Nobody’s resting on any laurels, though. We (the programmer and I) have a lot to do, and I’ve been gathering your ideas as they’ve come in. I don’t want to hide this process, though, so I’d like to share the news (for those of you who haven’t heard), that we very much intend to add new features to StormReporter. In particular, we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to address your two top concerns soon. Those are:

1. A proper visual map interface
2. A dedicated mobile application

The details for both are in the works, but I will say that it’s likely we’ll start with an iPhone app to work out the major design issues. We’ll definitely be looking for iPhone and iPad toting volunteers to help test it when it’s ready: if you’d be interested, please let us know.

Something else you’d like to see added? Please post it to our StormReporter Demo Group (you’ll need to be logged into StormSmart for that to work. Don’t want to do that? You can also get ideas to us here.

The idea behind this is that we want folks to be able to both easily

1. Figure out which areas have been examined by members of the Storm Team including those where no damage was reported
2. View only reports with damage reported

We’re making this super simple: at the very top of each form, you’ll soon find a check for “no damage to report”:

If you check that box, that’ll make it easy for people to screen out this report as a “no damage” report with a new search feature:

We’re already running this on the DEMO site. Once we make sure it’s working seamlessly, we’ll be rolling it out to all of the state StormReporter systems.

We hope you find it useful.

If you have features you’d like to see added to StormReporter, please post them below or (better yet) over on our StormReporter group on StormSmart Connect.

For obvious reasons we couldn’t just let everybody play with existing state StormReporter installations, which are already gathering good data (can you imagine sorting out the good data from the bogus data?). We also couldn’t just create a site where people could play with a demo site without signing in at all. StormReporter is constructed around a framework of users with different permissions and functions.

So tonight I’m happy to announce that we’ve found what we think is a good middle-ground: the StormReporter DEMO site. The StormReporter DEMO site is just a testing ground. Data won’t be backed-up or processed or even really looked at. You can test it at will to see what the site does. Create reports. Delete them. Do whatever you wish (well, within reason, please).

How do you do this? There are two steps.

1. First, you’ll need a StormSmart account. If you don’t have one, click here and create one. It’s free and will take all of a minute.
2. Have your account? You need to join the StormReporter DEMO group on StormSmart Connect. You’ll see the join button if you’re signed in.

That’s it! Head over to the StormReporter DEMO site, log in with your username and password and you’ll be able to take StormReporter for a spin.

Questions/problems? Please contact us.

Enjoy!

So we’re burning the holiday candles at both ends to get more materials up here, so please come back to visit soon. Or follow us on Twitter for updates.

Please feel free to contact us in the meantime with any questions (via that “Contact Us” button on the left edge of the screen). And a big thanks to all of you for your interest. We’re super excited about what’s ahead for StormReporter.

UPDATE: We’ve got some slides from a webinar given by the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management and others: we’re working on integrating some screenshots into them and posting them here.

-Wesley