Looking to get involved

[Dean.Forant]

Hi all,

I was recently working on a pet project in C# that tracks my golf
score and provides analysis of my game. I found that I was running
into the conundrum of creating a database that was could not be
exchanged freely between apps. I though about coming up with some sort
of XML standard for course details but it looks like GolfML beat me to
the punch. Having said that I would like to get involved in this
project. I live in Rhode Island and I play several of the local
courses. I could try to gather any demographic information for the
local courses up here.

It would also be nice if we could write an online interface to allow
course owners to enter their own course information and allow it to
be saved in the Markup format.

I would be very excited to provide any assistance needed. Just let me
know what I could do.

Thanks,
Dean

[Pierre M]

Hi Dean,

Thanks for your interest in GolfML. You're right. It would be nice to
have an online app to collect golf information.

But there are already zillions of "golf web site" that allow their
"members" to enter golfing information such as golf courses, pars,
lengths, game scores, compute their handicap, and so on. If we build
one, it will just be one more golfing site with courses, score
keeping, and handicap calculation "with XML facility". These sites
exist.
I'd like them to go one step further: I'd like *them* to provide a
simple interface to download their data and one to upload our scores
in GolfML format.

So far, I've encountered little interest from websites and golfing
application to "open" their data. They all believe they have their
solutions, and other should adapt. If you want our data, become a
member of our website and use our proprietary format.

I recently had an exchange of mails with a developer working on an
android app. He is planning to user GolfML as its data structure.

I think that a community website like "Out-Of-Bound
Golf" (www.oobgolf.com) which has an API, and offer course download
for mobile apps is a good place to start. I had contact with them
earlier this year and it is in their plan to have a look at GolfML.
They did not say they would use it. Just have a look. But it would be
ideal if their kicked GolfML in.

We need a few community site like them to get GolfML started. I have a
list of 20+ websites that offer similar services and each of them is
"proprietary". At best do they allow other members to benefit from
data entered by other members. That's it. Most of them don't even
bother having a look at it.

The goal of GolfML is just to provide a mean to exchange data, not to
develop yet another app.

If you want to get involved, I think that the best way is to educate
websites on the benefit of using GolfML for their data input and
sharing. And if you ever make a website that distribute golfing
information, make it available in GolfML format. Even your local golf
club could make its data available in a simple XML document (like
http://www.augusta.com/master-day1.xml for example).

May be we could think about an online app to help "generate" such
file. But it would quickly turn into "yet another website to store
golfing data".

Thinking about it, I am going to make a blank template GolfML document
from which everybody can start writing golf course definition with
Notepad or TextEdit.

Please send your suggestions.

/golfml

[Dean.Forant]

Having a template that we could use would be good. when you get it
done I would be more then happy to provide course information for some
of the local courses near me.

If I ever get back on track with my golf score application I will
incorporate the GolfML format.