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Share your thoughts, experiences or questions and participate in discussions over our favorite topic : SCUBA diving!

Diveboard Feature update: homepage, dive types, notifications

by Ksso on June 28, 2011

There have been a lot of updates over the past three weeks since our last "Feature update" blog post. I'll try and cover the major ones:Newly redesigned homepage: We were feeling the initial release of the homepage was gorgeous but not efficient in telling in a glimpse about Diveboard's mission and objectives. Also our visitors tended to believe they needed to register to enter the site, which is wrong since we have so much content available publicly. Richard did a brilliant job in creating a new version of the homepage which highlight the core features of Diveboard and hopefully will draw visitors into starting digging inside Diveboard.Dive types: Many users have asked for the ability to...

Diveboard Feature updates : Performance enhancements and bugfixes

by Ksso on June 08, 2011

We pushed a set of updates during the last few days here are the main ones worth mentioning :

Performance update : Limited dependencies to the FB Graph API. If FB Graph API is unavailable and your account is using FB connect and your session is still active, you will not even notice it's down

UDCF export : UDCF export was reported as being a wee bit buggy, it's now fixed and improved (and tested successfully with MacDive and DivingLog)

Video Embeds on Facebook Wall posts : Now if you have youtube videos on your logbook, and it's your choice of featured content, when posting to Facebook the video will be shown as an embed playable from your wall. ...

Service disrupted : FB Graph API down

by Ksso on June 06, 2011

Since about 12am CET, the FB Graph API which we rely on to authenticate Diveboard's users is massively disrupted as shown in the graph below. The graph is updated on Facebook Developer's blog page.

As a consequence almost no-one can login at the moment, until the API gets back to normal. I say almost no-one since there's a secret ugly page on diveboard to try out the login/password feature, and some users are actually using it. It's on occasions like this that we're happy to have cut the dependency with Facebook on that key element.UPDATE 1pm: After one hour downtime, API is back up at 1pm CET (lunch break over ?) - API is still VERY SLOW - fingers crossed !UPDATE 2pm: FB API is feeling...

Diveboard feature updates : Ready for non-fb-connect, Iterative permissions, Bulk dive manager

by Ksso on June 03, 2011

Finally ! We survived a complete rewrite of the login system. As you may have read previously, we assumed that diveboarders will be OK with the FB-login-only approach... apparently we were wrong since many of you actually were complaining about that.

Ready for non-fb-connect users & Iterative permissions

So we heard you and we spent a lot of time and effort to enable multiple login mechanisms on Diveboard. This came at a cost since FB Connect was doing a lot of the job, and we were given some capabilities such as you accessing your FB pictures/videos or posting to your wall were granted... and now we have to assume you may not even have a FB account ! So now we can handle those cases...

What's up at Diveboard : login, home page and search by fish

by Ksso on May 22, 2011

I thought I'd drop a quick note about what's currently keeping us busy at Diveboard. There has not been a major update this week, not because we're slacking but because we're changing a few things at heart.

You've been so many complaining about the Facebook-connect-only login for the site, that we had to make the move and support the usual login/password methods. This is not an easy change since it has also big impact on the design and adds more flows (reset password, change password...) which were previously simplified by the use of Facebook connect. But we're getting there !New homepage ...

The Race to inner space - Triton 36000

by Ksso on May 11, 2011

Submersibles are really trendy these days. Probably since it's the 50th anniversary of the deepest dive by the Trieste, but in a short while we've had Richard Branson announcing Virgin Oceanic and now Triton submarines announcing their "Race to Inner Space".The press release reads:The world’s most advanced submarine company, Triton Subs,and high pressure glass fabricator Rayotek Scientific, have joined forces to design a full ocean depth submersible that will revolutionize man’s relationship with the deep ocean. With a planned descent rate of 500 feet per minute, the deepest spot in the ocean, at 35,800 ft., can be reached in approximately 75 minutes. The Triton 36,000 Full Ocean Depth...

Diveboard feature updates : Export your dives

by Ksso on May 04, 2011

Dear Diveboarders, we just released in production a upgrade to the service. The Changelog includes:

Export your dives:You can now export one dive as ZXL / DAN DL7 from the profile pane of your dive, or multiple dives from the "Bulk Upload" wizard on the "Export" pane.

Better support for UDCF & ZXL:A couple of users have experienced some trouble uploading their dive files, this is now fixed. As you may know, each software vendor has its own interpretation of the format norm... so we'll do our best to include support for all those flavors as we encounter them ...

Objective Atlantinde : a treasure hunt in France's mediterranean sea

by Ksso on May 02, 2011

Objective Atlantide is a treasure hunt that has been around since 1989. Since 2003, a Mediterranean-sea-only version is organized over a period of 3 months. A pack of clay tablets (20000 this year) are scattered on popular spots of France's Mediterranean sea and groups of divers have to work together and find 14 of those to enter the final and have their club win one of the numerous prizes. The clay tablets are dropped at a max depth of 20m (60ft). The hunt just started this week-end, so if you're looking for you next dive, you may consider entering the challenge !

Incredible spots: the Orda Cave (Russia)

by Ksso on April 26, 2011

A team of russian divers have been exploring the Orda cave for the last couple years taking incredible pictures and producing a beautiful 50$ picture book.Orda Cave is the most extended underwater cave in Russia, the second in Eurasia, with regards to length, and the world’s greatest gypsum cave. It has status of All-Russia natural monument. It is the first and the world only underwater gypsum excursion cave, member of I.S.C.A (Association of Excursion Caves of the World). In 2008 Orda cave was applied to be included in the List of UNESCO World Natural Heritage. Unique beauty of Orda cave was marked by the world-famous British cave-diver, cave-diving instructor of the Royal court of Great...

Richard Branson's next challenge : Ocean's bottom

by Ksso on April 18, 2011

Richard Branson recently introduced his latest venture : Virgin Oceanic.With Virgin Oceanic the voyage is to the last frontiers of our own Blue Planet: the very bottom of our seas.The expedition is made possible by technology breakthrough by the world’s foremost submarine designer, Graham Hawkes.