Why is Britain called ‘Great’. I kind of quite like it, but isn’t it a touch odd? Why don’t we do this for other countries? I mean ‘United’ States is ok if a bit functional. But how about going the whole hog such as Marvelous Mexico, Fantastic Canada or Affluent Switzerland? A more serious minded colleague tells me that technically the country is called ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ which as country names go has got to be about as long and pretentious as they get. Apparently the ‘Great’ bit was introduced to distinguish it from the, presumably less great, Brittany (which is now part of France). Alternatively ‘Great’ has its origins in 1707 when Britain became greater by incorporating Scotland. None of this has anything to do with Nuno except that we like to say ‘Great British Nuno’ and sort of imply that the ‘great’ bit is somehow connected with the Nuno bit.

Nuno 2.3 with UK charts is now launched. This really is UK and not just GB because these charts go all the way around Ireland. Check out the coverage here. Here’s how it works. When you download the Nuno installer it does not come with any charts at all. So when you run the installer it will ask you whether you want to use the US or the UK chart data sets.

 

• If you want to change your mind you will need to uninstall Nuno and then re-install it.

 

• If you have purchased a license then you should choose the chart set that corresponds to the license.

 

 

 

Installation finished. Fire up Nuno and you will see there are no charts installed. The World Vector Shoreline will be there but that’s about all.

 

Next job is to go to the support pane and hit the Update button in the ‘Chart data updating’ section. This will go an fetch a complete set of charts; either the UK or the US set depending on your choice while installing. This will work even if you are using Nuno in the trial mode.

Fetching the charts may take a while, there are quite a lot of them.

While you are at it you may as well hit Update for the ActiveCaptain data. This is really quite small and won’t take anywhere near as long.

 

Once the clunking and whirring has finished all your data will be up to date and you are ready to go.

Happy sailing. If you get a minute, please tell us what you think about Nuno.

If you have never heard of ActiveCaptain then go have a look here www.activecaptain.com. ActiveCaptain is a lot of useful information, really an awful lot of information and now you can get at it through Nuno™. Have a good look around the website and while you are there set up an account. It is very easy to do and it is free.

Next job, fire up the new version of Nuno™. If you don’t have the latest version of Nuno then go and get it. Your subscription entitles you to free updates so you should make use of it. There is a link on the Support Center pane to download the latest version or you can just go straight to the website. This is just one of many improvements and additions we have planned for the near future.

Hit the ‘Show’ button and select ‘ActiveCaptain’. Type in your ActiveCaptain login details and you are good to go.

Here is what the logon screen looks like. Easy stuff.

Once you logged on you will see a bunch of extra symbols on the chart that look just like the markers on the ActiveCaptain website. Click on one of these to bring up a whole bunch of useful information.

Keeping the ActiveCaptain information up to date is easy too. Go the the Support Center by hitting ‘Show’' and then selecting ‘Support Center’. Press the Update button. That’s it. Updates are pretty small and fast. They are also quite frequent – this information is being constantly improved and added to.

We are very happy with the tie in with ActiveCaptain – what do you think?

ActiveCaptain? - and just what is that you may ask. Well it is a chart overlay, a crowd sourced data resource, a website and a community. Any the wiser yet?

Let’s start with what it means in Nuno™ where you can see additional information on your chart. Here is what it looks like.

Those extra little symbols are points of interest (POI) from the ActiveCaptain database. POIs are associated with marinas, anchorages, local knowledge, features and hazards. Useful little snippets of extra information which could be just the sort of thing you need especially when visiting an area for the first time. If you inspect the POI you will find a description, notes and other useful things. Where does this information come from? That is what the crowd sourcing bit is about. As Jeff Siegel, creator of ActiveCaptain explains:

ActiveCaptain allows boaters to share the knowledge and experience that each Captain has gained. The key to ActiveCaptain's content is the ability of registered users to communicate corrections, update information, and create reviews. Fellow cruisers can provide information about fuel pricing, slip fees, a favorite anchorage, or some local knowledge. As a registered Captain you can read marina reviews written by other Captains, write your own review, add a new point of interest, or correct inaccurate information. You add to the content and benefit from the content provided by others.

So not only do you have access to a wealth of information but you can also contribute by way of updates, additions and corrections:

The sharing of your knowledge and information creates an online community of fellow boaters - people from around the country or even around the world who share your love of the water and provide information, opinions, and insight. Registration on the ActiveCaptain web site is free. We feel this is critical to building the community. We also feel that it is important to acknowledge the contributions of our Captains in making this community successful.

And there you have the community aspect as well.

The Active Captain website is here. The ‘Interactive Cruising Guidebook’ tab gives you another way of looking at the information using maps and images from Microsoft Virtual Earth. Clearly with many people contributing to this project the information is going to be constantly updated. To handle this we have introduced an update facility within Nuno™ which will grab all the latest data for you so that it is to hand on your boat even when no Internet connection is available.

In the first release of ActiveCaptain you will be able to view all the information however we are planning to allow editing in the near future so that if you find something that you think should be changed then you will be able to make the changes right in Nuno™ and the corrections will be dealt with automatically.