SeedFinders NewsFlash

EVA Female Seeds offers 4 new strains (Veneno, TNT Kush, Pink Plant und Jamaican Dream). EVA's homepage has also been redesigned (i think).

Vanilla Kush, Acapulco Gold and Dr. Grinspoon was advertised by Barneys since the last Cannabis-Cup in Amsterdam where the Vanilla Kush also won the second price. Now this new varieties are available into the first shops - but feminized only.

Today we have added the spanish breeder Advanced Seeds and 10 feminized strains to our database.

Sweet Chunk, Sweet Tooth #4 and X-Dog are the three new strains at Alpine-Seeds. The SweetTooth4 is a limited edition and will be only available as feminized seed and for a short time, the other strains will be released as regular seed.

In recent weeks there have been some updates.

1: The plant profile function has been extended
The entries for taste, smell and effect have been enhanced, structured and simplified. We can now visualize this data with the aid of dynamic graphics, based on the input of our users. Our pie-charts can be found here in our strain-clouds, here you can look out for similar tasting, effecting or smelling varieties! In the next weeks there will be some more updates here!

2: Automatic flowering varieties
Recently, more and more autoflowering varieties come on the market. These are now also listed in a separate category and the search function has been also extended. Flowering times of this strains will be shown as "from germinating to harvest".

3: Many new varieties
A mass of new varieties were added, here you can find a list.

The new SeedFinder JSON API provides all the relevant information for every cannabis strain in our database, including short reviews, charts, medical information, parents, hybrids and much more... Use a bit of JavaScript / Ajax, PHP (or the language of your choice) to request the latest information directly from the SeedFinder and include it live into your own website! You can make your own applications, or widgets for your website with this new API (our example widget coming soon) or integrate the data directly. Its use is completely free - please just note the Creative Commons licenses and put links to us if you use the API. We will extend this option a little bit in the future, we also will make an interface for a simple search, but more information on that later... Here you will find information about the API, to be informed about changes or extensions just remember this blog - or subscribe to the RSS feed with the API tag for this blog.

Our new JSON API will deliver now all important data for own widgets and applications. With the help of the new output you have full access to our threadfinder, a possibility for webmasters of cannabis forums to realize an strain-connection for threads very simple. Also its possible to get all IDs now on the fly, with this new API you are able to create a strain-browser very simple! Click here for all info about the API, you will also find some small examples there.

The breeders in the SeedFinder now have their own dynamic Strain- and Hybrid-Map! With this new feature you can visualize all the varieties, their parents (and their descendants) of a breeder. You can center the different strains, you come from there directly to the variety descriptions and you can generate more maps (for example for a parent) to quickly find similar strains. Tip: You are able to zoom, stretch or rotate the maps which can be quite helpful! The keyboard shortcuts for that you'll see in the legend, top left of the map.

The whole thing is still in beta, it works better here and there, but it can quickly be a little confusing if too many varieties appear on the map. But hey, it's a start, and at some point I may will find the time to optimize this maps a little further ;) If anyone like to help us to build an even more stylish and more usable visualization, just do it, onto http://thejit.org/ you can find the JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit with which we have also crafted our own maps. There are also some other great opportunities for the presentation, but you will see - it's not quite as easy with a few hundred species in one single map ;)

Lots more has changed in recent weeks / months - even if you should have not noticed much of it, most have changed in the background. It was time to clean up a little bit, to bring some structure to the project and to prepare some stuff to make the future updates easier and faster for me ;) The ThanksGiving-Game for example ... From time to time the draw has been delayed a bit - simply because I have not found the time to do the raffle ... Well, I'm sorry, but this does not happen in the future, the draw is now automatic :) New (and visible) are the first "breadcrumbs" for the database - which facilitate the internal navigation - and by the way also google seems to like that ;) Over time this will spread through the entire SeedFinder, hope you will like this too :)

One more thing... Because we were always just on the cleanup we have also optimized our databases - be happy with the new, around 10 times faster query time ;) Yeah, its not a bad idea to have a look from time to time ;) Ok, that no matter for most requests onto our page, but if you view large genealogy trees or hybrid-maps it will be (hopefully) a little noticeable and some seconds faster than before! (And by the way I need only half of the ice for cooling the server.)

Well, I will not list everything here, the spring cleaning is still ongoing - and also some wicked new features will coming soon! Just one example: A giant wizard for strain selection - based only on the user reviews and quite configurable (with all the options from our strain review function)! But patience, patience - the majority is already done - but it will take a little while yet - then it'll be really, really cool ;=)

Allright, see you later,
klaas

Since tonight you'll see the new menu item "Strain-Browser" top left in the SeedFinder. When you click on it you should see a choice for all breeders and varieties if you do not have JavaScript turned off. This should save you some clicks and time, now you can go from anywhere quickly to all strain/beeder infos. Furthermore there is a new menu for the strain information and uploads. This menu will be shown directly under the strain-browser, on all pages with information about a specific variety and will also work without JavaScript ;) Using this new menu, you can quickly and easily identify and find all the uploaded information about a strain - and also the links to upload and add your own strain-info! This menu hopefully protects you against going loop ways and will help to find all the connected straininfo much easier than before :)

From now on we can show cannabis strain info and reviews arranged to climate zones according to the universal Köppen / Geiger climate classification. This system is based on the concept that native vegetation is the best expression of climate. Thus, climate zone boundaries have been selected with vegetation distribution in mind. It combines average annual and monthly temperatures and precipitation, and the seasonality of precipitation. We use our own database with the actual climate data from the past 23 years to calculate this zones, onto this way we can deliver an actual and fairly accurately image (onto a 0.5 ° lat/long grid). This allows us to collect and evaluate information like flowering times, yields and so one for the different regions - and in the ideal case, the future farmer may find suitable or unsuitable varieties better than ever before!

Click here to go to SeedFinders climate index page, all functions are working now, for example, you can already see all strains suitable for a particular climate zone in an ordered list by average rating. With the help of our climate zone picker you can also point your spot on a map to get the local climate (as well as suitable strains for this place). What's missing are a few custom maps, explanations and overviews for the individual climate zones, but the interested reader will find some more info here onto the pages of the University of Vienna (very detailed) or at Wikipedia (probably not as accurate, but a little easier).

PS: This feature replaces the old Outdoor Plant Finder and the previous classification of the ountdoor reviews to the latitude. Geo-coordinates are no longer displayed in the future, the flowering times will be now displayed also separately for northern and southern hemisphere.