patchcamp.com blog

I was surprised and honored today to find The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp selected to appear in The SPA 100, a selection of sites highlighted by Snap Preview Anywhere as “some of the more interesting, notable and funky sites that are now using the Snap Preview Anywhereâ„¢ product.”

Snap Preview Anywhere is the cool technology service from snap.com that provides a thumbnail preview of the web sites linked from the Patchcamp home page, and I continue to admire the speed and reliability of their service, especially since it has not diminished even as they have grown in just 8 weeks to serving over 30,000 customers. Do yourself a favor and try out the snap search engine and especially their cool new image search! As you might imagine, the search results include graphic previews which makes finding what you are seeking much more efficient and entertaining!

If your web site is included on the Base Camp home page you are welcome to include a special badge that says “This site featured on The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp” on your site! There are several styles to choose from and quick, simple instructions to follow to add the badge on this page.

For those of you who would like to support The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp but don’t have a site featured on the front page, you are encouraged to add a Base Camp badge, too. You’ll find instructions and sample badges here.

Thanks for your support!

After trying WebSnapr for almost two weeks and never seeing improvement on thumbnail load times or successful image loading statistics I went on the hunt for an affordable replacement. It didn’t take long to find snap.com’s Snap Preview Anywhere service, and even less time to implement it. Using BBEdit’s “find and replace” function I stripped out the websnapr code from the home page, copied and pasted the code snap.com generated for my site, and saved the changes.

I was literally amazed at the results. I even delayed proclaiming victory until I got home to check it on another network and verify my findings with a friend who tested the changes for me from a faraway state.

In 5 minutes I managed to replace the thumbnail images that took multiple seconds to appear (if they did at all) from WebSnapr with thumbnails that literally popped up almost immediately from snap.com.

When I first read about the free website thumbnail service provided by WebSnapr I immediately thought it would make a very cool feature addition to The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp. Using google I scoured the web for reports from other web developers who had implemented it, and found very few negative remarks. A common concern was that WebSnapr was featured on Digg, and shortly afterwards suffered the “Digg effect” of servers overloaded by Digg readers eager to check out the service. But this situation was expected to be transitory and that WebSnapr would scale their hardware accordingly with their growth to handle increased traffic.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, December 1 the patchcamp.com domain was changed to point to the servers at Wirenine.com, ending the official beta testing period and making the revisions planned for Fall, 2006 live.

Thanks to all who took the time to participate and provide feedback!

It took a little less than 24 hours for the DNS changes to propagate so that the URL http://www.patchcamp.com began to point to the new servers. Now that patchcamp.com is a unique domain of it’s own on the Wirenine servers, the prior testing URL of patchcamp.ranchochase.com is no longer active. I still plan to track changes to the site through this blog and your comments are more than welcome.

The most helpful new feature of the revised Patch Collector’s Base Camp is probably the integrated search engine (powered by Google) that returns results only from web sites related to Scout memorabilia.

You are invited to help improve the scope and accuracy of the results by submitting sites you feel are appropriate to the search group.

It’s quick and easy to volunteer to contribute to this search engine. A Google ID is required to particpate, but if you don’t have one it only takes a moment to get one. Once you’ve signed up drag the Google Marker into your menubar links. Then whenever you come across a site you think belongs in those included in the search engine just click the marker to add it.

Thanks for taking the time to test-drive the December, 2006 update to The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp! You’ll find the updated site available for your review at http://patchcamp.ranchochase.com

There’s a couple of ways to provide feedback. First, please fill out the quick and easy survey.

Then, if you’d like to provide more specific details about the site I encourage you to try out a very cool new way to annotate a web site with your comments using fleck.com. It will enable you to add the electronic equivalent of sticky notes to the Base Camp and share them. Fleck only works with the Firefox browser so far, but does not require you to install any plugins or register for an account. If you are using Firefox, here’s a link to annotate the newly updated Base Camp with your comments. Please feel free to send me your annotated pages via email (spanky at mac dot com).

You’ll find links to the survey and to annotate the Patch Collector’s Base Camp at the bottom of the home page. Of course you are always welcome to send me a direct email as well.

I’m looking forward to reading your comments and opinions!

The Scout Patch Collector’s Base Camp was officially launched to the public on Election Day, November, 2000. Since then the site has served over 175,000 visitors from over 100 countries.

Web development has come a long way in half a decade, and it’s time for the Base Camp to undergo significant changes, both in appearance and in underlying code, to bring it up to date and take advantage of the many new technologies now available. Read the rest of this entry »

If you compare the existing version of The Patch Collector’s Base Camp with the updated version that’s scheduled to go live on December 1 there aren’t many easily noticeable differences. In fact, the changes may not even seem significant enough to warrant testing by a select group of users. But be assured that many hours of efforts have gone into updating and modernizing the Base Camp. Here’s a list of the changes and new features in case you’d like some clues to what’s new: Read the rest of this entry »

As December 1 creeps closer by the minute time for testing by a pilot group of users gets shorter, so even though the edges aren’t completely smooth invitations went out by email Friday evening seeking feedback for the Base Camp.

Beta testers were instrumental in the development of the original Base Camp back in November of 2000, and I am hopeful that eyes of others can spot what I’ve missed, and helpful suggestions can make the site better than I imagined.