RealSurf Surfers' Forum

Okay, which one of you is trolling as Geedot?

lol - sceptical bunch, aren't ya!

No troll - though i can see how you would read it that way - and good on you for trying to keep scammers on their toes.

The company i work for is http://25fifteen.com/ and we're a RackSpace Startup Program partner (click on the qualifying partner drop down menu on this page - http://www.rackspace.com.au/startup/sign-up - and you'll see us at the bottom.

There's no real benefit to me offering to pass on those benefits. In theory it's only for startups but as I mentioned to Don in an email, I think I can make it work and get him his hosting for free.

The main reason I want to help out is because we're experimenting with a surf recommendation tool called SurfScout - http://www.surfscout.co - and Real Surf has been an awesome source of spot info as well as reports, to help us validate our recommendations the next day (I say, the next day, because SurfScout emails you the night before with a recommendation on the best time and place for you to surf the following day)

It's been heaps more useful that then usual CW, Swellnet, MSW suspects in that regard - so I figured if I have hosting credits and tech skills that can make life easier for someone who's given so much to Sydney surfers, like Don, and it costs me little to nothing to offer them, then why not help?

You have an awesome community here guys. Look forward to being a part of it.

And we look forward to the photos of your penis, geedot.

extra points if there is some tasteful art in the background.

Assuming you are male

Not sure it will fit in one picture - might have to set up a gallery

geedot wrote:Not sure it will fit in one picture - might have to set up a gallery

Your turn, spork.

oh yeah, geedot and his panoramic penis.

so thats pretty cool hey

everyone happy with someone using their private conversation for commercial gain?

geedot wrote:You have an awesome community here guys. Look forward to exploiting it, without prior consent, in order to let more naked mole rats surf in places they'd otherwise take 10 years to find. And maybe make a buck or too

Yeah, welcome geedot.

Yeah fcuk that noise. Surf scout sounds like the biggest heap of shitt idea ever. You can't b seriously mining our conversations here geedlot the feedlot and sending kooks surfing based on same can you?

new bathrooms,surfboards,upgraded car

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Wow. Put the pitchforks down, guys. You’ve completely misunderstood what i said.

Real Surf has been an awesome source of spot info as well as reports, to help us validate our recommendations the next day

I was speaking specifically about Don’s daily reports on the front page which, unlike the other sites, actually give good detail on what’s happening at DY and surrounding beaches on any given day.

We don’t mine that info to make recommendations. The recommendation email goes out ~12 hours before Don’s reports are posted.

We don’t mine these forums. We don’t need to. For each area we scout we have locals help us build out our spot guides.

We don’t scout secret spots. The list of beaches scouted is almost identical to every other surf forecasting site - unless you call Bondi, Curl Curl or Elouera secret spots.

We don’t send kooks to crowd your waves. In fact, we’re the only service that’s trying to do the opposite.

We don’t do your typical “wow, it’s a 6 foot NE ground swell with a light NW wind North Narrabeen is pumping…get down there” type surf report. Instead we look at everyone’s skill, equipment and location and recommend somewhere for them e.g. In a big south swell we don’t send beginners to Bondi - we send them to Maroubra. That way we spread surfers across beaches in any given area based on where they *should* be going not where the reports say is pumping.

You may say that’s the biggest heap of shit idea ever but we get emails every day from beginners thanking us for keeping them out of the way of more experienced people that may disagree with you.

There is no commercial exploitation. The service is free. We don’t make money off it. It’s an experiment to see if we can take something that’s usually subjective (like someone doing a surf report) and make it objective - using data - then personalise that so surfers who want to use it can get better waves for their skill level.

Of course, you’d know all of that if you actually signed up to the service or checked out other info on us (e.g. our Facebook page). But nobody from this forum thought that that was necessary (I’ve just checked the analytics) Instead, it was easier to just go down the “this is a scam” “don’t send kooks” “OMG you’re ripping off our private (even though it’s on a public forum) conversations” path.

I was serious when I said this is an awesome community and I was serious when I said the reason I want to give Don access to free hosting is because he’s been helpful to us with his awesome reports, so how about we put this all down to a big misunderstanding and move on?

I’m also cognisant of the fact that we’ve hijacked this thread - so if you have any other constructive (whether positive or negative) feedback or comments about SurfScout feel free to start a new thread and I’ll respond in there.

welcome aboard geedot. sounds like a great idea and you sound like a genuinely nice and honest bloke. your offer to help out is very generous and I'm sure don will be most appreciative.

pay no heed to the baying of those moronic trolls. apart from my self the members of this forum are all semi retarded ( some semi retired also ) socially stunted corn hole tweaking pedarests with permanent underprivileged stiffies and soiled underwear . that's right this joint is full of filthy stinking pineapple cooking pedaphiles.

this won't be the last attack on your good name by these creatures. stay strong beautiful geedot. #ivegotyourback

out

#bestrong geedot

Good response geedot.

thread hijacking is pretty standard here so I'll ask here.
from a technical point of view it sounds like an interesting challenge
but why do you want to provide the service?

alakaboo wrote:Good response geedot.

thread hijacking is pretty standard here so I'll ask here.
from a technical point of view it sounds like an interesting challenge
but why do you want to provide the service?

I've got this one for you champ. Rest your awesome fingers.

geedot wrote:I was serious when I said this is an awesome community and I was serious when I said the reason I want to give Don access to free hosting is because he’s been helpful to us with his awesome reports, so how about we put this all down to a big misunderstanding and move on?

You don't fool me Feedlot. One more carpetbagger cashing in on the intellectual property gold mine that is Real Surf.

Thanks guys

@alakaboo - part of the interest is the technical challenge.

I suppose we could have chosen another area but there are a number of surfers in our office and we were talking about how there are some awesome weather apps around (Brolly, Dark Sky) that can take the complexity of weather and do really accurate, local predictions then present them incredibly simply but nothing like that exists for surf forecasting/recommendations.

That led to a discussion about how any data-based solution to that problem could also have the benefit of allowing us to make the recommendations super customised. Again - the complete opposite of what we get today. And that with customisation you could actually help to fight the problem of overcrowding by effectively pushing surfers across beaches based on appropriateness for their skill. There's a spread of skill levels in our office so everyone could see the benefit of that.

If we can do what we're trying to do I think it will be great work by our team but I also think the end result will be something that I'll use daily - which is part of the reason why I'm pushing it as a project.

If lots of people also think that we may end up doing something more commercial but that's not our primary concern ATM. And we've already discussed that if we went down that path that there would always be a free element to the service.

For those interested in how it's going - last time I checked, the average open rate on the email is sitting around 60-70% and that over the 3 odd months we've been running the experiment that only ~5% of people have unsubscribed. Not bad considering we're sending out emails daily - so it looks like there are a bunch of people out there that think we're on the right track.

BTW - for anyone interested we recently did a study on the factors that affect a surfers decision to go out or not to help us understand how to make recommendations even better. I'm not going to post the link here in case I get slammed again...but if you want a link to some of the insights, let me know and I'll get it to you.