New England Skiing Blogs

[riverc0il]

Okay, so I am adding a section to my web site that essentially will be an aggregator for blogs related to New England Skiing. I really dislike most aggregators out there and my Sage is broken on my Firefox so this has been frustrating. And I like to read feeds in an "all in one" format, so I think this will work really well. The bonus is I get to share it with everyone else once I have put it together.

So, I need recommendations on what blogs to include. I am not including Forum RSS feeds. I considered TR feeds from AZ, T4T, etc. but I decided against it as that would be too cluttered. Definitely not biased feeds so official sources need not apply nor will they be considered. Stuff I already have include....

TheSnowWay.com
FamousInternetSkiers.com
SkiNE.net
The Single Chair Weather Blog
Weather Height's Roger Hill (more weather, rarely updated though)
WildSnow.com (okay, not New England... but I want that in there and I call the shots ).

First Tracks news is a possibility but so much of that is not Northeast (I should as MG if he can have an eastern feed only). AZ News is a possibility but it is almost exclusively press releases so I have relegated that to the "biased official sources" that I don't want to include. Basically, I am mostly looking for pages like mine, gpetrics, johnskismore, etc. Personal weblogs documenting unbiased trip reports and weather blogs. Any ideas?

Should take a week or two to fully integrate. Haven't had to hash style sheets and code in two years (goodness, going to WordPress instead of hand coding every page from a text editor was AWESOME!), time to relearn some stuff I may have forgotten. :roll:

 

[Greg]

I am not including Forum RSS feeds. I considered TR feeds from AZ, T4T, etc. but I decided against it as that would be too cluttered.

FWIW, the AZ forum feed only includes new topics, not every post. You may know this already, but thought I'd mention it. Example of how active it gets:

http://twitter.com/alpinezone

Probably busier in mid-season though.

 

[riverc0il]

That is what I figured but still a little too busy. Besides, I get all that when I pull up new posts in AZ. This will be first a resource for me and second a resource for everyone else, so I am being pretty biased towards what I want to see and where I want to see it Good info though, thanks for confirming what I thought. I don't see RSS being useful for aggregating forum content on any forum that has more than a few posts per day. Though I can see how some folks might find jumbling all of their ski forum posts together to be an interesting idea. I won't be adding Ski VT-l for this reason even though that would be a great resource... I think they feed per post rather than topic though which further complicates things.

 

[Greg]

How about coming up with drop-downs instead of one long list. You click one feed, it displays the items. Click the next feed and it drops down and collapses the former. Might be easier to view that way.

 

[riverc0il]

I could easily do it by using categories as "pages" but I am looking to have all content on one page. Similar to how social networking sites pull together "friends" posts. A quick viewing should reveal any new feeds with just one or two presses of the page down key. Also, I think if I start doing page feeds, I kind of blur the line between being an Aggregator and showing duplicating the wheel and potentially being viewed as ripping off content. I think all feeds on one page based on post date is the cleanest way to do it and also what works best for my eyes. I already have the vision of how I want the page setup firmly in my mind (it has been there for over a year now, heh!)... I just want a few more blogs. I know they are out there somewhere, I just have not seen them yet.

 

[mattchuck2]

I like Harvey44's blog about Gore (and other adk mountains):

http://harvey44.blogspot.com/

 

[riverc0il]

I like Harvey44's blog about Gore (and other adk mountains):

http://harvey44.blogspot.com/

Thanks! I should have remembered Harvey44's blog! Close enough to New England, its an add for sure.

I also just remembered RR's from skivt-l's blog Powder Play: http://powderplayvt.blogspot.com/

SkiDiva doesn't really have any TRs from what I saw, so I am taking a pass on adding that one.

 

[TheBEast]

Way cool stuff. Keep us posted. I'm definitely interested in new ways to view content on the web, especially when it has to do with snow and two planks...

 

[Tin Woodsman]

Really great idea Steve. FWIW, SKIVT-L can be viewed or accessed by subject/thread instead of just by post if you go to your preferences (top right of the of the normal web view page) and select archive preferences. Viewing by subject is one of the selections on that page.

Alas this blog is no longer being updated. That had potential.

Some other sites to consider, possibly:

http://www.middleburyskiing.org/blogs_alpine.php

http://www.skimaven.com/category/backcountry-skiing/

though I get the sense that neither are really what you're looking for.

Another idea might be a search on YouTube for videos related to terms that are likely to be good hits for you. Would require a bit of work every day to triage, but could be an interesting addition if you think it's worth it.

 

[Harvey]

TheSnowWay.com
FamousInternetSkiers.com
SkiNE.net
The Single Chair Weather Blog
Weather Height's Roger Hill
WildSnow.com

I like Harvey44's blog about Gore (and other adk mountains):

http://harvey44.blogspot.com/

Thanks! I should have remembered Harvey44's blog! Close enough to New England, its an add for sure.

Honored to be included in the list of blogs in Riv's original post. There are definitely some great blogs out there covering New England. FIS is fun as hell. And I've lurked at SnowWay since I discovered it during the whole Big Jay thing.

While I have been a one trick pony the last few years (Gore and More Gore), I'm going to try to expand my focus to include other ski hills in NY state. My pass is good at Whiteface, so I'll try to get there more often. (Slides are a major goal.) I'm also interested in what's going on at Hickory and Big Tupper, which are reasonably close to us in North River.

I'd like to bring in more content through feeds or possibly guest contributors. For the upcoming season, I've got one great skier and blogger on board who skis Greek, Gore, Whiteface, Snow Ridge as well as VT and the Wasatch.

Riv - thanks again, and I'll link back to you as well.

 

[riverc0il]

I am rolling out a preliminary version. Still needs some tweaking, specifically the text to alert readers to what they are seeing. But essentially, it is stylistically integrated and working fine. For those interested, I am essentially running two different integrations of WordPress side by side with mostly the same style sheet, though I had to remove the Gallery and of course the other Category list from the Aggregator... which is fine because I want the Aggregator to look different while still being stylistically integrated into my site.

I may remove WildSnow.com from the roster... that site has been extremely active lately and full of a lot of non-sense. It does not meet the genre of the Aggregator but I want it there for personal notification for when they post gear review of AT stuff and/or BC news. But if they are going to take up 10 out of 20 of the first page feed draws, then it probably is not worth it. Solution? East coast bloggers need to step it up! I will do my part

Okay, bloggers (I am looking at you Single Chair blog), get posting!

http://www.thesnowway.com/feeds/

 

[Harvey]

Steve...always liked the very logical and readable look of your site. No question in my mind that wordpress is a better, more flexible product than blogger.

Some of those blogs are new to me, and I will definitely check them out. (Go rog!).

One question...with some of those feeds the images are imported, and on others (including Harvey Road) images are omitted. Is this a formatting issue on my end? Any easy way to fix that?

 

[riverc0il]

One question...with some of those feeds the images are imported, and on others (including Harvey Road) images are omitted. Is this a formatting issue on my end? Any easy way to fix that?

That is due to how the RSS feed itself is formatted. I do not know what type of options you have through Blogger. With WordPress, I decide where the "cut" goes and that exports to the RSS feed automatically.

With a feed, you never want to allow the full article to post through because then your content can go out to aggregators without readers ever coming through to your site. So the goal is to create just enough interest through the first paragraph or two and ideally with a picture to get someone to click through to the full article.

As an example, if you were to browse the code of my RSS feed for my main site (http://www.thesnowway.com/feed), you would notice the the code and text in between the content tags is what is exported to the feed for what readers actually see.

Perhaps Blogger has an option for this sort of thing? That is one benefit to running a CMS on your own site instead of relying upon limitations of prefab'd products.

 

[Harvey]

That is due to how the RSS feed itself is formatted. I do not know what type of options you have through Blogger. With WordPress, I decide where the "cut" goes and that exports to the RSS feed automatically.

With a feed, you never want to allow the full article to post through because then your content can go out to aggregators without readers ever coming through to your site. So the goal is to create just enough interest through the first paragraph or two and ideally with a picture to get someone to click through to the full article.

As an example, if you were to browse the code of my RSS feed for my main site (http://www.thesnowway.com/feed), you would notice the the code and text in between the content tags is what is exported to the feed for what readers actually see.

Perhaps Blogger has an option for this sort of thing? That is one benefit to running a CMS on your own site instead of relying upon limitations of prefab'd products.

Truth is I barely know what I'm doing on blogger. I chose blogger because I didn't know any better, it's free, and it's really easy. Looks like I may be outgrowing it. What are the costs associated with WP?

I just figured out how to put a "cut" in, but I'm not sure if it would have the same linking effect as the cut in WordPress. Not sure how it's supposed to work but on my blog entries on your feed page, the Harvey Road link doesn't go to my blog it just reloads the page on SnowWay. Not the end of the world.

The picture thing is something I'd really like to figure out. At times I'll just post a pic with no text, if I think it has value, especially if I am mobile. Obviously that's not ideal for a feedpage like the one you've set up.

Just another work in progress.

 

[riverc0il]

Truth is I barely know what I'm doing on blogger. I chose blogger because I didn't know any better, it's free, and it's really easy. Looks like I may be outgrowing it. What are the costs associated with WP?

WordPress is "free" as in you can download it and that does not cost you anything. But if you want to fully use WP, you need to have hosting and that usually costs money. I think WordPress.com offers free WP blogs hosted by WP but I can not recall. Blogger is pretty limited, IMO.

 

[Johnskiismore]

Steve, I like what you're doing and thanks!

 

[riverc0il]

I added Matt Noyes Weather (NECN) and MWO Photo Journal. MWO Discussion had a little too much noise compared to signal, unfortunately, and their daily weather updates are not in RSS format. I am considering some sort of daily weather feed. NWS Discussion is kind of hard on the eyes and too much information when a storm is not on the horizon. Can't wait to see activity kick up a notch once the snow starts flying!

 

[billski]

Neat. I went straight to Scott's "thingy" forecast.

btw, your Otto Schneibs byline always makes me pause, as the corporate profit mavens now have bastardized it to push more sales....

 

[riverc0il]

btw, your Otto Schneibs byline always makes me pause, as the corporate profit mavens now have bastardized it to push more sales....

Do you mean that specific quote or the spirit of that quote? I definitely see the spirit of that quote being used in marketing more and more... ironically often to the majority of skiers (and riders) that ski very rarely and clearly have not centered their life around skiing no more than they have centered their life around stuff that I nominally do occasionally such as going to a concert (which, much like the casual skier, is a huge event when I do go). The "lifestyle" of skiing has been marketed much more than the skiing itself.

 

[Harvey]

One question...with some of those feeds the images are imported, and on others (including Harvey Road) images are omitted. Is this a formatting issue on my end? Any easy way to fix that?

That is due to how the RSS feed itself is formatted. I do not know what type of options you have through Blogger. With WordPress, I decide where the "cut" goes and that exports to the RSS feed automatically.

With a feed, you never want to allow the full article to post through because then your content can go out to aggregators without readers ever coming through to your site. So the goal is to create just enough interest through the first paragraph or two and ideally with a picture to get someone to click through to the full article.

I made some progress on this. It looks like within blogger, if you are willing to "syndicate" the full feed (vs the first paragraph) then the images seem to show up, and the imbedded links, if there are any, are live. It's something. And least it looks reasonable on your end. If I can figure out how to properly format the cut, and still have the images import - that would be ideal.

I definitely learned something. After seeing your feed page, and the effect of my casual posting/formatting style - it will affect the way I post.