With WorldofO GEO you can find out if there are any orienteering maps close to where you are, just by clicking on a map. This is what I have wanted since I started using the Internet more than 10 years ago – and now I am finally seeing it getting closer to fulfillment. I am traveling a lot – as most orienteers, and I always try to find out if there are any orienteering maps in the area I am traveling to. Or any trainings, competitions, clubs or people I can contact to help me do some orienteering.

7000 maps inside today
WorldofO GEO will help you with all of this when it is out of beta (based on the information you put in of course). The present beta-version is limited to orienteering maps only, and it is not opened up for addition of user information yet. Thus, you have only the 7000 orienteering maps which are currently inside to play with – which at the moment are the maps from the orienteering map registers of Austria, Czech Republic, Great Britain, Norway, Switzerland and Slovenia. However, more maps are to come, and the functionality for addition of your own maps for countries which do not have a separate orienteering map register will also be added soon. Furthermore, I will add functionality to add other information to the maps, like terrain description, terrain images etc.

The functionality for clubs, competitions and persons is not included in this public beta-version, but most of the work is already done.

Send an email to betatest@worldofo.com
To limit the number of users in this beta-testing period, registration through sending an empty email to betatest@worldofo.com is required to be a beta-tester. After a few minutes you will receive back an email with the web-address for WorldofO GEO, a username and a password to access the site. Your email-address will not be used for any purposes later on. Note that WorldofO GEO may be unstable in this beta-testing period.

All suggestions for improvements, problems with the user interface and general comments are very welcome. Please help me making WorldofO GEO even better!

Video demonstration
Press play below to see a video demonstration of WorldofO GEO.

Screenshots showing WorldofO GEO in action

In the right column of World of O it is now possible to perform a search through more than 800 different orienteering pages – including all sites included in ‘World of O’, national o-federation pages, club pages in several countries, etc. If you notice that your club page is not included, send me a message, and I can include it. Or even better: Send me a link to a list of all club pages in your country.

Update 24/10: Now more than 1000 orienteering pages included after including finnish, norwegian and swiss o-club pages.

Update 26/10: Now more than 1600 orienteering pages included after including swedish o-club pages and several other pages as well.

It is possible for anyone to include this ‘Orienteering page search’ on their page by including the following few lines of code on their page:

<!-- Google CSE Search Box Begins --><br /> <form id="searchbox_010292661561620684538:ce8kzhtdjjw" action="http://worldofo.com/news/showresults.html"> <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="010292661561620684538:ce8kzhtdjjw" /> <input name="q" type="text" size="24" /> <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" /> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:9" /></form> <p><script type="text/javascript" src="http://google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=searchbox_010292661561620684538%3Ace8kzhtdjjw"></script><!-- Google CSE Search Box Ends -->

which gives the following search form:

A new feature is now introduced at World of O: It is now possible to tell your opinion about a story by giving the story a rating between 1 and 5. Rating a story is extremely fast and easy – it will not take you more than a second or so. Please give feedback if you have problems with this new feature. If too many people have problems, I will remove it and try to find another way to do this. Please tell me if you like it, or if you would rather like to have it removed.

The reason for introducing this feature is that many people have told me that there are so many news stories going “through” World of O every day, that they miss the good and important stories if they don’t come back two times a day. The “most read” feature which was introduced early this summer helps a bit, but rating stories will make it possible to go a step further – and the chances you will miss the really good stories will hopefully become smaller…

Update 24/10/06: Very few people voted, so this feature is temporarily removed. It may be introduced later on again, but then in a somewhat different form.

I don’t know how many countries are so lucky that they have a yearly book with nearly 200 colorful pages about orienteering? In Norway we have “O-Boka”, the 2006 edition being available from the coming saturday at Blodslitet. I have been so lucky to be able to look through a part of the brand new book, and I must say it looks like this book will give me many hours of interesting reading!

I guess most norwegian orienteers know what this book is about, as this is the 4th year O-boka is published,  so this small preview is mostly for the international readers of World of O. The book is about norwegian (and to some degree international) orienteering in 2006 – including not only the elite orienteers you read about everywhere, but all categories of orienteers – like veterans, youths, ski-orienteers and so on – this year also including a section for each region of Norway. Focus in the book is on maps, pictures and more in-depth stories than the ones you read on the Internet. I have been told that there are 50 orienteering maps in the 2006 edition – and it looks like most of them are with route choices – and as part of a story. Most maps are from Norway – but there are also some maps from other countries. I have cut out parts of some of the pages below, so you can get an impression about what kind of material the book contains. Maybe this is something to try in your country? Or have you got a similar book in your country already, summing up the orienteering year? Post a comment below – or send me an email, and I might write a note about that as well.

Links:

• O-Boka homepage

Just for the record: I have no commercial interest whatsover in this book project;)  I have, however, written one of the articles in the book – about orienteering in the Hordaland region of Norway.

There have been a lot of comments to Sandy Hott Johansen’s long and interesting article regarding the WC 2007 at her homepage from many elite orienteers. It is worth to take another look at Sandy’s homepage and read the comments – and add your thoughts about the matter.

Link:

• “Why not?!!?” – Sandy Hott Johansen homepage

Ready for a bonus round of the Routechoice Quiz? Due to extremely good response (nearly 200 answers) – quite a few of them in english – Jo Inge Fjellstad has made an extra bonus round of the Routechoice Quiz, and also made an english translation. Expect answers to the first round in a couple of days, and the bonus round at the end of this month. Enjoy!

This time there is a tricky leg from Switzerland, and a leg from Trysil, Norway.

Links:

• Routechoice quizzes at ÅS-UMB page [ENG]
• Routechoice quizzes at Ås-UMB page [NOR]

The folks at Ås-UMB make some very nice routechoice quizzes – and now the october version of the routechoice quizzes are out. You can also see which routechoices where chosen in the previous quizzes.

The quiz is in Norwegian, but even without knowledge of the language, I think it is interesting to take part in the quiz to get some technical training.

Links:

• Routechoice quizzes at Ås-UMB page. Choose “Oktobernøttene for 2006 er klare” for this months quiz. The links below are results from earlier quizzes.
• A corresponding news note was published at OPN.no this morning (and thus also to be read at World of O), but I thought this could be something really interesting for the non-norwegian speaking of you as well, and therefore I made a separate news story here at World of O.

Finally one of the top austrian runners will be present here at World of O. Martin Pongratz is ranked 194 at the World Ranking, and has quite a few interesting (and long) stories at his web page – so it will definetely be worth a visit. He has, for example, put up splitbrowser graphs for the sprint finals and the qualification runs in the World Cup final in France last week (I only put up graphs for the middle and long finals and the relay). By following his stories, you will also see what is up in austrian orienteering – next up is the austrian night champs the coming weekend.

Link:

• Martin Pongratz homepage

Just for completeness there is now available splits for the relay graphically using splitsbrowser as well. Maybe not as interesting as the individual competitions, but it gives some insight into the BIG mistakes some runners made today.
Les mer »

Maps from the middle distance and relay in France are now available. Looking at these maps, it is no wonder the world elite had problems. At the right you see the control which stole the victory away from Minna Kauppi. Below you see part of Marianne Andersens route choice in her first World Cup victory.

This concludes the coverage of the WC final in France here at World of O. It has been fantastic to follow the world elite in this very difficult french terrain. I hope to be able to run there myself also some time (does anybody know if there are competitions there next summer?). It has also been a very good week for World of O – with more than 12.000 clicks on links from the main page.

Links:

• Maps at the organizers page

Part of the map from the middle distance with route choice of Marianne Andersen.