Status of state-ends.com?

Started by NJRoadfan, February 01, 2014, 10:45:04 PM

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NJRoadfan

I noticed the site is no longer working, but the domain is still registered to Adam Prince and the expiration date is February 3rd 2014. Is this site officially dead? If not, someone better renew that domain name!


froggie

This came up a month or two ago.  They have taken the site down.  To my knowledge, there is no intention of bringing it back.

hbelkins

https://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=11026.msg262514#msg262514

That isn't the thread where I remember seeing that some sites have gone to the Great 404 In The Sky because of Wikipedia, but I remember that discussion being held somewhere. I think it may have had to do with exit lists.

I hate to see good private sites disappear in favor of Wiki, and I say that even though my Kentucky exit list site never got finished (I'm still lacking I-71 and the Hal Rogers Parkway) and what is up is hopelessly out of date and I don't know when or if I'll ever fix it.
Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

vdeane

It's amazing how many of the old sites are out of date or gone completely.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.

empirestate

Quote from: vdeane on February 02, 2014, 10:16:42 PM
It's amazing how many of the old sites are out of date or gone completely.

Like mine? :-D

Seriously, I'm pretty sure I've got pages there that haven't been updated this century. But, at least some of the information there is still pretty close to original-source info, and I did recently complete the Nassau County road list, finally filling in what I'd always felt to be my biggest piece of missing information.

hbelkins

I've been flirting with the idea of giving my Kentucky exit lists and my West Virginia highway pages away, but haven't figured out quite how I want to do it. I'd either give up the info to someone else willing to host, or give someone access rights to my site and let them set up the pages however they wanted to.
Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

vdeane

Quote from: empirestate on February 02, 2014, 11:03:31 PM
Quote from: vdeane on February 02, 2014, 10:16:42 PM
It's amazing how many of the old sites are out of date or gone completely.

Like mine? :-D

Seriously, I'm pretty sure I've got pages there that haven't been updated this century. But, at least some of the information there is still pretty close to original-source info, and I did recently complete the Nassau County road list, finally filling in what I'd always felt to be my biggest piece of missing information.
Let's just say that there hasn't been a new "interchange of the week" added in the entire time I've followed roads.  I do still go there for reference and county route info (although I'll admit I was lazy and just used Google when I added that to the exit lists on NYS Roads).  Even my site will probably have a lot fewer updates once I get the exit lists finished.  After that it's just updates as needed, photos, and roadmeets.  Unless I decide to add something else like fictional highways (NOT Polar Express(way); something that's actually somewhat serious, such as I-98.).
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.

AsphaltPlanet

I recently let CanHighways.com expire, and to be honest, I don't think anybody has even noticed.
AsphaltPlanet.ca  Youtube -- Opinions expressed reflect the viewpoints of others.

getemngo

#8
Quote from: AsphaltPlanet on February 03, 2014, 05:19:34 PM
I recently let CanHighways.com expire, and to be honest, I don't think anybody has even noticed.

I noticed, because I made an offer to Dan Garnell to host and possibly take over his portion of State-Ends, and he said no, he was going to move all of it to CanHighways and revamp it... so I saw CanHighways down a few days ago and was confused.
~ Sam from Michigan

Alps

Quote from: getemngo on February 06, 2014, 09:43:27 AM
Quote from: AsphaltPlanet on February 03, 2014, 05:19:34 PM
I recently let CanHighways.com expire, and to be honest, I don't think anybody has even noticed.

I noticed, because I made an offer to Dan Garnell to host and possibly take over his portion of State-Ends, and he said no, he was going to move all of it to CanHighways and revamp it... so I saw CanHighways down a few days ago and was confused.
Oh, That's Our Garnell!

ctsignguy

The one dead site i always enjoyed visiting was Comrade Yamamoto's All Nite ......always some interesting shots of roads and signs, plus other things he was into....
http://s166.photobucket.com/albums/u102/ctsignguy/<br /><br />Maintaining an interest in Fine Highway Signs since 1958....

getemngo

Note that due to the complicated who-owns-which-parts-of-Gribblenation thing, the following State-Ends.com sites still exist:

Maine (J.P. Kirby)
Maryland (Brian Polidoro)

CT and NY homepages are still up too, but all links and images are broken. :no:

Here are websites I've found for other states:
Alabama (Froggie)
Alaska (Oscar Voss)
Delaware (Eric Stuve)
Hawaii (Oscar Voss)
Illinois/Indiana (Highway Explorer)
Iowa (Jeff Morrison)
Minnesota (Froggie)
Mississippi (Froggie)
Missouri
Nebraska (Jesse Whidden)
Oklahoma (Eric Stuve)
Virginia (Froggie and/or Mapmikey)

And of course, US Ends (usends).
~ Sam from Michigan

Alps

Quote from: getemngo on February 13, 2014, 05:05:30 PM
Note that due to the complicated who-owns-which-parts-of-Gribblenation thing, the following State-Ends.com sites still exist:

Maine (J.P. Kirby)
Maryland (Brian Polidoro)

CT and NY homepages are still up too, but all links and images are broken. :no:

Here are websites I've found for other states:
Alabama (Froggie)
Alaska (Oscar Voss)
Delaware (Eric Stuve)
Hawaii (Oscar Voss)
Illinois/Indiana (Highway Explorer)
Iowa (Jeff Morrison)
Minnesota (Froggie)
Mississippi (Froggie)
Missouri
Nebraska (Jesse Whidden)
Oklahoma (Eric Stuve)
Virginia (Froggie and/or Mapmikey)

And of course, US Ends (usends).
NJ state ends were with Chris Mason... currently down but possibly returning. I have the 5xx county ends.

sdmichael

My sites are still around and plan to be around a whole lot longer. I'm looking forward to having its 20th anniversary next year.

hbelkins

Both Jim Choate and Barry Camp have volunteered to host defunct sites. That discussion was either on Roadgeek or Great Lakes Roads; I think it was the latter.
Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

CanesFan27

Quote from: getemngo on February 13, 2014, 05:05:30 PM
Note that due to the complicated who-owns-which-parts-of-Gribblenation thing, the following State-Ends.com sites still exist:

Maine (J.P. Kirby)
Maryland (Brian Polidoro)

CT and NY homepages are still up too, but all links and images are broken. :no:

Here are websites I've found for other states:
Alabama (Froggie)
Alaska (Oscar Voss)
Delaware (Eric Stuve)
Hawaii (Oscar Voss)
Illinois/Indiana (Highway Explorer)
Iowa (Jeff Morrison)
Minnesota (Froggie)
Mississippi (Froggie)
Missouri
Nebraska (Jesse Whidden)
Oklahoma (Eric Stuve)
Virginia (Froggie and/or Mapmikey)

And of course, US Ends (usends).

I apologize in advance for the long post below:

Again, Sam, additional clarification - there is nothing complicated on what is owned.  If you look back at the history, we moved the ends site to the own domain because it was quickly filling up space at gribblenation.  The same was done for gn.net.  This was 10-15 years ago when space and bandwidth plans weren't as flexible as they were today.  THis is why the owners of this site had so many domains at one time as well.  The three sites were registered differently to split costs.  It worked great and still does - we just have all moved on to a lot of other different interests, careers, and families.

Maryland and Maine sites were not hosted on state-ends - we included them on our overall map because of Brian, Doug, CJ, Dan, Geoff and myself's interaction and friendships with Brian and JP. 

To the original poster, others answered this for me.  We all hadn't updated our sites in sometime and had no intentions to updated it the long and forseeable future.  If at all, ever again.  I sent a facebook message to all involved to see if there were any objections to cancelling the site and domain and there were none.  To quote more than one person of our group, "It was fun when we did it, but we've moved on." 

I will speak for myself on this - and this is very similar for all of the folks who hosted a state on our site - the interest in upkeep and adding to the site waned over the years.  Myself, my career has grown significantly in opportunity and responsibility.  I have become more involved in other interests and pursuits.  I've taken on pursuit of my MBA.  I met an amazing woman who became my wife and we have a wonderful, happy, curious, loving and adventurous one year old that teaches us something new about ourselves and life in general every day.  Throw in regular responsibilities and you get what I mean.

Years ago in mtr, I mentioned something about Matt Steffora and he appeared out of nowhere and said something to the effect of, "I just don't have time or interest to unfold old maps in search of finding out where highway 18 ended in 1942." Well, that pretty much says it all.

Conversely, why not start another state specific ends site from scratch.  The fun of state-ends.com was going out on trips to get the ends.  PA Ends had a number of people that went out and explored the state to contribute.  The Bee family, Jason Ilyes, Chris Curley, Dave Filpus among others went out and roadgeeked - not used google street view for photos - to take photos and all of them found other items in PA or NC that they hadn't known before and it grew into new things on gribblenation.   Hell, the Sports department at the Harrisburg Patriot-News had a contest on who could send the most ends in!  There was even a guy - on his own - that kept a website listing all of the missing ends for PA.   

We did have a lot of fun - and have numerous great stories as a result of it - but our time has passed and we've moved on. 


vdeane

The world's changed too.  Back then, if you wanted to share information/photos, you hosted everything yourself or not at all.  These days people can contribute to Wikipedia, look things up in street view, and upload photos to Facebook/Flickr/etc.  Part of the reason why NYS Roads is mainly exit lists and photos is because just about everything else already has something hosted elsewhere (usually Wikipedia, but not always) that's better than what I could reasonably do.  For example, I have no plans to add a route log; the NY Traffic Data Report, Gribblenation's NY Routes, Wikipedia, and CHM already do a good job there and anything I could do would be inferior in comparison.
Please note: All comments here represent my own personal opinion and do not reflect the official position of NYSDOT or its affiliates.

Mapmikey

The NC-ends will eventually reappear on vahighways.com in the ncannex section, which will include an update with a large number of my own photos taken in the last 3-4 years.  I do not have a timeframe in mind for this conversion but hope to do it in 2014.

Mapmikey

getemngo

I have purchased the state-ends.com domain!!

After expiring, it went up for auction, and I was one of four bidders. (If the other 3 were roadgeeks, I didn't recognize the names.) My initial bid was the highest and nobody challenged that the whole week. I mostly just wanted the domain to be in roadgeek hands instead of spammer hands.

Nothing is set in stone yet. But my initial plan is to begin rebuilding this summer, starting with Michigan, then adding Wisconsin and Ohio later.
~ Sam from Michigan

Duke87

Quote from: vdeane on February 03, 2014, 04:38:24 PM
Let's just say that there hasn't been a new "interchange of the week" added in the entire time I've followed roads.

Oh wow, now there's a blast from the past. I remember actually following those as they were updating, and boy did little 8th grade me think they were cool! Of course, back then, there was no Google Earth or anything like it. The images being posted on Empire State Roads were at the time pretty much the only satellite photographs I had ever seen which showed that level of detail on anything.

It's amazing how something which was damned impressive less than 15 years ago is now laughingly obsolete and blown out of the water by something a million times more powerful.

Thanks to Google, you can't explore the unknown quite the way you used to be able to.

If you always take the same road, you will never see anything new.

empirestate

Quote from: Duke87 on March 18, 2014, 11:48:56 PM
Quote from: vdeane on February 03, 2014, 04:38:24 PM
Let's just say that there hasn't been a new "interchange of the week" added in the entire time I've followed roads.

Oh wow, now there's a blast from the past. I remember actually following those as they were updating, and boy did little 8th grade me think they were cool! Of course, back then, there was no Google Earth or anything like it. The images being posted on Empire State Roads were at the time pretty much the only satellite photographs I had ever seen which showed that level of detail on anything.

It's amazing how something which was damned impressive less than 15 years ago is now laughingly obsolete and blown out of the water by something a million times more powerful.

Thanks to Google, you can't explore the unknown quite the way you used to be able to.

Yep, that's pretty much the way of it. I started compiling those images when the state first launched its orthoimagery program...which is still going, and which is a major source of Google's imagery. But at the time, Google Maps, let alone Earth, wasn't even a thing yet, whereas now you can explore aerial imagery to your heart's content. There's no reason for me to keep compiling and mosaicking aerial photos when anyone can freely browse them.

But I do still download the imagery as it's released by the state; right now the 2013 batch is partially released. We still don't get to see NYC, however, since the terrorists stole those images 13 years ago and still haven't given them back.

formulanone

Quote from: Duke87 on March 18, 2014, 11:48:56 PM
Thanks to Google, you can't explore the unknown quite the way you used to be able to.

(Yeah, forgive me...even I've heard all this before...)

There's always blissful ignorance...admittedly, I still prefer to discover what I can, and then learn more about it afterwards. Conversely, if  there's something I need to know in advance, I'm not bothered by doing some research. The internet can be the ultimate spoiler, but still a very  useful tool that puts it all together at one's convenience.

Still, it's probably help draw  interested people into the fold more than deter them. Even if websites, like anything else, decay or eventually lapse out of a lack if interest.

Dr Frankenstein

Quote from: AsphaltPlanet on February 03, 2014, 05:19:34 PM
I recently let CanHighways.com expire, and to be honest, I don't think anybody has even noticed.
I have!

At the moment, I'm uploading all my photos to Flickr, but I hope one day to make a custom site to navigate through them.

AsphaltPlanet

Quote from: Dr Frankenstein on March 20, 2014, 09:24:54 AM
I have!

At the moment, I'm uploading all my photos to Flickr, but I hope one day to make a custom site to navigate through them.

I am slowly updating some of the content that was formerly hosted at CanHighways.com onto AsphaltPlanet

Despite a lot of dead links, some of the NY content has already rematerialized here:
http://www.asphaltplanet.ca/NY/
AsphaltPlanet.ca  Youtube -- Opinions expressed reflect the viewpoints of others.

mcdonaat

What would be the best way to start a website? My current website is being hosted on Wordpress, and I'm not too sure of how to even create one anymore! I remember using Frontpage to create my last one... in 2002.



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