always, feel free to message me or contact us anytime!

I was able to get the ear of Eric at Studio 35, so they are looking into the Shark Water movie. If you would like to participate in a get-together to watch the movie followed by an after-party, let me know. We are considering having this in February, but it could be later.

Also, greeting to the new members. I know that there have been some bugs popping up here and there, and I am smacking them down and improving the site regularly. If you see something that doesn't look quite right, or appears broken, do not hesitate to let me know.

Thanks!

www.studio35.com
www.sharkwater.com

The nice guys at Diverwire have given liveSCUBA access to their RSS feeds, so we now have the latest SCUBA-related news in our "News" section.

Diverwire is positioning themselves as the leading SCUBA consumer news resource, and we are excited to get them involved with liveSCUBA.

www.diverwire.com

I had a great chat with the members of the OSU Scuba Club last night. My thanks to Aloah and the rest of the gang. If you're a student of OSU, check them out.

Greetings to those of you who are new to liveSCUBA! If you have any feedback or recommendations, please feel free to send me a message, post a comment or e-mail me.

Thanks!

http://www.osuscuba.com/

I have now integrated liveSCUBA with YouTube. Any videos that you have posted to YouTube can now be shown on your liveSCUBA profile and in your Video Gallery. Click on "Video Gallery" in your profile, then "Add Video", and your YouTube videos will automatically be visible for you to select. Click on "Import", and the video will then be imported to your Video Gallery.

Your Best 2 videos (as voted on by the community) and Newest 2 videos (newest to be imported into liveSCUBA) will automatically be visible on your profile page.

Give us your feedback! Send me a message or post a comment to this blog.

Thanks!

www.youtube.com

I am kicking around the idea right now of putting on an Ohio Diver Get-together. A possible agenda would be a screening of Shark Water at a Columbus, OH local theater, followed by an after-party. It's a new idea, so no details yet, but stay posted.

On another note, it doesn't appear that there are any theaters in Columbus that are planning on showing Shark Water. It's a shame since it's been so highly reviewed. If you want to see it, call you favorite local independent theater. I am trying to get Drexel Theaters in Columbus to show it. Their number is 614.222.0947. Give them a call if you would like to see Shark Water (ask for Jeff Frank and tell him that Kris from liveSCUBA.com referred you). Also, send me a message or post a comment to this blog if you are interested.

Thanks!

www.drexel.net (Drexel Theaters)
www.sharkwater.com

I will be making a presentation on liveSCUBA.com at the monthly meeting of the Mid Ohio Dive Club of Columbus, OH. The meeting is at the Winking Lizard at 1380 Bethel Rd., Columbus OH 43220. I plan to be there at ~8 PM.

The Mid-Ohio divers are a great group, and if you are in the Columbus area, I suggest you check them out. The meeting are usually the first Wednesday of each month. Their website is below, but it appears to be down right now.

www.midohiodivers.org

I hope to see everyone there!

Things have been hot and heavy lately between development and marketing. I made some major improvements to the back-end and I am quite happy with. Also, I will be at DEMA on November 1st. I am definitely excited to do some networking and meet lots of industry guys. If anyone is going to be down there also, shoot me a message or post a comment.

Thanks!

I have just added RSS syndication to everyone's blogs. That will allow you to keep up-to-date with your buddies' blogs with your favorite RSS aggregator.

I also heard about a new movie called Shark Water today while I was listening to the Scuba Radio podcast (www.scubaradio.com). The movie sounds very interesting and has been well received by the independent film community. They are currently showing around Florida, and will be going nation wide in November. Hopefully they will come up to Ohio. Check it out!

* www.sharkwater.com *

Well, I had a great dive at Portage Quarry with the guys of TA Dive Club (www.tadiveclub.com). If anyone is coming through the Columbus, OH area, check them out. Anyway, my 3-mil was too thin to handle the thermocline and it took about 2 hours for me to warm back up. (Yeah, I'm a wuss =) ) We decided to head home after lunch. It was a lucky decision because my car broke down on the way back home. Thankfully the nice guys at Nissan loaned me a car for the weekend. We'll see what the damage is today...

I am planning to BETA launch this site at the beginning of this coming week, so anyone who knows of any friends who would be interested in this site, please tell them about it.

*** I will be giving away official liveSCUBA T-shirts to anyone who supports liveSCUBA between now and October 15th!!! Check the "News" link in the top bar for more info. ***

It's been a while since my last update. I now have the mapping system together, and the pages for dive sites, shops and hotels done. Let me know what you think of the new default artwork, etc.

I also took care of the user photo and avitar uploading problem. It turned out to be an IE issue. I am still planning to put in a more elegant system, but it will work for now.

I have jumped back to doing development on the mapping section. It's coming together nicely and should be much more intuitive to use now. As always, handling Internet Exploder, er, Explorer make coding much more exciting than it would otherwise be.

I am still working on the photo and avitar uploading function when I get the time, so hopefully I will have that sorted out soon, followed very quickly by a full front page.

I appreciate everyone's support!!!

Well, the API is pretty much done. I'm now just adding functions in as I need them. I am having a problem with Internet Explorer within Message Central, so I'm working on that.

Hey everyone! I am in the process of developing a new API to drive the back end of the website. You may see some problems here and there with the AJAX calls, but that should be sorted within the next couple of days.

Also, I noticed that we have a few new members, so welcome!!! Let me know if there is anything you would like to see on the site. I have a master list of improvements and fixes, so feel free to shoot ideas or problems my way and I will fit them into the list.

Thanks, and dive safe!!!

liveSCUBA blogs are live!