After several months of development, the GLRF Categories application is now online. This new feature offers the worldwide GLRF membership the ability to connect with others in the rowing community who share a common focus. The application features rowing-related news articles and videos from around the world, something we think all GLRF members will find useful. To help support each community category, there are forums, social groups, llinks, and galleries to support an active interaction among GLRF members.

Each category offers a poll feature that are planned for a 7-day window in which GLRF members can cast their votes. Past polls will be available for review. Every GLRF member can submit ideas for polls that can be added to queue.

The application launches with 9 categories that address the largest segments of the rowing community. Coaches can connect with others. Likewise for Juniors and University level rowers. We included a category called Race Officials that includes both race officials and regatta organizers. Additional categories can be added if there is a demand, such as for coastal rowing.

The application mirrors the other aspects of the GLRF website. The Categories-Home page showcases the latest from all of the categories. We highlight featured articles and videos that we think the entire GLRF membership might find interesting. In addition, to facilitiate a quick scan of new articles, there is a grid box of the latest articles from each category on the home page.

From there, GLRF members can explore their individual categories of interest and read articles and watch videos that are refreshed daily from a sophisticated news aggregation script, and assigned based on a moderators review to one or more categories. As of Wednesday, 20 August 2014, there are already 2501 articles and 1805 videos added to the database. Our only regret with the development of the application is our inability to add a translate feature within the frame that displays the news articles. However, we feel the entire GLRF membership will benefit from the collection of news articles since GLRF is a worldwide organization.

To encourage community interaction, members can submit their own articles or add articles they found on the web.

Every member has the ability to curate their own list of articles and videos with a My Saved Articles and a My Saved Videos area.