Active Captain Sharing Discontinued?

This was just posted over on the Cruisers Forum. Apparently vendors have been notified that Active Captain data will no loner be available to third parties after May 23rd.

What a shame. AC was a good thing while it lasted. I'll be looking for another source of crowd-sourced reviews of anchorages and marinas. One that was also mentioned over on the other forum was Zulu Waterways. Primarily down under right now, but they're looking to expand into this hemisphere.

Any other ideas?

AC left the building awhile ago. The next "gotta have it" will repeat the cycle. Annual guide books, word of mouth, web sites and telephones remain my favorite update sources for location advice. Too simple and last century for some.

First of all, a lot of BS gets posted on the Internet so if this potentially affects you, I would wait and see what actually happens and how it affects you.

If you want crowd-sourced reviews of anchorages and marinas, why not just read them on Active Captain? They are not discontinuing these, are they?

Personally, I find Internet reviews of anything pretty useless. Look at restaurant reviews and half say it's the best restaurant they ever ate at and the other half say it's the worst. Active Captain reviews aren't much better.

I use Active Captain (on my PC) extensively for locating marinas and anchorages and for finding rates and contact information for marinas. You can too. It's free.

This is sad. Jeff Siegel, you should be ashamed for selling out to a company who finally restricted sharing of the crowd sourced data you worked hard to develop. This is the end of Active Captain's very good data base of crowd sourced data. Only Garmin users will share after this goes into effect.

Jeff, if you still follow AC posts, maybe you can comment.

I do appreciate the PPs views of anchorage and marina reviews. Usually only the poster with a beef posts, never the satisfied customer. I did gain a lot from anchorage reviews though: where dinghy docks are located, nearby grocery stores, etc.

David

I use the Waterway Guide quite a lot, rarely AC. Especially for marinas charges and fuel prices. Don't know if Waterway get their feeds from AC, but don't think so.

https://www.waterwayguide.com/explo...&longitude=-80.3938293457&zoom=10&mode=marina

djmarchand said:

This is sad. Jeff Siegel, you should be ashamed for selling out to a company who finally restricted sharing of the crowd sourced data you worked hard to develop. This is the end of Active Captain's very good data base of crowd sourced data. Only Garmin users will share after this goes into effect.

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Jeff built a platform and developed a market for it. He then sold it to fund his boating life. Nothing at all the be ashamed of.

djmarchand said:

This is sad. Jeff Siegel, you should be ashamed for selling out to a company who finally restricted sharing of the crowd sourced data you worked hard to develop.

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Jeff has many things he should be ashamed of and this isn't one of them. He built a business and sold it. He doesn't control what the buyer does with it. His purpose was to make money and he did.

aboatman said:

First of all, a lot of BS gets posted on the Internet so if this potentially affects you, I would wait and see what actually happens and how it affects you.

If you want crowd-sourced reviews of anchorages and marinas, why not just read them on Active Captain? They are not discontinuing these, are they?

Personally, I find Internet reviews of anything pretty useless. Look at restaurant reviews and half say it's the best restaurant they ever ate at and the other half say it's the worst. Active Captain reviews aren't much better.

I use Active Captain (on my PC) extensively for locating marinas and anchorages and for finding rates and contact information for marinas. You can too. It's free.

Click to expand...

100% agree with you on AC We have always used AC as a stand alone for the same things you mention. The fact it's not now going to integrate with other software doesn't impact us at all. We also don't integrate it with Garmin.

As to reviews, they are what they are. We find a great deal of help in the details, more than in the total score. We also find restaurant reviews most helpful.

Crowdsourcing and an open api ecosystem of vendors are very different things. I'd imagine Garmin may want to keep the crowdsourcing but close off data to competitors who use AC.

If true, it's disappointing either way. Some of the most successful tech companies in the world embrace the concept of both an open sharing community combined with an eco system of vendor solutions built around a core product (Salesforce, AppStore, Facebook, AWS, Azure, etc.)

The closed nature of the marine electronics industry continues to baffle me

Note also that this is way out of control speculation as one might expect from the other site. All that we know is that they have discontinued providing data to Polar Navy. Not everyone even to our knowledge. Just to them. Now, there are reasons behind that too as I understand in other ongoing litigation. So one chart provider that very few people use gets cut off. Who cares?

Sad. I used AC a lot with my Coastal Explorer. I have even done write-ups myself. I was able to get up-to-date information on a lot of anchorages and marinas! When I was in range of cell towers it would download AC information, so when I was out of range, I had some good information.

Hey Guys,

It's still a fairly free country, and if you don't like what AC is doing, work together to create the next big thing and replace AC. Whenever a company gets bought, the new owners are often cutting off support to third parties who they see as competition. It is their product now and they have the right to drive it in the ground like a yard dart.

All it would take is a database server and a half dozen decent developers to do it all over again, but better. Grumbling about the new owner is not helping except to vent your opinions.

Deleted

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

Sad. I used AC a lot with my Coastal Explorer. I have even done write-ups myself. I was able to get up-to-date information on a lot of anchorages and marinas! When I was in range of cell towers it would download AC information, so when I was out of range, I had some good information.

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And have you lost any access today? Are you a customer of Polar Navy? They're the only ones, to my knowledge, to publish they've been terminated. I don't know if any others have or not.

sunchaser said:

AC left the building awhile ago. The next "gotta have it" will repeat the cycle. Annual guide books, word of mouth, web sites and telephones remain my favorite update sources for location advice. Too simple and last century for some.

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Yup. I have it on CE, but I rarely consult it. I do like the CHS Sailing Directions that I think came as an add on with the original CHS charts installed by the PO. I don’t think the CE version of those charts have that functionality.

BandB said:

And have you lost any access today? Are you a customer of Polar Navy? They're the only ones, to my knowledge, to publish they've been terminated. I don't know if any others have or not.

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Hope so BandB

Well, I looked up the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that was cited and it appears it applies only to the European Union. So Garmin is dumping Active Captain due to an EU law to protect personal data privacy? This is ludicrous.

Donsan said:

Well, I looked up the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that was cited and it appears it applies only to the European Union. So Garmin is dumping Active Captain due to an EU law to product personal data privacy? This is ludicrous.

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Who says Garmin is dumping anything. All we have is one report from one customer they've terminated. One very minor, very insignificant customer.

BandB said:

We also find restaurant reviews most helpful.

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Not many restaurants around where I cruise and you can get restaurant reviews from other sources. I'm sure the eastern seaboard is a different situation. There is also little in the way of cell service or internet, and my shipboard computer is isolated from the internet so I only update AC when it is connected to the internet. I'll contact CE and find out how they are impacted but as I said, I rarely use it. Many of the reviews in AC of anchorages in BC are word for word right out of the Douglass books. That's not hearsay. I verified it myself and suggest others check.

Jim

Airstream345 said:

....... The closed nature of the marine electronics industry continues to baffle me

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I suspect if you owned one of those companies and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop equipment and software you would probably be reluctant to share it with your competitors.

So just read this on Active Captain fb page:

Todd Driscoll's comment is very important. Benjamin Stein and I just got off a conference call with Garmin on this subject and they emphatically confirmed that what he wrote is where they're headed. We'll have the whole story on Panbo soon but the news is good, as in:

"Garmin has no plans to end the ActiveCaptain Community and is actually working to update the community... We hope that current and new application developers will work with us and include the ActiveCaptain Community in their products. As always this product will continue to be free for users and developers."

JDCAVE said:

Not many restaurants around where I cruise and you can get restaurant reviews from other sources. I'm sure the eastern seaboard is a different situation. There is also little in the way of cell service or internet, and my shipboard computer is isolated from the internet so I only update AC when it is connected to the internet. I'll contact CE and find out how they are impacted but as I said, I rarely use it. Many of the reviews in AC of anchorages in BC are word for word right out of the Douglass books. That's not hearsay. I verified it myself and suggest others check.

Jim

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We don't use AC for restaurants. We do use their marina reviews and information. We know the AC/Douglass thing and find it disgusting.

aboatman said:

I suspect if you owned one of those companies and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop equipment and software you would probably be reluctant to share it with your competitors.

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If you read the first part of my post I suggested exactly this scenario.

Opening up data to a vendor ecosystem that adds capabilities (think apps on phones) or adopting open standards that allow more flexibility between systems can and does actually expand a major players total addressable market. It also provides a ‘free’ innovation/incubation M&A strategy as smaller players win and lose in the marketplace.

Making sure Garmin Radar data can only be read by Garmin MFDs limits Garmin’s TAM and SAM to only vessels considering a either a major electronics refit or a point replacement.

I should point out I’m not bashing Garmin here. In fact I recently installed Garmin based on its features, ease of use, reputation, price and yes its acquisition of Navionics and AC but only because our previous electronics where all single point solutions and old enough to fail which required a ‘forklift upgrade’.

Now that I’m ‘on’ their platform it would be nice to add, delete, change what I need or integrate what I have with ease.

Or maybe I’ve just spent too much time in tech and open source communities and I’m dreaming.

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

So just read this on Active Captain fb page:

Todd Driscoll's comment is very important. Benjamin Stein and I just got off a conference call with Garmin on this subject and they emphatically confirmed that what he wrote is where they're headed. We'll have the whole story on Panbo soon but the news is good, as in:

"Garmin has no plans to end the ActiveCaptain Community and is actually working to update the community... We hope that current and new application developers will work with us and include the ActiveCaptain Community in their products. As always this product will continue to be free for users and developers."

Click to expand...

I have no idea what that means.

Cruisers net has charts and information such as Notices to Mariners. Its worth taking a look at and exploring the functions it offers. Its free.

The above was posted on Active Cap't Facebook page. It would appear based on this posting AC is here to stay........

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

The above was posted on Active Cap't Facebook page. It would appear based on this posting AC is here to stay........

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They said the "ActiveCaptain Community" will continue to be developed, but what exactly is the "ActiveCaptain Community"? It's whatever they define it to be, hence my comment that I don't really know what it means. And they say it will be free to app developers. Are chart plotters "apps"?

What would be illuminating (maybe) is to understand exactly why they shut down whoever they shut down.

Panbo just posted some info on the AC situation.

https://www.panbo.com/archives/2018...elivery_changing_but_free_access_assured.html

Well, OK! If Garmin’s “backend connectivity manager” (how’d you like that job title on your resume? ) says Active Captain will still be available on my Furuno MFD, I’m happy.

angus99 said:

Well, OK! If Garmin’s “backend connectivity manager” (how’d you like that job title on your resume? ) says Active Captain will still be available on my Furuno MFD, I’m happy.

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Well, someone has to cover Garmin's arse.