What's New in Swimmers Guide

End of Month Report for August, 2016

Date posted: 9/1/16

The situation with our programmers has not changed appreciably, getting the whole site back into shape is moving - but at a glacial pace.

Meanwhile, we continue reviewing, updating, and improving the listings, as well as adding new ones, at a fairly impressive rate. In the countries and states we've reviewed since we started the second complete review of the site, we've been able to add over 1,000 listings, increasing coverage by nearly 16% - and we still have more than 60% of the total site to go.

So far, outside of the United States, we have been through the listings in: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland, Fiji, and the Netherlands. From there we plan to proceed to Belgium and Luxemburg, France, Andorra, Spain and Portugal, then over to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, etc.

Within the United States, we started with Maine, worked through New England, the Mid-Atlantic states, Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia. We've also been through West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. We have about 50 listings to go in Wisconsin and then we'll do Minnesota, Iowa, the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming, etc. covering the northern half of the country from east to west and the southern half from West to East.

We're trying to balance the pace of the review of our U.S. and other country listings, reviewing a country outside the United States and then one or more states within the U.S. We've been through 36% of all listings; 40% within the U.S. and 35% in countries other than the U.S. Once we finish Wisconsin, we're off to Belgium.

During the first review of the site, from April, 2011 to October, 2014, we concentrated on getting all the listings geocoded and mapped - a three and a half year effort that allowed us to adopt the map-based interface. During this review, we've been concentrating on updating price information and getting pool water temperatures for those listings that did not have them before. About a year ago, we also started tying our Targeted Google Map Links to the points for each facility that Google has marked on its maps. Doing this will, in many cases, give you an opportunity to see photographs of the facilities and, in some cases, give you a bar chart of the facility's popularity during each hour of the day, so you can try to schedule your visit during an off-peak period for a less crowded swim.

As of August 31, 2016, the site had 21,885 listings in 176 countries around the world.

End of Month Report for May, 2016

Date Posted: 6/1/16 10:54 AM

It's been six months since we made a "What's New" posting. After a year of touting how great the October, 2015, site update was going to be - only to find it a real disaster; then four or five months promising to get things right, only to have one part of the site working properly with the rest working poorly or not at all when we posted a "fix" in March, we're pretty well finished with promises. We're getting things done as fast and as well as we can, but our programmers march to the tune of a different drummer and we can't seem to get them to look at the site's deficiencies (and fix them) with as much urgency as we feel is needed.

In any case, in early March, right around the site's 20th anniversary on line, we finally did get our map based interface working. At the same time, however, the list search, site statistics, and virtually all the user Add and Edit features were not working. The good news is that new map-based search is incredibly spiffy; so good that it almost makes up for the bad. We have the programmers working on the necessary fixes to the other parts of the site and hope that they'll all be fixed within the foreseeable future. (No date promises though, we're done promising things that we can't personally deliver on...)

The Map-based Search Tool

We've had a few people complain that they find the map-based interface difficult to use, so we'll give a quick tutorial here. It's really so easy and intuitive that we didn't think that an explanation would be necessary - but apparently it is, so here goes:

Using either the small sized map on the site's home page or the larger map on the page that comes up when you click on the text "Search by Map" half-way down the home page, find the Search Box in the upper left corner of the map.
After deciding where you want to search, place your cursor (or finger, if using a touch-screen device) and start typing the name of the city and state or country where you want to be able to find a pool. Instead of a city/state, you might also use a three character airport code, the name of a hotel, a full street address, or a postal code and country, the search is incredibly flexible.
As you type your entry in the Search Box, you'll notice that a list of possible matches starts to self-populate, something like a drop-down list, beneath the search box. As you type, the list of possible matches will change refining the list to conform more exactly to what you are typing.
When you see the location you're interested in on the drop-down list, move your cursor down to select that choice and hit "Enter" on your keyboard.
Within a second or two, a map showing the selected location will appear. In the new map, a standard Google Map point icon, red with a small black dot in the center, will appear at the location that Google determined is the center of the location you chose. If there are Swimmers Guide listings within the radius that Google defaulted to, you will see one or more red, yellow, or green centered pinpoint markers. These reflect the approximate locations of all the Swimmers Guide listings in that area. If there are no pinpoint markers on the map, try using the "-" minus sign tool in the lower left corner of the map to zoom-out. Sooner or later, you'll probably come up with a listing - if there is one, within a variable radius that can extend as far as 100 miles. (Google decides the radius covered and we haven't figured out why some maps cover more territory than others.)

Green dots indicate that the pool at that location is open to the general public.
Red dots indicate that the pool is not open to the general public.
Yellow dots indicate either that we don't know whether the pool is open to the public or the situation is not as simple as can be answered "Yes" or "No", e.g., because the pool operates on a year-round basis but is open to the public only in summer or because the pool's hours are so limited that, while it may technically be considered open to the public, the restrictions are too limiting in our judgment.
Note that hotel swimming pools will usually (but not always) be represented by a red or yellow dot as we know many of them are for registered guests only or we don't know the hotel's non-guest admission policy.

Some of the dots also have text within them to give you a heads-up as to the pool's length: Pools that are 50 meters, 25 meters, or 25 yards, i.e., "standard" length pools, will have "50m", "25m", or "25y" designations within the colored center. Pools of other, different sizes will not have any characters within their dots' colored centers.

Although you can zoom out on a map to see a larger area and may find additional listings within the larger area, the map is not fully dynamic. That is, the radius of the area covered on a single map choice result is limited at the time you fill out the Search Box. Changing the center of the map will not cause new listings to be added to the map reflecting a revised center point.

Also, at this time, the accuracy of the placement of the dots is, in some cases, limited to two decimal places in digital GPS latitude and longitude. That gives the maps an "error factor" of a kilometer in some locations, so the maps are good for an idea of the relative locations of the pools shown, but not the exact locations. (We're working on fixing this to bring the GPS latitudes and longitudes to at least four digits of accuracy [11 meters], but there are trade-offs in display speed as the accuracy of the mapping increases that have to be considered.) The "Targeted Google Map Links" within the listings are carried to as many as eight digits of accuracy, so they're "spot on", but in the Map search mode, locations are not so precise.

Clicking on a dot (other than the Google map center dot) will bring up a small box with the pool's name, address, length, and public access status. Clicking on the x at the upper right corner of the box will close it.

For more information about the listing, click on the hypertext "Read More" and a new tab will appear with the full, standard, Swimmers Guide detail listing data. Since each listing pops up in its own browser tab, you can go back to the map from your search to check out other listings without closing the previous Read More listing tabs and without having to do a new search.

Why do we think this new search tool is so great? That's simple: After typing a very few characters, you can see every listing in the city or town, plus potentially every listing in every city or town in a s much as a 100 mile (160 kilometer) radius. In places such as Los Angeles County, California, where there are dozens of communities that merit counting as a city or town in our list search and which, therefore, would require dozens of searches to find them all, one map covers the entire county, plus some listings in several adjacent counties. Searching on Copenhagen, Denmark, will reveal a map covering several Danish counties as well as some listings in Norway, Sweden, and Germany!

What Else is New?

Since our last "What's New" entry we've added nearly 1,000 listings, easily breaking the 21,000 mark and approaching 22,000 listings. And we celebrated our 20th anniversary online back in March.

Site Statistics:

As of May 31, 2016, the site has 21,621 listings covering 43,488 full-size, year-round pools in 12,074 cities and towns in 175 countries.

End of Month Report for November, 2015

Date Posted: 12/2/2015 3:54:04 PM

Oy vey! What a mess!

The much touted and long awaited site update that went online at the end of October turned out to be much less than we had hoped for. Several critically important features of the site simply did not perform up to expectations. Here are the things you should know:

The Map Search tool does not pick-up recently added listings - and we've done about 300 of them since the new site went online.
The Map Search tool includes listings that have been deleted from the database. (Although the Map Search tool is not working properly, it is still a good, first-pass tool to find a pool. Most of what we have been working on over the last couple of months has been in England and the northeastern United States, so those areas are where the most new listings may not be included. Use the "legacy" List Search tool to check for additions in the area you'll be visiting.)
Where membership or multiple-visit pass information has been included in the database for a facility, that information is not being displayed on the facility's listing page.
Where membership or multiple-visit pass information has been included in the database for a facility, that information is not being displayed on the facility's listing page.
Club and Team classifications (Masters, Youth, Water Polo, etc.) is not being displayed next to the Team Name on the listing page.
All Clubs' and Teams' names have been formatted in the listings as if they were hypertext links to the clubs' or teams' websites, whether they actually link to their sites or not. (Where there is no link to a club site, clicking on the club's name just brings up another tab or page with the listing information, duplicating the page you just clicked on.)
The "Add A Pool" tool requires an entry for the pool's email address, even though most pools don't have them, and does not communicate the contents of some of your entries to us - most importantly, the pool description.
Most of the other "Add" and "Edit" tools on listing pages do not work properly. Some refuse to accept "Captcha" codes that are typed into the box exactly as displayed, thus preventing you from actually submitting the information. Some accept your entries, but fail to record those entries anywhere that we can access them.
With the exception of only the number of listings and number of pools, the "Site Statistics" section is completely inaccurate.

We have engaged another firm to reprogram the website and expect that these errors will be corrected within a few weeks' time. In the meantime, however, if you have information to tell us about a listing, please use the mailto link at the bottom of the facility's listing page, so we can get your correction, comment, or review into the listing by way of an administrative "backdoor" to the database.

When we bring the new website up, we will move it from the Network Solutions server to a new server maintained by the programmers, thus eliminating finger-pointing about whose hardware or software is causing the site to function slowly or shut-down entirely.

What We've Been Working On:

While we have sat, seethed, and scrambled to get the site back into the shape it should be in, there has been a benefit: The reduced amount of communication from the user base (i.e., you), has given us time to work on finding new listings.

After realizing, somewhat belatedly, that we've never received a lead about an LA Fitness chain owned facility that did not turn into a listing, we started mining their well organized, if information challenged, website. Thus far, we've added nearly 200 of their clubs to the database and we don't think we're even half-way through. It's a bit of a slow process, we have to call each club to find out its pool's length, number of lanes, water temperature, and day-pass fee. But, with the exception of a few clubs with pools whose employees couldn't provide the information, every one of the clubs we've called whose page includes "indoor pool" has a pool that qualifies for listing.

As we've gone through the list and spoken with club personnel, it has become apparent to us that the average American does not know the difference between a meter and a yard. Where there has been confusion, we've listed the pools in yard-long measurements. Where there was no confusion, we used the length in yards or meters, as told to us by the club staff. Some of the pools listed as being 25-yards long may turn out to be 25-meters long and vice versa. Some may not be either - but that's where you come in. If you know that one of our listings is wrong, tell us. We'll fix the error, send you a polite "thank you", and never bother you again.

Site Statistics:

The only site statistics that we're comfortable with are the total number of listings and total number of pools. During the month of November, 2015, we added 269 new listings and ended the month with 20,694 facility listings and a total of 22,515 qualifying pools. We feel reasonably confident that we'll hit the 21,000 listing mark well before the site's 20th anniversary online, in March.

A Final Word:

In most of the world, December marks the end of one year and the start of a new one, as well as religious holidays for the Judeo-Christian cultures. We take this opportunity to wish all the good people who use this site a Very Happy Holiday Season (Christmas, Chanukah, Festivus, or whatever else you may be celebrating) and a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!

End of Month Report for October, 2015

Date Posted: 11/3/2015 9:12:00 PM

Site Redesign:

As promised, albeit a bit late, we finally went live with the third major update to the website on October 22!

Before we get into what's new with the site, we need to be upfront with you. The site is running much slower on the Network Solutions server than it did on our programmer's itty-bitty web hosting service, and there are some features in the new site that are not working at all as intended - especially the "Add" and "Edit" tools on the pool listing pages.

Additionally the "Site Stats" section appears to have some anomalies, so we're going to skip our usual monthly statistical recap this month.

The reason this report wasn't posted on a more timely basis is because we didn't have access to the tool that allows us to post it until November 3.

In short, this has been a much bumpier conversion than we had hoped to have and there are a lot of issues to work on - which we are doing.

With that all said, now we can get into letting you know what's new:

A New Home Page:

The "Home Page" has been redesigned to show three expanding and collapsing tabs, one each for the three ways to search the Swimmers Guide database: A Map Search; a List Search; and a Google Free-Text Search.

The New, Improved Map Search:

The site has been engineered to feature the Map Search feature, which we've finally taken out of "Beta". When you go to the Swimmers Guide home page, you'll see a map of the world with a Location box and Search button above it. (If you don't see a map, hit your refresh button until you do.) As you begin typing a location into the Location box, Google Maps will begin to auto-fill the field with possible choices that it recognizes. The more you type, the narrower the selection of locations and the more likely that the place you're looking for will show-up in the list, ready to receive your click. Click on the best choice or continue to type out an address and then click on the "Search" button.

After you hit the Search button, the map of the world will be replaced by a map centered on the location that Google understood to be the one you wanted. Be careful, if your choice is imprecise, Google may bring up a map centered on an entirely different location from the one you were looking for. For example, in looking for pools near the Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina, USA, we typed-in its airport code "RDU" and the map that came up was centered on the Radhamohanpur Railway Station in Radhamohanpur, West Bengal, India! If we had selected the first choice presented by Google, it would have taken us to the airport we were looking for in Morrisville, North Carolina.

Borders Don't Mean Anything, Anymore:

With the new Map Search tool, artificial, political boundaries no longer limit the range of a search. If you're center your search in Manhattan, New York, you'll see options in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island. More importantly, you'll be able to see options in Yonkers, Brooklyn, and Queens that may be better suited to your preferences and schedule. You couldn't get that information with a List Search, but you can with a Map Search.

Narrowing Down Your Search:

Once you've gotten to the desired location, the location itself will be marked with a Swimmers Guide-logo map-point and, if Swimmers Guide has any listings within a roughly 30 mile radius they will appear as red or blue filled map-points. Red points indicate that the pool at that location is a 50 meter pool; blue map-points are for pools that are not 50 meters long.

Depending on the area selected, the pools' map-points may overlap. Paris, France and London, England, for example, have so many listings that some pools' points are nearly covered by others' points. To zoom in and out on a map, use the small "+" and "-" tools in the lower right corner. A + will zoom the map in, showing a smaller area and separating the dots. A - will zoom the map out, causing the map to show a larger area and potentially causing map points to overlap. Sometimes, zooming out may reveal more pools than the first map view, i.e., pools that fall outside the original map's radius. But beware, the map is not fully interactive. If you move the map center too far away from its first location, it will show more map, but not more pools, even though there may well be pools in the new area.

For example, when you select London, United Kingdom as your location, and you move the map to show areas to the west of London, there are no pools shown in Reading. But, if you change the selected location from London, United Kingdom, to Reading, United Kingdom, the new map will show an ample selection of pools in that city and several others within the new map's radius.

One very important note: Although we have more than 20,000 listings, they tend to be located in relatively populous areas. If you search for a pool in a small town or village, there may be no pools at all within the resultant map's radius. For twenty years, we've striven to avoid ever presenting you with a page that says "No listings were found that meet the search criteria." and, although the map search site will never say it, a map that shows no red or blue points is telling you just that.

OK, you've pulled up a nice map with all sorts of red and blue dots on it, now what? If you click on a dot, a small window will pop up showing the pool's name, address, the length of the main pool at the facility, an indication as to whether the pool is open to the public (Public Access: Yes/No/?) and the words "Click here to see details." Follow the instructions to see the full, detailed listing page for that facility.

What the Map Search Doesn't Do:

In the List Search, when you select a city or town that has more than one listing, we present a table of all the pools in that community showing their neighborhood or district, the length of each facility's main pool, the pools' postal codes, whether the pools are accessible to the general public, whether any of the pools have arrangements with local hotels, and the types of aquatic sports clubs (Masters clubs, youth swim teams, triathlon clubs, etc.) that train at the facility

Fortunately, the map presentation itself, conveys just about all the critical location information you should need, but the public access information, hotel and sports club information is not available on the map, at first glance. We're working on getting that information to you through the Map Search facility, but that's not ready, yet.

Map Search to List Search Interoperability:

If, on reading the details of a particular listing, you decide you'd like to check out other pools in the area, you can either click on the "Return to Map" text in the upper left side of the page, immediately above the words "The Basics" to go back to the map you were last looking at, or you can use the "breadcrumbs" to go to the List Search section, the "Legacy" view of the Swimmers Guide website. When you're in the List Search section of the site, the Map Search section collapses to show the List Search section expanded. This section works in exactly the same way as the original, nearly twenty-year old, classic, "Swimmers Guide" drill-down search did. Note, however, that once you move from the Map Search tool to the List Search tool, to get back to do a Map search, you have to go to the Home Page, select the Map Search section, and begin a new search. We're planning to fix that in a future update but, for now, it's just something we'll have to live with.

What else have we done?

All of the pages in the List Search section have been redesigned to be simpler, clearer, easier to read, more consistent in typeface and presentation, and to deemphasize the advertising.

We've also added "Captcha" codes in the Add and Edit parts of the site. This is a security feature that we hope you won't find too irritating, but we need to protect the integrity of the database.

End of Month Report for September, 2015

Date Posted: 10/1/2015 12:30:06 PM

Site Redesign:

We had hoped to be able to close-out the month of September by introducing the new website. Unfortunately, some minor problems put us a bit behind. Still, we expect the introduction of the new site to happen within a few days, not weeks, and we're psyched:

The Map Search feature is not to be believed - it is beyond user friendly and intuitive.

The List Search that we've been featuring for the last 19 years has gotten faster and cooler. The "Pools in #City# is better organized. The pool listing details page is simply cleaner. And, for the first time, we have a trail of "breadcrumbs" that will make navigation easier.

The new site was designed to work much better than the old one on a tablet or smart phone, too, so those of you who have suffered through the old site's clunky display on a cell phone should find it a lot friendlier.

It's coming soon...

September Activity:

Although we didn't take any time off for vacations or trips in September, time spent reviewing and recommending changes to various versions of the new site took up a lot of time. Still, we managed to add 64 new listings while removing only 10, and added another 330 clubs and teams along with 310 new club and team website links. We have fewer than 100 listings (of more than 1,800) to review in England, after which we will turn to the next group of states in the United States.

Since we started working on England early June, we have sent just under 3,300 emails and received over 4,900. All of the emails sent weren't inquiries to English pool operators, but easily 90% of them were - and that figure doesn't include the number of forms we've filled out on sites that require that sort of communication in lieu of email. We've added water temperatures to about half of the listings there and checked their website links, telephone numbers, prices, etc.

On the whole, our review and email efforts have been well-rewarded, although we do wish that someone would pass a law that people who put their email addresses and have "contact us" forms on their websites be required to have a live person send a real reply, instead of those form replies that say "we'll get back to you" - and then they never do.

Site Statistics as of September 30, 2015:

As of the end of September, the site had 20,318 listings with 22,134 qualifying pools in 173 countries and 11,516 cities and towns. Of the 20,318 listings, 19,161 (94.3%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 20,151 listings (99.2%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 49,571 external links on the site in total, or 29,420 content-based links (all links excluding Google Map links). We included contact information for 10,937 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 93.5% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month Report for August, 2015

Date Posted: 9/1/2015 3:51:32 PM

After taking a long weekend at the beginning of the month, we took a full week off for a vacation trip to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for six days in the middle of the month...

Site Redesign:

As expected, we ran across some "bumps in the road" in the programming of our new site layout and functionality, but the worst appear to have been overcome and the new site is looking really spiffy. Here's a "teaser":

Instead of opening the home page on the drill-down menu, we're going to open the site with three choices: the map-based interface; the drill-down interface; and the Google site search interface.

Note that the map-based interface is mentioned first, because, when all the programming is done, that's going to be the best way to search the site. If you know where you're going (or where you are) and Google Maps recognizes the name of the location you type into the search box, this interface will deliver a map centered on your selected location that pinpoints every listing within a radius of ten or fifteen miles. City, county, province, state, and national boundaries are irrelevant in this search method, so you need only know where you want the map to be centered to be able to find the listed pools there and in neighboring communities - even if you've never heard of those communities - within the map's radius.

The second choice will be the menu interface we've been using for the last three or four years, which was based on a very similar setup that goes back to 1996, but it will be faster and cleaner than what we have now.

The final choice, the Google site search, has been on the home page for a long time, but, until now, it hasn't been promoted very well. If you're good at creating finely-tuned Google searches, this will help you when you're looking for a specific location or pool feature. "Newbie" searchers may find this method unhelpful, but if you know how to narrow your search sufficiently, it'll come in very handy.

The listing detail pages have also been redesigned to look better, with fewer variations of type size and a generally cleaner view.

We're psyched by what we've seen, so far, and after we work out a few more bugs and put it online, we think you'll like it, too.

August Activity:

During August, long weekends and vacations in the mountains notwithstanding, we added 66 new facilities and deleted 14, for a net increase of 52 listings to 20,264.

Site Statistics as of August 31, 2015:

As of the end of August, the site had 20,264 listings with 22,080 qualifying pools in 173 countries and 11,503 cities and towns. Of the 20,264 listings, 19,131 (94.4%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 20,097 listings (99.2%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 49,177 external links on the site in total, or 29,080 content-based links (all links excluding Google Map links). We included contact information for 10,637 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 93.5% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month Report for July, 2015

Date Posted: 7/30/2015 3:27:03 PM

We're taking a long weekend to visit family from July 31 through August 3, so this month's report covers up to the morning of the 30th of July.

Good News!

We are happy to report that our programmer is "back in the saddle" working on new code to create a better, faster, easier to use website that works better on smart-phones, as well on desktops and tablets. Most of the easy stuff is already done, but it's always the last 5% that always takes 50% of the total project time.

Some Observations:

We're trying very hard to get pool water temperatures for those listings that don't have them already. In some countries, Germany, for example, pools' water temperatures are routinely included on their website descriptions. In others, England being a good example of the opposite, water temperatures are almost never disclosed.

No matter what the water temperature may be, it's going to be too cold for some and/or too warm for others. We would expect that pool operators would want to be transparent about their temperatures, because they don't want unsatisfied customers. But what do we know?

We're also trying to update the drop-in admission prices in our listings and we're bumping up against a very similar dichotomy: In Germany, the pricing schemes can be extraordinarily complex, with different prices per hour before 8 AM or after 8 PM, sliding-scale prices depending on length of stay between 8 AM and 8 PM, and special, additional charges for "warm water days". But no matter how complex the pricing, a German site will lay it all out for you; the pricing may not be simple, but they're not trying to hid it from anyone. In England, where the majority of our listings are owned by local governments and operated by private "not for profit" organizations, casual admission prices are often completely absent or so well hidden in a PDF document somewhere on their websites that you're likely never to find them. The operators fall all over themselves trying to get you to take out a membership, just like a private health club chain, but drop-in prices are often just not available on the websites.

If the drop-in price is too high to disclose on the website, will it be any better when a swimmer shows up at the door? Is there no transparency there?

When we're trying to find the water temperature or admission price for a listing in the U.S. or Canada, all we usually have to do is pick up the telephone, make a call, get the temperature, and we're done. Both our smart phones and land lines have free telephone service in North America. Outside of the U.S. and Canada, however, getting information about a swimming pool's price or temperature requires sending an email or completing a form. It is mind-bending how many pool operators have "mailto" links and "enquiry" forms that never bother to answer.

Sorry, I just had to vent about that a bit...

July Activity:

In July, we added 55 new facilities and deleted 20, for a net increase of 35 listings to 20,212.

Since we started the second total database review in November, 2014, we've examined and updated 4,091 listings in selected countries and regions, adding new listings and deleting old ones that have closed, as we go along. We've also checked and updated another 1,200 listings in other parts of the world, based on user suggestions via the "Edit" process. So about 25% of the database has been reviewed over the last nine months, which means we're working on a roughly three-year cycle to review every listing in the database.

Site Statistics as of July 30, 2015:

As of the end of July, the site had 20,212 listings with 22,026 qualifying pools in 173 countries and 11,488 cities and towns. Of the 20,212 listings, 19,094 (94.5%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 20,046 listings (99.2%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 48,786 external links on the site in total, or 28,743 content-based links (all links excluding Google Map links). We included contact information for 10,310 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 93.6% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month Report for June, 2015

Date Posted: 7/1/2015 12:43:50 PM

June Activity:

In June, we added 49 new facilities and deleted 17, for a net increase of 32 listings to a total of 20,177.

Since we started the second total database review in November, 2014, we have examined and updated 3,583 listings in selected countries and regions, and added 449, net, new listings in those regions. (We've checked and updated another 1,100 listings in other parts of the world, based on user suggestions via the "Edit" process.)

Site Statistics as of June 30, 2015:

As of the end of June, the site had 20,177 listings with 21,985 qualifying pools in 173 countries and 11,479 cities and towns. Of the 20,177 listings, 19,074 (94.5%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 20,011 listings (99.2%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 48,326 external links on the site in total, or 28,315 content-based links (all links excluding Google Map links). We included contact information for 9,887 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 93.5% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

i want my wife to cheat on me

End of Month Report for May, 2015

Date Posted: 6/1/2015 2:51:55 PM

May Activity:

In May, we added 97 new facilities and deleted 29, for a net increase of 68 listings.

Since we started the second total database review in November, 2014, we have examined and updated 2,593 listings in selected countries and regions, and added 449 new listings in those regions - that's an increase of 17%, which isn't bad!

Site Statistics as of May 31, 2015:

As of the end of May, the site had 20,145 listings with 21,943 pools in 173 countries and 11,483 cities and towns. Of the 20,145 listings, 19,048 (94.6%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 19,979 listings (99.2%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 47,617 external links on the site in total, or 27,38, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 9,492 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 90.5% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

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End of Month Report for April, 2015

Date Posted: 5/1/2015 12:34:19 PM

Two New Countries:

Early in April, we added our first listings in the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, bringing our coverage up to 173 countries around the world.

April Activity:

In April, we added 81 new facilities and deleted 10, for a net increase of 71 listings. Net of links in deleted listings, we added 351 web links, 83 of them facility-specific Google Maps links and 268 links to facilities' and aquatic sports clubs' websites.

Since we started the second total database review in November, 2014, we have examined and updated 2,107 listings in selected countries and regions, and added 407 new listings in those regions - that's an increase of 19%, which isn't bad!

And, as we go through the listings in this review, we've added pool water temperatures to the list of things we're trying to do better. We try always to check the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and prices in our listings; we're now looking to expand club and team website links and to replace the "water temperature not reported" text in so many of our pool descriptions with the actual, usual temperatures.

Site Statistics as of April 30, 2015:

As of the end of March, the site had 20,077 listings with 21,863 pools in 173 countries and 11,443 cities and towns. Of the 20,077 listings, 18,986 (94.6%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 19,910 listings (99.2%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 47,604 external links on the site in total, or 27,694, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 9,334 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 93.3% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

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End of Month Report for March, 2015

Date Posted: 4/1/2015 1:15:25 PM

20,000 Listings!:

On Sunday, March 29, 2015, roughly nineteen years since the site went online, we added our 20,000th listing, and on the 31st, we were up to 20,006. That's an increase of 16,700 from the original base of just 3,300.

March Activity:

In March, we added 85 new facilities and deleted 10, for a net increase of 75 listings. We added 520 web links, 75 of them facility-specific Google Maps links and 445 to facilities' and aquatic sports clubs' websites.

The second, total database review is progressing at a reasonable clip, with plenty of new listings and lots of new information added to the listings we already had.

Site Statistics as of March 31, 2015:

As of the end of March, the site had 20,006 listings with 21,787 pools in 171 countries and 11,417 cities and towns. Of the 20,006 listings, 18,915 (94.6%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 19,827 listings (99.1%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 47,253 external links on the site in total, or 27,426, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 9,149 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 93% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month Report for February, 2015

Date Posted: 3/1/2015 7:28:54 PM

February Activity:

In February, we added 133 new facilities and deleted 22, for a net increase of 111 listings. We added 441 web links, 91 of them facility-specific Google Maps links and 332 to facilities' and aquatic sports clubs' websites.

For the countries and states we've gone through in the second total site review that began last November, we've managed to increase coverage by 24%, growing the 1,227 listings we had in those areas to 1,525. If we continue to find new pools at this pace, we should hit the 20,000 listings mark before the end of March, twenty-two years since we started the project and eighteen years since we went online!

As mentioned last month, we're changing the text underneath the listings' price information to more clearly indicate that the prices shown are as of the bracketed dates and to more strongly encourage user participation by notifying us when prices shown are no longer correct. This change is being implemented listing-by-listing as we go through the site in this site review, so you'll see a mix of the new and the old for another three and a half years or so.

We're also removing the "Source of Data" section from the listings where we had it. In the early days of the Internet, we thought it would be helpful for you to know where we got our information - from an official website, from someone connected with the facility, from someone who had visited the facility, or, as was the case in a very large number of listings "was cobbled together from a couple of websites". In the last eighteen years, however, a great deal of detail has been added to listings after the initial data were collected, and those source statements may no longer apply to much of the data in the listings today. As we go through the listings, we're removing most of those source entries.

Site Statistics as of February 28, 2015:

As of the end of February, the site had 19,931 listings with 21,705 pools in 171 countries and 11,386 cities and towns. Of the 19,931 listings, 18,851 (94.6%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 19,752 listings (99.1%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 46,733 external links on the site in total, or 26,981, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 8,777 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 92.6% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month Report for January, 2015

Date Posted: 2/1/2015 5:32:04 PM

January Activity:

In January, we added 230 new facilities and deleted 13, for a net increase of 217 listings. We added 649 web links, 423 of them facility-specific Google Maps links and 226 to facilities' and aquatic sports clubs' websites.

For the four countries we've gone through in the second total site review that began last November, we've managed to increase coverage by 28%, growing the 905 listings we had in those countries to 1,161. Although we don't expect we'll be able to maintain that pace of growth, and although at least part of it is due to relaxation of listing criteria discussed in the next paragraph, we do expect to get to 20,000 listings within the next few months. It has taken only 21 years to get there!

Last month we mentioned that we'd relaxed the eight-months-per-year minimum operating requirement for Australia; well, we've done it for New Zealand and South Africa, now, as well. The climates in the Southern Hemisphere seem not to mirror what we see north of the Equator, and there are a lot of seven-months-per-year pools in those countries (more South Africa than New Zealand) that we think deserve to be listed - so we've listed them.

We've also taken a more aggressive approach to our data collection process than ever before. Until recently, we'd gladly include anything we could find on the Internet to create a listing and just move on. Now, we're making a lot more direct inquiries to pool operators, asking questions about current pricing, water temperatures, and the other things we think are important to you.

Finally, we decided to change the text underneath our price information to clearly indicate that the prices shown are as of the bracketed dates and to more strongly encourage user participation by notifying us when prices shown are no longer correct. This change is being implemented listing-by-listing as we go through the site in this site review, so you'll see a mix of the new and the old for another three and a half years or so.

Gaming Google - An Observation:

We use the Google search engine almost exclusively to find new listings and links to add to those we already have, but we've noticed a discouraging trend, lately. One website operator has figured ways to "game" Google, generating results for searches that specify "swimming pool", "aquatic center", or any of several other "key words" together with the name of just about any city or town. The problem is that the resulting page or pages don't satisfy the criteria - the site doesn't have any information about a pool or aquatic center in the locale specified; they just point to other pages on that site that may or may not be near the desired location.

Search Engine Optimization, which is adding text to web pages and specifically designed "meta tags" in the background so that Google and Bing will list the pages at the top of their lists, has become an art that the gamer has mastered - to everyone else's detriment. We expect that Google will find a way to detect and downgrade sites designed like that one, sooner or later, but meanwhile, we'll just have to continue manually excluding that site from our results by including the text "-swimia" in our Google searches

Site Statistics as of January 31, 2015:

As of the end of January, the site had 19,820 listings with 21,583 pools in 171 countries and 11,332 cities and towns. Of the 19,820 listings, 18,760 (94.7%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 19,643 listings (99.1%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 46,292 external links on the site in total, or 26,649, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 8,537 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 92% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month and Year Report for December, 2014

Date Posted: 12/31/2014 9:54:30 PM

December Activity:

During December, we added two new countries to the database: Mongolia and North Korea. There were two listings in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, surprisingly close to each other, and one in North Korea (shown as KOREA - NORTH (DPRK) on the list).

The listing in DPRK is, admittedly, a bit of a push; we couldn't find a telephone number for it anywhere, but then, if you're going to be in North Korea, your visit to the listed resort is going to have to be arranged in advance or coordinated with your "keeper", anyway. We have leads for two more listings in that country, in Pyongyang, the capital, but we need to find the street addresses and some other details, first.

A Slight Adjustment to the Listing Criteria:

During the course of our review of the listings in Australia, which we were able to wrap up just in time of this month's report, we realized that there are a lot of "summer only" pools in Australia that are open for a full (or nearly full) seven months, a month shy of our eight months per year operating requirement to qualify for listing. Since many of the seven-month pools are in remote locations and are the only places to swim within hundreds of kilometers, we decided to relax the open season criterion in Australia, only.

Site Statistics as of December 31, 2014:

As of the end of December, the site had 19,603 listings with 21,352 pools in 171 countries and 11,254 cities and towns. Of the 19,603 listings, 18,640 (95%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 19,417 listings (99%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 45,643 external links on the site in total, or 26,226, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 8,245 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 92% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

An Overview of 2014's accomplishments:

In early November, we wrapped up the geocoding project that began in April, 2011 with fully 99.05% of all listings annotated with their digital latitude and longitude (GPS) locations and Google Map links based on them.

For the full year, we added 1,256 new listings and deleted 536, for a net gain of 720 listings. We added a total of 7,542 links to pool websites, listing-specific Google Maps, and pool-based sports clubs. We expanded the types of sports clubs eligible for inclusion in the listings to include triathlon, SCUBA, underwater hockey and rugby, lifesaving, and fin swimming/apnea clubs.

We reviewed virtually all the data in more than 6,500 of the 19,600 listings.

We did some tweaks on the text-based search routine and made some modifications to the map-based search tool that we expect will ultimately be the site's primary interface. Unfortunately, our programming plans were thrown off schedule due to an unforeseen illness - we were delayed, but not deterred. We have some great plans for the site and we're going to see them through.

What's Next:

We're continuing the second "grand tour" of the site, beginning with English-speaking countries in the Southern Hemisphere, where it's now summer, and will move on to the Northern Hemisphere as summer approaches there. We'll intersperse American states between other countries' reviews, attempting to follow more or less the same sequence we followed in the first go-round. Our hope is to ensure that every listing is reviewed at least every three or four years so the listing doesn't get too stale on us.

For this go-round, we're checking all the listings, one by one, to ensure that the names, addresses, website links, telephone numbers, and email addresses are still correct. We're also updating the visitor admission fees and searching for the names and website links of any clubs that may train at the facilities including: Youth Swimming Clubs, Masters Swimming Clubs, Board and Platform Diving Clubs, Synchronized Swimming Clubs, Water Polo Clubs, Triathlon Clubs, SCUBA Clubs, Underwater Hockey and Rugby Clubs, Lifesaving Clubs, and Fin Swimming/Apnea Clubs. In December, alone, we found about 320 clubs to add to our listings.

End of Month Report for November, 2014

Date Posted: 12/1/2014 1:12:54 PM

November Activity:

Having spent the last three and a half years going through every listing on the site, in November, we began the entire process again. We're starting with Australia and have gotten about half-way through the 722 listings in that country.

In this go-round, we're concentrating on ensuring that the telephone numbers and prices shown in the listings are correct, we check every link in each listing, and we're also looking for clubs and teams that may train at the listed facilities. We picked up a bunch of new facilities in November and we're confident that, by the time we're done, we'll have the most complete list of pool-using teams and clubs - with website links - on the internet. Who knows? With more than 7,200, we may be there already!

While we were checking the listings in Sydney, we realized that we had too many entries (135!) to navigate through on one page, so we divided it into four separate areas, based on each suburb's location in relation to Sydney Harbour.

During the month of November we also:

· Added 74 new listings; and

· Deleted 39 (pools that had either closed or were no longer qualified).

Site Statistics as of November 30, 2014:

As of the end of November, the site had 19,506 listings with 21,241 pools in 169 countries and 11,224 cities. Of the 19,506 listings, 18,526 (95%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 19.320 listings (99%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 45,101 external links on the site in total, or 25,781, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 7,992 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 92% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

What's Next:

A Personal Note:

The December-January period marks major holidays in most western cultures. We'll take this opportunity to wish all of our followers and friends the happiest of holiday seasons and the most healthful and prosperous of new years. Happy Laps!

End of Month Report for October, 2014

Date Posted: 11/1/2014 2:29:33 PM

October Activity:

During October, we finished the geocoding project we began in April, 2011. In addition to having found exact latitude and longitude points (expressed digitally and shown under the caption "GPS" in the listings) for more than 98.8% of the listings, we also took the opportunity to check as much of the other data in the listings as possible. So, while some of the information in the listings may be stale, it should not be more than three and a half years old.

The 1.2% of listings (227) that have not been geocoded now all include a reminder that we can't provide accurate maps without the GPS points, which is an unsubtle plea for your help. If you know a facility that has the GPS reminder and you can find it on a map, please send us the information so we can add the latitude and longitude, and a map, to the listing.

(To find the exact position on a Google Map, use the aerial photograph view of the area, zoom in as closely to the pool building as possible, and, with your cursor over the building, use the right-click button on your mouse. A small menu will appear, click on the third option, "What's here?" and the exact GPS will appear at the bottom of the description that pops up. Copy the entire line of numbers and send it to us using the "Edit" button on the "GPS" line of the listing.)

During the month of October we also:

· Added 210 new listings.

· Deleted 45 listings (pools that had either closed or were no longer qualified).

· Geocoded another 373 listings.

And we removed "Cruise Lines" as a country, as we were not able to verify that the ships we had listed still had the "treadmill pools" once advertised. So we're back down to 169 countries - but they're all real countries...

Site Statistics as of October 31, 2014:

As of the end of October, the site had 19,461 listings with 21,185 pools in 169 countries and 11,188 cities. Of the 19,461 listings, 18,448 (94.79%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 19,234 listings (98.83%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 44,711 external links on the site, or 25,477, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 7,705 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 91% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

What's Next:

We still have some work to do with the site revision. Some features aren't working quite as they should; the smart phone version still needs some serious tweaking; and, now that the site is 98.8% geocoded, our mapping tool is ready to become really, really useful.

Unfortunately, we have been informed that our programmer has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness that will involve a period of hospitalization beginning Nov. 3. We wish him well as he strives to recover.

We have not figured out what our options are for moving the site forward as, for the moment, we are more concerned with Terrance's health that the site.

End of Month Report for September, 2014

Date Posted: 10/1/2014 4:52:18 PM

September Activity:

We continue to work out the minor kinks to the new site layout and to plan for more significant improvements in the mobile and map-based interface versions of the site.

During the month of September we:

· Added 150 new listings.

· Deleted only 14 listings (pools that had either closed or shouldn't have been listed in the first place).

· Geocoded another 312 listings.

Site Statistics as of September 30, 2014:

As of the end of August, the site had 19,296 listings with 20,993 pools in 170 countries and 11,125 cities. Of the 19,296 listings, 18,234 (94.5%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 18,861 listings (97.75%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 44,067 external links on the site, or 25,206, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 7,659 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 91% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

What we're working on now:

In addition to the site tune-up, we're in the 42nd month of the geocoding project, which has provided an opportunity to review the data in every listing. By now, much of what we reviewed earlier in the project will have gone stale - so please, please use those "Edit" buttons so we can get the listings corrected.

Only 435 of the listings remain to be geocoded, as of September 30. If you find a listing that doesn't have an entry in the "Latitude / Longitude" field, please go to our July 31 End of Month Report, below, for instructions how to find the exact latitude and longitude of any location from the Google Maps website.

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Special Edition "What's New?" Update

Date Posted: 9/13/2014 12:55:42 AM

In this special edition "What's New" report, we're happy to report what should be obvious to you - that we have a newly redesigned site, new logo, and some improved functionality. Working from last to first in that list:

Improved functionality:

The new functionality includes no longer having to click on the name of the country/state/county/city and then clicking on a "Select" button. When you click on your choice, the screen will automatically refresh with your next level(s) of choice. Then, after you've selected the city or town, if there's more than one facility listed, instead of clicking on a "See Details" button on the right, you simply click on the facility name to get to the listing information.

The Google Map interface is still in Beta, but two notable changes have been made: When you click on the map graphic, if you've given your browser permission to figure out where you are, the page that comes up will automatically show your location with Swimmers Guide logo pin-point on the Google Map. And the map that comes up will be a lot bigger than it was on the old site. We have some terrific ideas about ways to further improve the functionality of this tool, and will begin bringing the mapping tool out of "Beta" as soon as we can.

(As an aside, on the map tool, the field captioned "Address" does not require a street address, it will work perfectly well with an Airport Code (JFK, LAX, MIA, ORD, etc.), a neighborhood, city combination ("Soho, London", "Soho, NY", "Midtown, Atlanta"), it's really incredibly flexible.)

On the "Home Page", we've changed the caption for the third search option - one that is not often used, but is also incredibly powerful. Where it used to say "Or you may type in a location in the [Google Custom Search] box below. The invitation is to "Perform a free-text search of the entire Swimmers Guide database using the Google Custom Search box below." Google has indexed well over 90% of the pages of the Swimmers Guide website and you can use the tool to search for pools, teams, individual locations, listings of pools in a single city, a county, or just about anything on the site.

People who use the free-text search are cautioned to be fairly specific in choosing the terms they want to search on; if they're not specific enough, the search may return thousands of pages from the site. And, for reasons we've never quite understood, of the 23,032 pages on our sitemap, Google has not indexed more than 2,300.

The "Site Stats" and "FAQ" sections have been restructured for ease of use and to reduce the length of individual pages displayed. And both the FAQ and the "About Us" sections have been rewritten.

New logo:

Our new logo was professionally designed by 3D Logo VFX. We liked the nice graphics we had in the header of the old version of the site, but there was no individual component that we could use in other places. The new logo conveys our objective of locating swimming pools in a very simple way. We expect to use variations of the logo as markers on the map based interface, as a URL icon (a favicon), and as a graphic link for Apple and Android operating systems.

Site redesign:

The decision to do an entire redesign of the site came about when our first programmer advised us that other professional, family, and personal concerns would make it impossible for her to devote much time to the site for a while. As fond as we are of Suzi- we hit it off in our first conversation several years ago - we felt that we really needed to finalize and implement a smart phone friendly site and to finish a really spiffy map based interface.

We found a programmer here in Raleigh, who told us he could do the job and has delivered on his promise. The initial impetus was to design a single site that could adapt its page layout and display to be fully functional and fully readable, irrespective of the user's device - desktop, laptop, tablet, iPhone, or Android phone. There are still a few, small bugs to fix in the small screen layout but, even with those problems, it's much more legible than it was. The content, look and feel, and functionality of the two versions are the same.

End of Month Report for August, 2014

Date Posted: 9/1/2014 2:45:14 PM

August Activity:

In early August we brought on a new programmer to redo the site and finalize a version of it that will be more legible on smart phones. The color scheme and fonts of the newly laid out site will be quite different from what we have now, but the basic functionality will remain the same. Needless to say, this took up a lot of our time, so we were able to do less geocoding, etc., than we might have liked.

When you see our new logo at the top of each page:

New (2014) Logo

come back to this section for an interim update on the features of the new site.

That said, during August, we:

· Added 108 new listings.

· Deleted 48 listings of pools that had either closed or shouldn't have been listed in the first place.

· Geocoded another 217 listings, leaving just over 600 to go.

Site Statistics as of August 31, 2014:

As of the end of August, the site had 19,160 listings with 20,844 pools in 170 countries and 11,084 cities. Of the 19,160 listings, 18,020 (94%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 18,549 listings (96.8%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 43,528 external links on the site, or 24,979 links, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 7,649 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 91% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

What we're working on now:

In addition to the site redesign, we're in the 41st month of the geocoding project, which has provided an opportunity to review the data in every listing. By now, much of what we reviewed earlier in the project will have gone stale - so please, please use those "Edit" buttons so we can get the listings corrected.

Only 611 of the listings remain to be geocoded, as of August 31. If you find a listing that doesn't have an entry in the "Latitude / Longitude" field, please go to our July 31 End of Month Report, below, for instructions how to find the exact latitude and longitude of any location from the Google Maps website.

End of Month Report for July, 2014

Date Posted: 8/1/2014 2:40:43 PM

July Activity:

We took a week off to visit family in July, so we didn't get as much done as we would have liked. Still, it wasn't a bad month, productivity-wise. During July we:

· Added 130 new listings.

· Deleted 25 listings of pools that had either closed or shouldn't have been listed in the first place.

· Geocoded another 278 listings, leaving fewer than 800 to go.

· Updated the admission information for the Chicago Park District's 42 listings and the City of Toronto Parks, Forestry & Recreation District's 54 listings.

· Were able to do some good cleaning-up of our listings in England and Ireland, and added a fair number of listings the San Francisco Bay Area.

Site Statistics as of July 31, 2014:

As of the end of July, the site had 19,100 listings with 20,764 pools in 170 countries and 11,067 cities. Of the 19,100 listings, 17,908 (93.8%) included links to the pools' own, official websites and 18,332 listings (96%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 43,169 external links on the site, or 24,837 links, if Google Map links are excluded. We included contact information for 7,617 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 91% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

What we're working on now:

Mapping and geocoding

We're still working on the geocoding project, which has provided a good opportunity for us to check all of the data in each listing - some of which had not been reviewed in many years. By the time the project is complete, every listing will have been checked at least once in the last four years. We've been through all of the countries with the largest number of listings, now, with the exception of Korea and Russia, whose languages and orthography present particular challenges. Those two countries, alone, represent more than 25% of the uncoded listings and each of them will likely take a month or more to plough through.

For those who would like to help, if you find an uncoded listing (one where the "Latitude, Longitude" entry is "Do you know?") and you can find the location on a Google Maps map of the area, simply place your computer's cursor over the exact location of the pool and right-click. (We find that using the aerial photograph view, zoomed in as tightly as possible, is the best way to ensure your cursor is in the right location.)

If you're using the latest version of Google Maps, the one that gives a full-screen map view, in the pop-up menu that appears, click on the third item listed ("What's here") Google Maps. A box will pop up immediately beneath the search box section of the screen, in the upper left quadrant. The latitude and longitude will appear in grey text as the last line in the pop-up box. Use your cursor to select the latitude and longitude text and copy it. Go back to the page for the listing you're geocoding; click on the "Edit" button in the Latitude, Longitude line of the listing; and paste the copied data into the "New Latitude/Longitude" box. Put your name and email address in the appropriate places and click on "Update Latitude/Longitude".

If you're using the older version of Google Maps, the one with the white section that takes up about 20% of the screen on the left, in the pop-up menu that appears, click on the last item listed "Drop LatLng Marker". A small, yellow text box will appear that pinpoints the site and includes the latitude and longitude in decimal notation, often to six decimal places. Use your cursor to select the latitude and longitude text and copy it. Go back to the page for the listing you're geocoding; click on the "Edit" button in the Latitude, Longitude line of the listing; and paste the copied data into the "New Latitude/Longitude" box. Put your name and email address in the appropriate places and click on "Update Latitude/Longitude".

One further caveat: If the listing is in the People's Republic of China, use the special Chinese Google Maps site at https://ditu.google.com/. Don't use the standard Google Maps site (http://www.maps.google.com), as there are problems with the overlays of the map and aerial photograph views in the standard version, when geocoding in that country.

The map-based interface for the site works off the Latitude and Longitude data in the database. If there's no Lat./Long. entry for a particular facility, it won't show up on our maps.

Smart Phone Friendly Interface:

We continue to work on a (nearly) graphics and advertising free version of the site for use on smart phones. It's not quite ready for a beta presentation, yet, but it should be soon. The information in the listings will be identical and the layout, almost the same, but it should be easier on your eyes and your thumbs. Nearly a third of our traffic comes through smart phones (PCs and tablets make up the rest, almost evenly), so the smart phone application is extremely important to us.

An amusing copycat error:

We've remarked more than once about the people who "scrape" the data from our site and set up websites of their own, stealing our "eyeballs" and advertising clicks.

Yesterday, while we were reviewing a listing in Israel whose web link had gone bad on us, we put the name of the facility into the Google search box and one of our imitators' web links for the facility came up. It showed the Israeli pool as being somewhere in Upstate New York (USA), apparently because the Israeli postal code is the same as the US ZIP Code for Schenevus, New York. Heck, Schenevus isn't even in the Borscht Belt!

And so it goes…

End of Month Report for June, 2014

Date Posted: 7/1/2014 1:18:01 PM

Our 170th County!

In June we found our first listing in El Salvador, raising the number of countries in the database to 170! The last time we added a new country was in July, 2013 - they're getting harder to find.

June Activity:

During the month, we added 107 new listings, in total, but had to delete 54 old listings when we found that those pools had closed, duplicated other listings, or shouldn't have been included on the site in the first place. So the net increase was 53 listings. Five more and we'll hit the 19,000 mark!

On the GPS front, we geocoded another 342 listings, bringing the total of listings with latitude and longitude data and pin-point Google Maps links up to 95%. (18,054 of the 18,995 listings on the site have been geocoded.) As of June 30, only 941 listings remained to be done - we figure it'll be another three months or more, before we've coded - or tried to code - every listing in the database.

Site Statistics as of June 30, 2014:

As of the end of June, the site had 18,995 listings with 20,639 pools in 170 countries and 11,037 cities. Of the 18,995 listings, 17,737 (93.3%) included links to the pool's own, official websites and 18,054 listings (95%) had GPS points and Google Maps links. There were 42,675 external links on the site, or 24,621 links, if Google Maps are excluded. We included contact information for 7,578 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 90.8% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month Report for May, 2014

Date Posted: 6/1/2014 9:25:41 PM

May Activities:

We took a ten-day vacation in May for a quick trip to London and Paris sans laptop and sans swimsuits. That doesn't mean that we completely abandoned site work while we were away, just that we didn't do much of it at all. We did go to the London Aquatic Centre (http://www.swimmersguide.com/ViewFacility.aspx?fid=23810) to get some questions about the pools there answered; and we picked up a new listing in Paris (http://www.swimmersguide.com/ViewFacility.aspx?fid=24025), but mostly, we just walked, and walked, and walked. So, if we didn't do as much site work as you may have expected, we hope you'll forgive us.

In May, we geocoded another 149 listings, bringing the total of listings with latitude and longitude data and pin-point Google Maps links up to 93.5%. (17,712 of the 18,942 listings on the site have been geocoded.) The project, begun in April 2011, is likely to take another five or six months to complete, as language problems really get in the way - geocoding a listing in China, for example, takes two or three times as long as one in France or Germany. There are no "Street Views" in the Google Maps sites and, owing to a problem of unssynchronized aerial photograph and map-views on the main Google Maps site, we're having to re-geocode every listing in that country on a different platform.

Site Statistics as of May 31, 2014:

As of the end of April, the site had 18,942 listings with 20,566 pools in 169 countries and 11,031 cities. Of the 18,942 listings, 17,632 (93.1%) included links to the pool's own, official websites and 17,712 listings (93.5%) have GPS points and Google Maps links. There are 42,174 external links on the site, or 24,462 links, if Googlge Maps are excluded. We include contact information for 7,542 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, 90.8% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month Report for April, 2014

Date Posted: 5/1/2014 1:06:53 PM

April Activities:

In April, we geocoded another 283 listings, bringing the total of listings with latitude and longitude data and pin-point Google Maps links up to 92.5%. (17,483 listings of the 18,900 listings on the site have been geocoded.) The project, begun in April 2011, is likely to take another five or six months to complete, as we've done the listings in the major English-speaking countries, and the listings in the countries where the major Western European languages are spoken (and written), but the larger countries that we haven't gotten around to yet use written languages that are difficult and time-consuming to work with. We spent several hours geocoding one listing in Korea, last week, and it took several days to geocode the 43 listings we have in Ukraine, where the Cyrillic alphabet is used. China, Russia, Korea, and a host of other, smaller countries fill our plate with the 1,417 listings to be reviewed.

A Tactical Shift:

We've been talking about a map-based interface for the website for months and have had a beta of the interface since October or November, but have been holding off on releasing the interface until we could make some needed changes. Once that was taken care of, we were going to work on a more smart-phone friendly version of the site.

Following the statistics that are available to us through Google AdSense and Google Analytics, however, it has become clear that the smart-phone interface is more important than the map-based interface. So we've put a link to the beta version of the map site on the home page and we're redirecting our efforts to improve the site's appearance on iPhones and Android devices. When we think the mobile version of the site is up to snuff, we'll go back and get the map interface polished up.

Social Media:

We put up a Facebook page for the site in January (there's a link to it at the top of this page, now), look to see "Like" and "G+" buttons on the site soon, as well. Our advisors tell us that a lack of involvement in the social media scene will lower our Google search page rank, making it harder for you to find us - and we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

When we revised the layout and set-up of the site, back in March, 2013, some of the information we included in listings for particular countries using an "auto text" feature disappeared. Last week we put in a post "Thinking about traveling abroad this summer?"; we'll try to add weekly posts about swimming while traveling in the weeks ahead.

Site Statistics as of April 30, 2014:

As of the end of April, the site had 18,900 listings with 20,509 pools in 169 countries and 11,022 cities. Of the 18,900 listings, 17,526 (92.7%) included links to the pool's own, official websites and 17,483 listings (92.5%) have GPS points and Google Maps links. There are 41,778 external links on the site, or 24,295 links, if Goo0lge Maps are excluded. We include contact information for 7,457 swimming, diving, and other pool-based sports clubs, approximately 90% of which include links to the clubs' own websites.

End of Month Report for March, 2014

Date Posted: 5/1/2014 11:40:12 AM

Geocoding:

In March, we geocoded another 302 listings; 91.1% of the 18,871 listings on the website now have latitude and longitude data and Google Maps map links. We continued our emphasis on listings in the United States, where 98% of the listed facilities are now geocoded - there are fewer than 100 left to do. World-wide, there are only 1,673 to go, so we're beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our model tells us that we're about three and a half months away from completing the project that began in April, 2011.

Other Site Stats:

Counting the map links, the site now has 41,248 external links; 24,050, if the Google Maps links are excluded. Fully 92.3% of all 18,871 listings now have links pointing to their "official" websites (or the most informative external sites we have been able to find for each facility). And we have 6,625 links to various types of clubs and teams that train in the listed facilities: Masters and youth swim teams; board and platform diving teams; water polo, triathlon, SCUBA, underwater hockey & rugby, lifesaving, and fin swimming clubs.

The number of clubs and links is expanding at a good clip - but it would be faster if those of you who have connections with the types of clubs we include will be kind enough to let us know about them. Send us your club or team's name, URL, and where you swim and we'll put the club in the listings of as many of the pool(s) as we have listed. We don't have your pool listed? Go to the Add A Pool section and we can add your pool and your club at the same time. Do keep in mind, however, that we have some minimum listing criteria - not every pool makes the cut. The minimum listing criteria are shown on the first page of the Add A Pool section and in the FAQ.

London's Olympic Venue:

Last month, we boasted that we had been able to get the data to create a listing for the London Aquatic Center (http://www.swimmersguide.com/ViewFacility.aspx?fid=23810), a few hours before it opened and we asked for your help in rounding out the listing details, adding reviews, etc. So whaddaya waiting for? Not "word one", yet, from any of you (or from the operators, whom we contacted directly).

Last Month's Milestone (Corrected):

Also last month, we remarked that the first (printed) edition of Swimmers' Guide was published in "March, 2013, 21 years ago" TYPO alert! That should have been March, 1993.

It occurred to me the other day that there are people who swam in the 2012 London Olympics, who hadn't been born when the first edition of Swimmers' Guide came out...

End of Month Report for February, 2014

Date Posted: 3/2/2014 6:57:39 PM

Geocoding:

In January, we geocoded another 273 listings; 89½% of the 18,863 listings on the website now have latitude and longitude data and Google Maps map links. We spent most of the month working on listings in the United States, where 93% of the listed facilities are now geocoded. Our model tells us that we're about five months away from completing the project that began in April, 2011.

Other Site Stats:

Counting the map links, the site now has 40,676 external links; 23,778, if the Google Maps links are excluded. Fully 92% of all 18,863 listings now have links pointing to their "official" websites (or the most informative external sites we have been able to find for each facility). And we have 6,423 links to various types of clubs and teams that train in the listed facilities: Masters and youth swim teams; board and platform diving teams; water polo, triathlon, SCUBA, underwater hockey & rugby, lifesaving, and fin swimming clubs.

London's Olympic Venue:

On March 1, the London Aquatic Center opened to the public and "we were there", with a listing for the facility at http://www.swimmersguide.com/ViewFacility.aspx?fid=23810, a few hours before opening. The listing is "bare-bones", but we know that those of you who have an opportunity to visit the venue will send lots of "Edits" to round out the listing. Your reviews and information about the clubs and teams that train there will be appreciated...

Another Milestone:

The first (printed) edition of <i><b>Swimmers' Guide</b></i> was published in March, 2013, 21 years ago, this month!

End of Month Report for January, 2014

Date Posted: 2/1/2014 5:48:18 PM

Geocoding:

In January, we geocoded another 492 listings; 87½% of the 18,856 listings on the website now have latitude and longitude data and Google Maps map links. We spent most of the month working on listings in the United States, where 86½% of the listed facilities are now geocoded. Our model tells us that we're about six months away from completing the project that began in April, 2011.

Why is that important? Because we're building a map-based interface for the site (see the "beta" HERE) and we want the position of each pin to be as accurate as we can get it. Unfortunately, we've found that many of the pin-points in other resources are flat-out wrong and we don't want our site users to get lost looking for a pool in a foreign location, where they don't speak the language. The new interface will show a listed facility only if we have its latitude and longitude in our database.

So, if you come across a listing where we don't show the latitude and longitude, and you know the location of the facility: Open up your browser to the Google Maps website; find the pool or building that contains the pool in a sattelite view; put your cursor right on that point; right-click on the point; go down to the "What's here?" option; click on it; go to the Google search box at the top of the page; copy the latitude and longitude data that appears there; and send it to us using the "Edit" button in the "Latitude, Longitude" field of the listing.

Correction to the Site Stats Section

Late last year, we realized that statistics from deleted listings were not being removed from some of the statistics on the Site Stats page. The page has been corrected. It takes this page a tad longer to download than any of the others, now, but it's now accurate with "Up to the Minute Data" it promises.

Facebook:

In January, we finally got around to setting up a Swimmers Guide Facebook web page. We haven't done much with it, yet, but hope to start putting in an occasional post to let you all know what we're doing more often than our monthly posts here. It may also be a good place to add tips about finding pools or customs in countries that may be foreign to us. Or maybe to let you know when we've found an extraordinarily interesting new listing. We'll see what develops.

A Swimmer's Suggestion:

One of our most regular contributors sent us a note in early January regarding an experience he had while in Chicago over the Christmas Holidays. Here's what he wrote:

"Searching for pools to swim in while I was visiting Chicagoland over Xmas, I decided to call around the local high schools to see if I could get in some laps. Well, lo and behold, two of the coaches in two very nice, new, 25-yard pools were happy not only to let me in, but opened up a lane for me to amaze everyone with my pre- and post-Xmas display of garbage yardage. I got an even 1K in on each occasion and, of course, felt great afterwards, especially since it brought back fond memories of practices while I was in high school. The trick seems to be finding out which schools open their pools for practice or rec swim, going there, and then politely asking if you can do your laps. Though I offered to show my USMS card and pay a fee, I didn’t have to either time and had some nice conversations with the coaches in which we traded swim stories past and present. So, be ready for some disappointments, but don’t be surprised if you just might be let in to relive your days of dreaming to do a 100-free in under a minute, which was one of the season goals I noted one of the kids had checked off on his locker 'psych board.'"

We have more than a few middle and high schools listed on the site and we know that thousands of others open their pools to the public but getting enough information for a listing is often quite difficult. If you find yourself in a place where we don't have any listings, call the local high school - you may be pleasantly surprised at what you find. If you do find an unlisted pool, go to the Swimmers Guide Add-A-Pool section and send us the data to create a listing, so the next swimmer visiting the area, who finds him or herself searching for a pool, doesn't have to replicate your efforts.

End of Month and End of Year Report for December, 2013

Date Posted: 1/1/2014 5:08:27 PM

It's Been One Heckuva Year!

The New Year is always a good time to look over the year before to recap accomplishments, disappointments, and notable events.

In January and February we spent a lot of time and money trying to get the most egregious of the sites that had stolen our content knocked off-line. We were not successful but, if you Google the names of some of the pools on our site you're likely to come up with a page or more of that fellow's clone pages. He's still there, his content is still short of the mark - and his English hasn't gotten any better...

In March, we marked the 20th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of Swimmers' Guide, A Directory of Pools for Lap Swimmers. That edition listed eleven hundred pools, all in the United States.

We also moved the entire database from its MS-Excel-converted-to-MS-Access format to Microsoft's SQL database format.

We implemented a totally new website layout "look-and-feel", with new tools for our readers to convey information to us more easily and with fewer restrictions and problems than we had with the old email-it-to-us system.

And that was just March! In September, we moved the site, lock stock and barrel, from its Colorado-based home of seventeen years to a Network Solutions server. That move eliminated the recurring outages we had experienced in the past and solved a number of email communications that had plagued us for years.

In December, we introduced a beta version of the map-based site interface. It still needs a lot of work, but it's pretty spiffy, even if it is still in the early stages of development.

Over the course of the year, we removed 574 listings due to closure, duplication, or failure to meet the minimum listing criteria. And we added 738 new listings. We geocoded more than 5,000 of the listings, reaching 85% of the entire database as of December 31, 2013. We found official website links for more than 1,600 of the listings and now have links to just over 90% of the 18,800 listings' own home pages.

As of December 31, 2013, the site has: 18,833 listings with 20,832 qualifying pools in 10,972 cities and towns in 169 countries. All told, we have more than 37,600 links to external websites for the pools, the clubs and teams that train at the pools, and to the Google Map website that will show you exactly where the pools are.

What's in Store for 2014?

In the coming year, we hope to:

Finalize the map-based interface of the site.

Complete the geocoding of the database. There are 2,824 listings for which we still need to find latitudes and longitudes and, without the lat./long. data, the listings will not show up on the site's maps.

Create a more smart-phone/tablet-friendly version of the site.

There are one or two more interesting things that could happen in 2014, but we aren't in a position to talk about them, yet. All we can say on that front is - "Stay tuned…"

A Thank You

We spend a lot of time doing research to add new facilities to the site and to update the information for the facilities already listed, but there's only one of "us", and we simply can't do it all. Fortunately, there is a small cadre of people who are in regular contact with us, telling us about new pools opening, old pools closing, prices changing, and links breaking. They write reviews, make helpful observations, praise what they consider praise-worthy and criticize what they don't like. They don't hesitate to let us know what they'd like to see on the site and to tell us where they think we could do better.

Although we give everyone the opportunity to join that most helpful group by using the "Edit" buttons in the listings, only a small number of our site users actually do. And they make all the difference in the world. To them we can give only a heart-felt "Thank You!"

i want my wife to cheat on me

End of the month report for November, 2013

Date Posted: 12/2/2013 1:19:05 PM

Geocoding:

In November, we continued adding latitude and longitude data for the listings in Japan. We interrupted working on Japan briefly as we turned to the U.S. State of Hawaii. And we kept running into new listings in Japan that had to be added to the site. Thus far, we've added 81(net) new listings in that country and we'll probably run across a few more as we work through the last 230 listings to code. As of today, we're up to 82.6% of all listings geocoded. After we finish geocoding Japan, we'll return to the USA and finish geocoding the remaining listings there.

Programming:

The map-based interface project is back on track. You can see a beta of the new interface HERE. It works and it's quite powerful. The Road Warriors and airline crewmembers among you will appreciate that you can put in the three-letter code for an airport - without even including the name of the country - and it will give you the complete list of pools in the area, as long as they've all been geocoded. There are several enhancements to be made; it's a work-in-progress and is likely not to work occasionally, as we test changes, so we're not publicizing it, yet.

Seasons' Greetings:

Unless something really interesting happens, this will be our last "What's New" entry in 2013. Whatever holidays you may be celebrating during this last month of the year, we hope you enjoy them.

End of month report for October, 2013

Date Posted: 11/1/2013 1:32:15 PM

Geocoding:

In October, we finished Poland, did the U.S. states of Indiana and West Virginia, and began working on Japan. Owing to language differences, we expected that geocoding and updating Japan's 777 listings was going to be a real slog, but it hasn't turned out to be. After a while, when dealing with a series of websites in the same language, the structure begins to reveal itself and it's easier to understand the listings after being exposed to many others in the same language. We were surprised to find that it's true with Japanese, written with a completely different character set. And we need to give a tip 'o the hat to the Google Translation site (http://translate.google.com/), a real godsend! The geocoding of Japan is coming along nicely - in the first ten days, we knocked off about 180 listings.

We're at 80.5% complete in the geocoding project and we guess we have another ten or eleven months to go with it.

Other Character Sets:

Speaking of languages written with different character sets, while we were working on our Japanese listings, we found out that the site's new (since March, 2013) software is able to handle text in non-Latin based languages. We couldn't do that before; when we tried, the foreign characters just came out as a series of boxes or question marks, which was quite unhelpful. Now that we know that we can do it, we've begun adding the Japanese pools' names to their listings in Japanese as well as in English. Check out the Chiba International General Swimming Center listing for an example.

Programming Delays:

Our programmer has been tied up with other clients and projects lately, so we've had a period where very little progress has been made. We're hoping that situation is in the process of correcting itself.

SPAM From Our Domain:

We've been notified of email bounce-backs from unknown senders with email addresses "@SwimmersGuide.com". There are only two valid email addresses in our domain: "info@" and "BHaverland@". If you receive an email from our domain with any other address, you can confidently trash it.

End of month report for September, 2013

Date Posted: 10/2/2013 2:27:12 AM

Geocoding:

In September, we finished Norway, did a few states in the US (Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming), and wrapped-up all of Portugal, too. We're approaching 78% in the geocoding project and we're now plugging away at Poland.

Site Relocation:

You'll recall that last month we remarked about the interruptions in service the site had been experiencing; in September, we fixed the problem by moving the entire site from a server in rural Colorado to a Network Solutions hosted server. In making the change-over, there was virtually no interruption in service to you (at least, we received no complaints), and for me, the switch was instantaneous - the minute after I sent the instructions for the move, my ISP directed me to the new server location.

Your Email Addresses:

When you click on one of the ubiquitous "Edit" buttons on our site, one thing we require is your email address. We do that so we can thank you for your help and/or get back to you with a follow-up question, if what you sent wasn't entirely clear to us. Please be sure that there are no typos in the email address you send. Updates sent with erroneous email addresses are viewed as questionable and may be disregarded entirely. We've been online since 1996 (that's more than 17 years!) and I don't believe that anyone has ever had cause to be upset about getting spam from us or from anyone remotely connected with us.

End of month report for August, 2013

Date Posted: 9/1/2013 8:52:03 PM

Geocoding:

August was a quiet month; we took some time off to be able to scratch a couple of places (Glacier National Park and Mount Rushmore) off our "bucket list." We finally hit the 75% mark in the geocoding project. We finished Switzerland and we're now about three-quarters of the way through Norway.

More advice for travelers:

In the US, indoor pools (other than those in schools) usually stay open year-round; that's not necessarily so in Europe. We've noted that a very substantial percentage of pools in Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and Germany close for some time during the summer - some for a couple of weeks and some for as long as four months. In many cases, there is an outdoor, seasonal pool available on the same site. When we know that's the case, we try to include a description of the outdoor pool in the "Notes" section of the listing. Some towns' outdoor pools are at different locations and we don't know about them; and occasionally, there is no nearby pool that operates in summer.

Well over 80% of the listings now have links to the pools' official websites ("Web Address) and, although the official websites may not be in a language you read or understand, the Google Translation tool website (http://translate.google.com/) we mentioned last month should be high on the list of your bookmarks.

Service Interruptions:

Over the last couple of months, the site has been plagued by occasional slowdowns, momentary server outages, and out-and-out site failures - usually for only brief periods, but occasionally for a full day or more. Those failures are embarrassing and annoying. We're in the process of rearranging things and hope to have more reliable service online before the end of September.

Email Interruptions:

Beginning at around the time our web service started to flicker, we noticed that a large number of our emails to addresses in Canada or on Canadian servers were starting to bounce back rejected by the server. If you have written to from an email address that ends with ".ca" and have not received a reply, chances are that we read and replied to your correspondence, but your server rejected it. We think we know why it's happening and we're pretty sure that we'll get it fixed at the same time we fix the service interruption problem. In the meantime, we can only say that we're sorry.

End of Month Report for July, 2013

Date Posted: 8/1/2013 8:39:02 PM

Geocoding:

Over the last few months, we completed geocoding Colorado, Oregon, and Nevada in the US, and Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Sweden, internationally. We're a bit more than half-way through Switzerland, then we'll do Montana, Norway, and Portugal to wrap-up Western Europe. As of today, we're approaching 75% of all listings coded with latitude and longitude.

Advice for Travelers:

Meanwhile, we've had some communications with our user group (that's you) that reminded us of a few important facts about the site and swimming internationally. So here are some suggestions:

When traveling, always have a swim cap with you and, gents, either be prepared to wear a "brief-style" swimsuit or anticipate that you won't be allowed into a substantial number of pools, particularly in French-speaking countries. At some European pools you can purchase or rent a swimsuit, but if you have your own Speedo®, you'll probably feel a little less uncomfortable.

Get yourself a synthetic chamois-like towel. They're available in auto parts stores and some swim outlets, and keep the tube it comes in. A "shammy" will get you as dry as fast as a cotton towel, but it'll stay slightly moist, which is where the tube comes in handy.

Also take a couple of locks. Most lockers in the US will accept a Master® Lock, but that's not necessarily the case in Europe, so take a smaller, suitcase-type lock with you, too. If your Master Lock doesn't work, a smaller hasp may. At many pools, you can buy or rent a lock, but the prices may be steeper than at your local hardware store.

If you're going to Europe in summer, you can expect to find many of the pools listed on this site closed for the season. That sounds counterintuitive, but most of the pools we list in Europe are municipal operations and, even as far north as Finland and Sweden, small towns may have both an indoor and an outdoor pool; when the season is right, the indoor pool is closed and the outdoor pool is opened. The timing of opening outdoor pools in Europe is a bit different from what Americans are used to; the outdoor pool season begins as early as late April and often ends in mid-August. As we've gone through the European listings, we've tried to remember to include information about outdoor pool options in the "Notes" sections of the listings.

How do you find out about these things? You have, we hope, discovered the "Web Address" line in the listings. They're clickable links to the pools' "official" websites. Don't be deterred when you discover that most of the official websites are in the language of the country or region in which the pool is located. If you don't use Google's Chrome browser, which has an automatic translation link, go straight to the Google Translation tool website at http://translate.google.com/.

A Note About the Site Stats:

We've discovered a flaw in the programming of the "Site Stats" page. As we go through the listings while completing the geocoding project, we occasionally find that a pool we had listed has closed. When that happens, we archive the listing so that it's no longer available - but it stays in the database and all of the site statistic items keep the archived listing in their counts. Since the new site went online in March, we've deleted nearly 200 listings, all of whose pool , link, and club counts are still in the numbers o the "Site Stats" page. We're working on getting that corrected.

End of Month Report for April, 2013

Date Posted: 5/1/2013 9:32:18 PM

An Anniversary Missed

With all that's been going on with the site over the last few months, we forgot to mention that March marked the 20th anniversary of the publication of Swimmers' Guide: A Directory Of Pools For Lap Swimmers. The 1,100 listings included in that first, printed edition were just the beginning of today's 18,738 listing website. I'll have to have a glass of wine to celebrate tonight.

An Anniversary Not Missed

We are not forgetting that April was the second anniversary of the start of the geocoding project. As of today, we've succeeded in finding latitude and longitude data for 65% of the listings. We were hoping that we'd be able to wrap that project up by April of 2014, but if our forecasts are correct, it looks like we won't be done for another 14 or 15 months. Other site issues and some personal business have taken a lot of time in March and April, and promise to take more before that project is ended.

We could do the job a lot faster, there are apps out there to upload addresses and download the related latitudes and longitudes, but we've found that they're not as exact as we think a GPS point should be. Rather than go with inaccurate automation, we're working our way through the database by hand, as it were, often going down to the Google Maps Street View to be sure we have the right building. We're also checking our links, phone numbers, admission prices, etc. in a general site check-up.

A New Project Begun

Since we have so many of the listings geocoded already, however, we decided to ask our programmer to begin work on the map-based interface for the site. We've seen a lot of map-based websites, but few with the geographical breadth of coverage of SwimmersGuide.com and none with the simplicity of organization we think a map-based site should have. This project promises to take a while, but we think it will be worth the wait.

End of Month Report for March, 2013

Date Posted: 4/1/2013 3:53:56 PM

A Quick Note About the Recent Site Redesign

The new site has been online for a little over two weeks, now, and I'm happy to say that the response has been almost uniformly positive.

When the redesign went online, we had a problem with our coding conflicting with something in the Google Ads code that caused pages not to download properly. It took a couple of days to get that resolved, but the pages now seem to be downloading properly. To those of you who took the time to alert us to that problem: Thank you!

The few other complaints we've received were due to misunderstandings rather than real problems. Those of you who use hand-held devices, tablets and smart phones, should find the orange boxes at the top of the country, state/province, county/region, and city/town selection lists a godsend to allow you to skip through long lists to the name of the geographic area you're searching. Some people have not understood this, but if you play around with it, you'll see what a great tool it is. I often use it with my desktop machine, too. Thanks to everyone who has provided feedback, it's helpful to us and, as those of you who hated the mailto links should now have noticed, we were listening.

The other significant source of complaints has been from people who think we are connected with the facilities in some way. That's been a problem since "Day 1" of the site. Unfortunately, people neither follow the "Important Notice - Please Read" link at the top of every listing page, nor are they able to discern from the context of the page that there's no connection between us and the listed facilities. We don't think we'll ever overcome that problem.

And another...

Because of the way the site was reindexed every week in the old system, it was not possible to "bookmark" any of the geographical pages in the site. Although the country and state IDs remained relatively constant, over time, the addition or reclassification of a county or city at the lower end of the alphabet would cause a change in the ID of every county and city that followed it alphabetically, irrespective of what country, state, or province the new listing was in. Now that the database is permanently hosted on the server, the indexing is permanent. If you want to bookmark the search page for all the listings in England, for example, you'd go through the search to http://www.swimmersguide.com/default.aspx?SID=187 and bookmark it or, if you want to use it as a link on your website, you'd simply use the URL as a link to that page. It should never change again and links to it should always give you the list of Counties and Cities in England.

Geocoding Update

With all the business getting the new site online, we suffered a real slowdown in getting the latitudes and longitudes for listings in March. We were able to geocode only about 200 listings last month, which brings us up to 63.7% of the total. But the new site go-live wasn't the only distraction we had to deal with last month, read on...

"The Scraper"

Over the course of the years, we've come across a number of sites whose information bears striking resemblance to our own listings, but in February, we found a site whose content was so perfectly identical to ours that we felt it necessary to call on the assistance of an intellectual property attorney. The operator of that site is a plagiarist who has taken our content, wrapped it in "English as a Second Language" quality text, added pay-per-click ads, and is attempting to fob off our content as his own. As best we can determine, he has added nothing to our information, in fact, some of the things in our listings that we think most important to you have not been included in his site's listings!

We've been working on this database since February, 1992, most of the time uncompensated, the rest of the time earning something in the neighborhood of $4.00 per hour, before expenses. Over the course of a few days or weeks, this plagiarist unleashed a "bot" on our site, skimmed off the information he wanted, inserted it into a template, and is now reaping his unearned rewards.

So, as we work to have the SOB taken down, we will have less time to work on the geocoding or other projects we have in mind.

Welcome to the New Site!

Date Posted: 3/14/2013 12:44:03 AM

Swimmers Guide went online in late May, 1996, since that time, the number of pools in the database has nearly quintupled, but the interface you have seen and the way the information was created and stored on the server have gone virtually unchanged. We decided that with the resources we had available we could devote our time to creating content or we could devote our time to creating a visually pleasing site, but we could not do both – so we opted for content.

Although we’re convinced that our decision to choose substance over style was correct at the time, the Internet has changed and the “back of the house” software we had been using all along couldn’t support some of the innovations and improvements we want to implement. So, after 16 years, we hired a programmer to bring Swimmers Guide into the 21st Century.

What has changed?

In the listings, aside from the obvious - narrowing the screen, changing colors and layout, putting the advertisements that pay for the site on both sides of the listings - we’ve also eliminated the “mailto” links that used email messages for you to send us updated information about the listings’ web links, telephone numbers, prices, map links, and your reviews. Now, there’s an “Edit” button on the right side of every data point in a listing; click on the Edit button and a screen will come up prompting you for input that, when completed, will allow us to review, accept or edit what you’ve sent, and to add it to the listing in real time!

Do you want to tell us about a team or club that trains at the facility? On the old site, we could fit only two or three clubs of each type into a listing; now, we can accept an almost unlimited number of swimming, diving, water polo, and synchronized swim teams for each listing - and we've added several more types: triathlon, life saving, fin-swimming, underwater hockey and rugby teams, and SCUBA diving clubs.

On the old site we had a 500-character database field-size limitation for reviews and comments; that limitation is now a thing of the past. The site will allow as many reviews of as we want to have, and, with the field-size limitation gone, we’ll be able to begin adding the date received to each review. In about a year, we’re going to delete all the undated reviews – some go back ten or more years – but we’ll leave them for a while because we think that most of them do have value.

The “Add A Pool” tool on the old site hadn’t worked for years, and the work-around of asking you to copy a questionnaire from a page on the site to an email message, then type answers to a multitude of questions, then email it to us has finally been replaced! The new “Add A Swimming Pool” tool that you can access from the home page is much easier to deal with from your point of view and ours. Fill in answers to the questions and hit the “Submit” button - the information will be instantly available to us. We’ll be able to see what you sent and, if the facility meets our listing criteria, we’ll be able to add it to the site in real time. No more waiting until the weekly site upload, everything can be done in a matter of minutes.

Have you ever wondered how many listings we have – or how many we have in a particular country? Check out the “Site Statistics” page. The information on that page is updated in real time – every time a pool is added to or removed from the database, the information on that page will be automatically updated.

Although the site is still less smart phone-friendly than we’d like, we’ve added a small tool above the scrolling (or drop-down) lists of countries, states, counties, and cities, to allow you to type in the first few letters of the name of the place you’re interested in and the list will automatically scroll down to the places you typed, hit the “Select” button, and the next list (or the listing) you’re looking for will come right up. If you’re using a tablet computer or a desktop computer, this tool works on them, too!

We’ve changed the set-up of the “Pools in [city name]” so that all the listings in a city are shown on a single page, as opposed to multiple pages with no more than 15 listings per page. And the new list, which comes sorted by postal code by default, can now be sorted in ascending or descending order by name, neighborhood, primary pool length, postal code, accessibility by the general public, accessibility by hotel guests, and whether or not the facility has club or team contact information.

More important than all the changes we’ve written about above, the ones you can see, are the ones you can’t see. The site is now permanently installed in an SQL Server database using asp.net programming. The change from Cold Fusion/MS Access to asp.net/SQL Server, not only allowed all of the can-see changes, but will enable us to implement a tremendous number of site enhancements. We can now develop a truly smart-phone friendly site. We’ll be able to implement some controlled database searches that depend on variables other than just geographical situation: How many 50m pools are there in Nassau County, NY? Where can I find a 50m, outdoor pool in Germany? What listings in New York City have Masters swim clubs? We haven’t begun that work yet, but now it’s doable. When we finish geocoding the site, we’ll do a map-based graphical user interface that will render artificial, political boundaries irrelevant in a search. If you’re in or going to an area close to a national, state, or county boundary, you’ll be able to tell if there’s a pool on the other side of the border that’s close – without doing another “Find A Pool” search! (We’re at 62% geocoded as of March 4, 2013, 23 months into the project, so that’s only a year or so down the road.)

What hasn’t changed?

Behind the hardware, software, and data, itself, the individual who created the site hasn’t gone anywhere. He now works full-time to keep the site as current and useful as he possibly can. He will continue to do the same work, simply using a better tool.