Big Blue Planet
- Summary
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they say Big Blue Planet – a web site that would (eventually) have every piece of information you could wish for about the dive locations on this planet. We want it to be the biggest, and more importantly, most useful resource of it’s kind on the web.
we say its overly complicated and yet still doesn’t do what we would find useful in a review site
- Url
- www.bigblueplanet.com
- Editor's rating
- 3.5what's the rating scale?
- Tags
- Published
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- 9 Jun 2008
- Comments
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- No Right of Reply
- No comments
- Related Reviews
Big Blue Planet website reviewed by Scubafreebies Editor is marked up in microformats hreview version 0.3.
The review
They say
We wanted to give something back to the diving community that has supported us as we have grown and developed Dive-Logs. So, we thought up the concept of Big Blue Planet – a web site that would (eventually) have every piece of information you could wish for about the dive locations on this planet. We want it to be the biggest, and more importantly, most useful resource of it’s kind on the web.
We also want it to be free and to have an open access policy with no need to register to get to the information you need.
What can it do for you ?
Search dive locations and add your own reviews
You can browse dive locations geographically, by water temperature and search by marine life spotted. Each dive location is linked to the corresponding Lonely Planet, CIA and Foreign Office pages, and has info added by divers. When logged on you can add destination information, a review of a location and note marine life you spotted.
We could not work out if/how you could add a new dive site, dive store, or marine life to vote for.
Dive buddies
Registered users can set themselves up as a dive buddy in a particular location. They will then be listed on the page for that location and other divers can send an email to them through the web site. You cannot search for existing dive buddies or know anything else about them before you make contact.
Upload photo gallery and vote on others
You can view the photo gallery before creating your own, and you can create your own before registering. But if you don’t register your gallery will be deleted at GMT midnight. You get space for around 100 photos.
Carbon calculator
From any diving destination page you can calculate carbon emmissions for a flight there and from a dive boat and compressor usage.
Browse users
Top Big Blue Planet users are listed by the number of dive location reviews they have written.
Is it easy to use ?
We found the site confusing to use and difficult to read. The pages are crammed with different sections all crying out for attention. Sometimes there is so much that stuff ends up to the right of the screen and you have to scroll to find it. In order to get so much stuff onto each page they have designed it with tiny fonts – as low as 6px, put blue text on a blue image background and designed the page layout at a fixed size. Anyone with reading difficulties or with less than perfect vision will have problems.
Does it travel ?
The search pages depend upon javascript and have no fallback which is a shame. Biggest travelling problem is likely to be the applet you need to download before you can put any pictures on the photo gallery. Lots of internet cafés will not allow downloads so you will have to wait until you get home.
Is your personal information secure ?
On registration you are reassured that your email address will only be used to inform you about new features on the web site. You are not asked for any other personal information.
What do you agree to ?
The terms and conditions state that any content contributed by users (photos and reviews) is in the public domain.
Users
There’s about 100 users who have reviewed or added dive locations to the site and about 30 with photo galleries.
We say
They set an ambitious goal for the web site and have features to match. Unfortunately they are too much and not enough. Divers are likely to want to review a dive store and dive site they visited but we could find no way to add these to a dive location. On the other hand the carbon calculator is a gimmick that just adds more clutter to teh page. And the dive buddy feature is way too restrictive for a web site that embraces fact that divers travel to dive.
However the only way to make these sites work is to contribute so browse the site for your next holiday destination and see what reviews are there. And when you come back, pay it back with a review of your own.
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