My pool instructor uses the above site to graphically represent a shot on a pool table. My hat’s off to the author – I think it’s an awesome idea. So awesome in fact that I’m writing a wrapper tool for it so that people can login, configure a table, save it and name it, identify the color, write up a long HTML-based description, and then share it with others. It will be a place where anyone can go to see other’s setups, manage their own, and have a link to a specific table config that they can call their own.

And here’s my rough draft at the page I’m writing:

My first perl-based site is working, but it’s just a proof of concept and doesn’t reflect the above link at all. I just needed to figure out how to pass macromedia shockwave object the right info to draw the table and store info in a file. The one I’m working on now is php-based, stores all of it’s info in a MySQL database, allows for user self-registration and logins, and will have all the cool features I imagine. If you have comments on what you think it should have, let me know, but here’s my short list for now.

• Ability to display a specific table via a link (for email, blogs, forums, etc). The idea is that anyone can right-click on a table link, copy shortcut and email or otherwise reference a specific table set for use forever.
• User self-registration and login, and remembers you for a specified period of time via cookies.
• Everything’s stored in mySql (coolness factor)
• Users can add their own tables and mark them private or public
• Each table configuration saved can have the table info, a title, the author, a category, multiple attributes, and a full HTML description by author to go with the table layout
• Attributes will be checkboxes on the config that allow specification of multiple charactistics or features that the configuration has… ie, a single table config might involve draw, or be useful for 8-ball, or be a good drill, and involve throw or squirt or masse, etc. This allows the author to associate the config to multiple attributes without sticking to a specific category.
• Ability for registered users to make comments on the table and rate the table.
• Side items showing top rated tables, most recent, most active users, and “My tables”
• Selection page showing a list of tables to filter from — ie, clicking on an author’s name gives a selection list of all the tables that author has created… clicking on a category shows you all the tables from that category, etc.
• The table list will be available as an RSS feed so that people can subscribe and be notified of new tables added.

Let me know if you have any other better ideas to add to this — I’m having a blast learning php, mySQL, and general web application development and what better way than to use something I’m passionate about.