New York Time Article 5/27/99 Page G12.
By VERNE G. KOPYTOFF
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/circuits/articles/27libe.html
One of the sub-articles is about the NY-NJ Trail Conference web site.
Thanks for the compliments and the coverage. The criticisms are known shortcomings that are being worked on. The web site is maintained by one part time volunteer with a few volunteers and staff providing some of the information.
There is a perceived conflict between providing free information on the web and selling books and maps. The Trail Conference depends on the sale of books and maps for a significant part of their funding which goes to protecting the trails we maintain and developing new trails. The high quality maps the Trail Conference sells would take many hours to download over a phone line. What looks fine on the screen will not look as good when printed. Would you pay for more extensive information by opening an account, depositing a small amount, and then being charged a per-page-viewed charge for very detailed information?
With over several thousand miles of trails within a two hour drive of New York City, it is a daunting task to cover all of them. The New York Walk Book and the New Jersey Walk Book try to cover most of them in over 700 pages of text. They are quite comprehensive on covering public transportation accessibility. Eventually much of this information may be made available on the web. But the web is a very different medium than print and it needs extensive reorganization to make it suitable for web use. The overview map gives an indication of how we will make much more information about individual trails available.. The links from the map are currently very incomplete with Fahnestock State Park being the most complete path. Besides this navigational approach, there needs to be a database search capability based on many criteria, e.g. length, difficulty, scenery rating, etc. I am not personally aware of any such ambitious database work on the web for trails databases. Virtual hikes are another possibility. For example look at: Claudius Smith Den Area (under construction with more images and a map to come).
Help is welcome.
Walt Daniels, wdaniels@bestweb.net