This week both Garmin and Lowrance made major fishfinding announcements, but the overall Sonar Wars context most definitely includes the sharp Humminbird Mega high-frequency side imaging seen above. There's also some good news for cruisers in the Navico MFD software update, plus an opportunity to preview a new press release feature coming to Panbo...
Hurricane Sandy may make this year's Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (FLIBS) especially exciting! And whereas I've got better hardware for tweeting photos and words, I'm going to try that reporting method again. It may take a while to relearn the software tools but one my first visits will be the Raymarine booth where they are debuting a major Lighthouse 5 update to the e- and c-Series MFDs plus I'll get to touch the a-Series for the first time.
Eventually Panbo's new Classifieds section will look more like the other sections, but it's already been tested a fair bit and we're declaring today the official opening of the public beta (Google style). Please check it out! It may be a little rough around the edges -- don't hesitate with constructive criticism -- but I'm hopeful that it will grow into something useful to everyone involved with marine electronics. Individuals and businesses can easily place ads there and right now they're all FREE...
Where did all the display ads go? Well, it's a long story, really, but the important thing is that I'm now about 99.9% certain that it is safe to browse Panbo without danger of downloading some devious software. And here's a huge apology to anyone who has suffered a PC infection due to a virus on the third party ad server, though hopefully it's only the two PCs at one electronics company I already know about. But please do report any anomalies you see or that a virus scanner sees. Just email ben (at) panbo.com. I'll add more of the story if and when my blood pressure settles down.
I'm headed to Boston and then a flight to Paris where my wife and I hope to enjoy the sights and also see our son Curran, crack drummer for Today is the Day, help marry "metal, noise and psychedelic rock" at le Nouveau Casino our last night there. Panbo entries may be scarcer than they've ever been during my six years here (birthday last week). But there will be an interesting new product announcement next Monday, and I have a few other entries more or less in the can, including some written by the market research team who surveyed us a year ago, before market conditions caused a hiatus in their plans. Frankly, my growth plan for Panbo has been slow going too, but I did recently compose some guidelines that might help make the comments even more valuable than they've been. And I'd appreciate your feedback on my draft, which follows. If all goes well, I'll be reading your comments about commenting on my iPad while sitting in a Montparnasse sidewalk cafe...
I'm really not looking for more work in my life, but I failed to resist an invitation from Seven Seas U to at least dip a toe into their online education program. I'm impressed with what SSU has created, as well as a few recorded sessions on weather and SSB I reviewed, and I'm also intrigued with "webinar" technology (even if the name grates). While it's true that a few I've attended "live" have been marred by connection, sound, and/or screen problems, it does seem like an efficient way to teach a subject and have some back-and-forth with the class, and SSU seems to have the tech part down. So tomorrow night at 8pm EDT I debut a webinar on modern marine radars, and you're invited...
Starting tonight, Panbo is getting moved from one hosting service's server farm to another's, which means that commenting will be shut down for an indefinite period so that the databases stay in sync until the transfer is complete, and also that I'm wicked nervous about losing bits and pieces of content (as has happened during past moves). Cross your fingers, and be patient, please. And if things go well, you're going to see some good changes around here...
Please don't jump to conclusions about this first real slice of the finished Panbo/MTA survey until you better understand what it represents. The questions quoted at the top of the table above were "open ended". The 950 people who spent time taking the survey (thank you all!) got no check box type guidance toward their answers. In fact, no brand names were specifically mentioned anywhere in the survey. So the 1,558 positive responses, along with the 773 negative ones, are purely the brand names that came into those many minds when asked in privacy which marine technology products had either pleased or displeased them. The individual response totals then are a mix of at least three factors: market share (how many of the survey takers own, or have owned, some of a brand's products); brand awareness (most may remember whose MFD they use, but not necessarily whose inverter); and brand perception (the emotion that brings a brand name to mind). And there are more complexities beyond...
Five years ago today my first Panbo entry entered cyberspace, and some 1,300 entries later I could hardly be more pleased about how the site has evolved. It arguably has become "The" marine electronics blog that founder Yme Bosma envisioned, and that's largely because such a boat load of readers visit on a regular basis. According to StatCounter, Panbo topped 90,000 unique visitors in March, and according to Google Analytics about 27,000 of those visited more than 25 times during that month. Wow, and thank you, thank you, thank you all! And now, thanks to the MTA Survey, here's a bit about who you are...
Dan Corcoran: In the fall there were a lot of magazine articles on tools everyone should have on their boat including favorite tools, tools distance cruisers should have, unusual tools, multi purpose tools, and so forth. In this article I bring some focus to tools of the battery operated kind I use on my boat.
