This obviously also includes our app! The iOS app will be online in a few weeks and available in the App Store for free. The Android App will take a little longer to be finished.

At the moment we are testing the beta version, here are two screen shots.

What do you think of our look? Thumbs up if you like it.

]]> http://blog.my-sea.com/2013/11/06/the-mysea-app-is-coming-soon/feed/ 0 http://blog.my-sea.com/2013/10/11/a-wedding-day-full-of-obstacles/ http://blog.my-sea.com/2013/10/11/a-wedding-day-full-of-obstacles/#comments Fri, 11 Oct 2013 10:12:37 +0000 mySea-Team http://blog.my-sea.com/?p=564 It is a hot day in late summer, there is a slight breeze, the yacht is gathering speed as Oliver and his wife Silvie sail towards the setting sun. The turquoise water of the Aegean Sea sparkles in the sunlight and the olive trees on the waterfront are reflecting in the water. It is a special day for Oliver and his wife. 12 years ago they met in a small tavern in a dreamy bay in the island of Patmos and got married 2 years later. Their children are staying with their grandparents and now the two of them are on their second honeymoon, reminiscing about how they first met. It was a day like today, Oliver was out with his friends and they wanted to round off the evening in a relaxed atmosphere.

They were drawn to a tavern playing soft music, with candle lights and cosy tables on the terrace. By chance, he and Silvie literally bumped into each other. He apologised, full of remorse, for spilling red wine over her dress, but Silvie just laughed. He can still hear her ripple of laughter, even today, and remembers that very moment vividly.

Today, on their wedding day, Oliver wants to relive those memories, but if possible without ruining her dress. He sails towards Patmos and searches the horizon for the bay with the small tavern. But which bay could it be? Twelve years is a long time to still be able to remember.

Oliver has been thinking about it for hours and is getting more and more nervous. He can’t and won’t ask his wife, after all, it is supposed to be a wedding day surprise for her, a special and romantic surprise.

The sun is slowly getting closer and closer to the horizon and eventually touches the Aegean Sea and Oliver is still looking for the small tavern. Silvie had already given him several questioning looks and was wondering why his behaviour was so hectic and inexplicable. Who sails in zigzags towards an island when the wind conditions are perfect? So where is this bay with the tavern then?

His friend and colleague had recently told him about an app that would be able to solve his problem immediately and is coming onto the market in summer, wasn’t it called mySea? Why isn’t this app available right now?

But wait, he’s just had an idea, his friend! He was also on that sailing trip when he met Silvie. His friend is bound to remember…

Quickly Oliver fishes his mobile phone out of his bag and rings his friend. Fortunately, he is at home  and answers the phone straight away. But it gets even better, he still knows which bay it was where Oliver and Silvie met. His directions are not brilliant but the name of the bay helps Oliver all the same. So he whips out the nautical charts, checks and sets a new course.

The sun has almost sunk into the Aegean Sea and it is slowly getting dark when Oliver arrives at the bay. Silvie is standing at the bow, full of curiosity, and sees the candlelit tavern right right at the waterfront. Soft music resounds towards them and the crickets are chirping. His wife’s beaming face was the best wedding day present for Oliver.

But how much easier would it have been with the new app from mySea? How much aggravation could he have avoided on this special day? And how quickly would he have been able share his happiness with his friends right now?

Radovan Marčić

mySea will soon be joined by Radovan Marčić, the famous nautical expert and practicing gourmet and Marko Knežević, the sailing expert, both from Croatia. Radovan Marčić is a maritime author and journalist, who is well known for his cooking shows and knowledge of restaurants, especially along the Adriatic Coast, Radovan knows this coast and the islands like the back of his hand, he has sailed for decades and has already published many features about the sailing area including cruising guides and almanacs, about its people, culture and maritime heritage, as well as popular gastronomic guides and restaurant reviews.

Marko Knežević is a lifelong sailor and journalist, who has also gained many sea miles around the world, but it is in the Adriatic, his home waters, where his expertise is best known. Both are excited about mySea and will bring to the team their expertise and local knowledge, making mySea more authentic and informative as a guide, this information will make your experiences more pleasurable, more safe and a lot more fun. Besides keeping all the information up to date, they are going to create interesting topic lists like safe anchorages, top restaurants etc…

We speak on behalf of many users, when we say: we are looking forward to the cooperation and great insider information of two professionals. Radovan and Marko are happy to support mySea, because they see it as an excellent opportunity to expand and improve Croatian nautical tourism, particularly in the field of water sports, and to elevate it to a higher level. They see the potential in mySea to be the best digital, nautical area guide.

The mySea team enjoys getting compliments like this and we look forward to offering you and all our other users lots of great advice with insider’s tips from Radovan und Marko soon to make sure that your next sailing trip is even better.

Marko Knežević

The data bank had to be created and the first question arose immediately: what information do we want to offer to the users and what would users find especially interesting? If this were the only question we had asked, we would have completed this project much faster, but one question led to another. In the end, we had a data bank with more than 300 fields and it is still expanding today.

Then came the next challenge. Where can we get all of the information we would like to provide to our users? We collected information on the Internet and from books, but primarily on site. Employees travelled the coasts of Greece, Croatia and Turkey and spoke to charter companies, marina managers, professional skippers, yacht owners, restaurant owners and many more people. All of the information was structured and painstakingly entered into the data bank. In this way, we have already been able to collect more than 25,000 POIs (Points of Interest) and it is increasing daily.

We thought we had completed most of it. But then the front end, that is the user interface, had to be developed for the website and the app. And once again questions kept piling up. What should it look like? What information is really important for users and therefore has to be as visible as possible? How can we make it user-friendly? What would the user like to be able to do on the website or app? And above all, can we be more than just a data bank? The work was very time-consuming, but after several weeks of rough planning and fine-tuning we were finally able to send the drafts to our development department. We are definitely not only a data bank and the future web and app versions will undoubtedly prove this. But we couldn’t develop the first version and not add the community character.

So let yourself be surprised and accompany us on our journey to the mySea-world.

mySea will be going online shortly. Soon you will be able to find new and unheard-of information on interesting POIs in Greece, Croatia and Turkey. We have been researching for nearly 2 years and are about to launch the Beta version.

We are a young start-up company and are looking forward to building a great portal for water sports enthusiasts together with you.

We would love to get your feedback and suggestions.

Your mySea-team