In an email sent by minyanmaps.com in response to some of the comments made regarding GoDaven.com:
Minyanmaps.com started as an outgrowth of kehillah.com, a website started a number of years ago by a professor at The Lander College for Men that provides community services to jewish communities. The site never expanded beyond the queens/five towns area, but plans toeventually. One of these community services was providing minyanim times. Sometime in september of this past year, we came up with the idea of minyanmaps to provide this service in greater detail. We had, in fact, known about godaven, but godaven did not provide such a service at the time.Somewhere in the middle of our development process, godaven unleashed his version of minyanmaps. We discovered this, but decided not to back out for several reasons:
1) We were too far ahead in the development process.
2) We felt that we had more to offer than his site (I'll elaborate on this later).
3) We felt that perhaps we could merge with his site, combining his
minyan data with our interface, thus alleviating him of all the burden
in maintaining his site (he is a physician after all).
What our site offers that his doesn't:
1) We a have a well designed UI that assists in finding shuls very easily. Lets say you wish to find a shul in Kew Gardens Hills, using our site, you can very easily see minyanim in forest hills, hillcrest, Kew Gardens very easily, just by moving the map over. Move it over a little more, you can see shuls in Jamaica Estates and Holliswood. On his site, you will have to go to Kew Gardens Hills, then go to Forest Hills, etc. Or lets take a combined community like Highland Park/Edison. There arefour shuls in Highland Park and two in Edison, all in close proximity to each other. From our site you can find the all very easily. On his site, you would have to know to check both in Highland Park and Edison.
2) We display not only minyanim times, but the next 30 upcoming minyanim for the shuls that are shown on the map. This way you don't have to sort through all the shuls and minyanim to find a minyan. Plus the times are calculated so that a minyan which is listed 10 minutes before shkiah will tell you when that is so you don't have to figure it our every time.
3) Using SMS, people can get information for minyanim sent to there cell phones.
4) We will very soon have minyanim information for Canada and the UK.
5) Anybody who wants can submit changes or add information to the site
(it must be approved first, but we plan on adding shul administrators
for each shul).
6) We plan on having shul services from our site such as MP3 uploads of shiurim.
B'kitzur, we never planned on battling with him, we thought that we had enough to add that he doesn't that made our site a unique item on the internet, and all our kavonos here were purely l'shem zikui harabim. We were slightly upset that he didn't want to join forces with us.
I know you don't want to get involved, but godaven seems to be taking our site as an personal insult to him, and I would like my comments publicized.
And there you have it folks.....
Minyanmaps.com started as an outgrowth of kehillah.com, a website started a number of years ago by a professor at The Lander College for Men that provides community services to jewish communities. The site never expanded beyond the queens/five towns area, but plans toeventually. One of these community services was providing minyanim times. Sometime in september of this past year, we came up with the idea of minyanmaps to provide this service in greater detail. We had, in fact, known about godaven, but godaven did not provide such a service at the time.Somewhere in the middle of our development process, godaven unleashed his version of minyanmaps. We discovered this, but decided not to back out for several reasons:
1) We were too far ahead in the development process.
2) We felt that we had more to offer than his site (I'll elaborate on this later).
3) We felt that perhaps we could merge with his site, combining his
minyan data with our interface, thus alleviating him of all the burden
in maintaining his site (he is a physician after all).
What our site offers that his doesn't:
1) We a have a well designed UI that assists in finding shuls very easily. Lets say you wish to find a shul in Kew Gardens Hills, using our site, you can very easily see minyanim in forest hills, hillcrest, Kew Gardens very easily, just by moving the map over. Move it over a little more, you can see shuls in Jamaica Estates and Holliswood. On his site, you will have to go to Kew Gardens Hills, then go to Forest Hills, etc. Or lets take a combined community like Highland Park/Edison. There arefour shuls in Highland Park and two in Edison, all in close proximity to each other. From our site you can find the all very easily. On his site, you would have to know to check both in Highland Park and Edison.
2) We display not only minyanim times, but the next 30 upcoming minyanim for the shuls that are shown on the map. This way you don't have to sort through all the shuls and minyanim to find a minyan. Plus the times are calculated so that a minyan which is listed 10 minutes before shkiah will tell you when that is so you don't have to figure it our every time.
3) Using SMS, people can get information for minyanim sent to there cell phones.
4) We will very soon have minyanim information for Canada and the UK.
5) Anybody who wants can submit changes or add information to the site
(it must be approved first, but we plan on adding shul administrators
for each shul).
6) We plan on having shul services from our site such as MP3 uploads of shiurim.
B'kitzur, we never planned on battling with him, we thought that we had enough to add that he doesn't that made our site a unique item on the internet, and all our kavonos here were purely l'shem zikui harabim. We were slightly upset that he didn't want to join forces with us.
I know you don't want to get involved, but godaven seems to be taking our site as an personal insult to him, and I would like my comments publicized.
And there you have it folks.....
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