Surf Line 30

A Plea to Surfline, Think Like a Surfer
Before the internet I used to wake up every morning to the sound of an automated voice reading off Pacific Ocean buoy data on my weather radio. Today it's a morning trip, literally, at 5:00am to the computer for a Surfline surf check. BS (before Surfline) you used to have to know what it meant when the West Santa Barbara Channel buoy was reading 10@17, wind 10 knots out of the East, it meant you would be skipping class and going to Jalama for a surf, that's what it meant.

Target: Surfline.com
In the Internet Age for a small fee Surfline will process all that information for you and serve it up daily with video. The only problem is they make you swim through an ocean of content, ads and flash navigation to get there. Surfline is great but I wish it was as easy to use as my weather radio.

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"Getting Real"

A while back I read a great book by the crew over at 37Signals titled “Getting Real,” it turns traditional application development on its head by championing “less is more.” In the book they talk about fewer features and more thoughtful user interaction, people are digging it. In fact their DIGGing it so much that the 37Signals produced bare bones project management application Basecamp has been listed by Business2.0 as one of the Web2.0 applications that is changing the Internet. Surfline never changed the internet but they did change surfing by offering accurate surf forecasting to the masses. Somewhere on the trip they got confused about what surfers want, let’s see if we can help them “Get Real” so they can change surfing again by putting down the feature list and putting the user first.
Give Me My Surf Report!

I learned in the third grade that most of the world’s surface is covered by water however I am betting that the majority of Surfline’s customer base lives between Point Conception and Tijuana. When I signed up I gave them my zip code so I am pretty sure they have a good idea where I surf. Yet they still force me to flash navigate through three levels of really small options to find what I am looking for. At 5am I don’t care what the waves are like in Bali or if Sam Hammer scored in New Jersey I just want my surf report.