Tag: website

So, that only took one day. Yesterday I was going on about how the Nevada Appeal's website was the only one that hadn't gotten a facelift. And then today I look, and the redesign has gone live for them, too.

They also seem to have fixed the style problems with the article text that the Record Courier was having. So that's a big plus towards making the stories readable.

It looks like the announced website redesigns from a couple of weeks ago have come online. I noticed it first at The Record Courier today when I went to look at it.

Then I went to look at the other sites, Tahoe Daily Tribune, Tahoe Bonanza, Sierra Sun, and Lahontan Valley News, and all of them have been redesigned as well. The only one that didn't get a new set of clothes is the big brother of the bunch, the Nevada Appeal. They must be holding off for a little bit because it's the biggest and most complex site. It probably needs more work and testing to switch over. But I'm sure it will get the facelift too. I can't imagine they'd deny the redesign to their Western Nevada flagship website. Give it a couple of days; it will get here.

I think the new design is a huge improvement over the old. Visually it looks a lot better than that old default template they were using, and the sections seem to be laid out and organized better. There are extra features, like comments, an AJAX events calendar, and user-submitted photo galleries. In all I like it. Strangely, though, the one place it seems like they didn't pay much attention to are the articles themselves. The typography on the article text is fairly horrible; all the paragraphs just run together because there are no margins in between them. It makes for difficult reading when you're sitting down to plow through a whole article. I'd also say the text in the headlines could stand to be bigger, and the reporter's byline is so small and hard to find that it might as well be fine print. The publication date is pushed out of the way, too, like they're trying to hide it. These are small style things that are easy to change, but I think that things like headline, pub date and byline are important enough that you should spend extra time on getting them to look just right.

Another thing they started some time ago, before the redesign, but haven't advertised very well, is the e-edition of the paper. This is a way to read the paper online, but to actually see a scan of the page, as it really appears in the newspaper. Pretty neat.

Overall, these redesigns are definitely a big value add to the internet ecosystem of Western Nevada, and I can't wait until the Nevada Appeal catches up to its smaller brothers.

NewsCarsonCity.com has been steadily improving lately. When I first linked to it, the site was little more than an interminable list of videos, trailing off into oblivion. But over the last several months he's been working on turning the site into a blog, with real permalinks and archives that make my job of linking to videos on the site (like this one about the Carson Mall) so much easier. And he's also expanding beyond video and working on writing editorials, like this one about Doppelganger's and downtown redevelopment incentives.

The site's still not perfect. The videos are still in Windows Media, which can make them tricky to play on some platforms. Nearly all other online video is using Flash these days, either through YouTube or one of the other contenders, or rolling their own Flash solution. And using Flash would allow other bloggers (like me) to embed the videos directly in their sites, leading to more views and more visibility.

But the site is looking so much nicer these days. And the biggest plus is that he now has an RSS feed allowing me to actually keep up with the new videos as they come in. Good stuff.

I don't know if I haven't seen this before because it's new, or because I'm so out of the loop. Bob Gray's V&T Railroad up in Virginia City had an official website a few years ago, but it kind of disappeared at some point. Or I lost track of it. And recently when I was trying to find it, I wasn't having any luck.

But just today, when I was Googling around, I rediscovered it, and found that it looks like it's been completely redesigned and rebuilt for the 2008 season. You can see it at virginiatruckee.com. And not only does it look good, but by glimpsing under the hood I was able to tell it has a good engine too. It may just be a static brochure site, but it's running on top of the Wordpress content management system. Which won't mean much unless you're a blogger or a web developer, but building a site on a CMS means you can easily make changes to the site through a control panel, instead of editing the HTML files directly. It's the smart way to build a site if you're looking towards the future. And what it really means is that the V&T hired somebody who really knew what they were doing to build the site. Somebody who, from what I can tell, has remained anonymous. And using Wordpress as the CMS? That's pretty cutting edge. I'm impressed.

They still need to flesh out the content some more, but the site's built on a good solid foundation so it will be easy for them to do. And aside from the fact that steam rides cost $1 more than diesel rides, I didn't find any kind of confirmation that their steam locomotive will in fact be back on the rails this year, or what kind of steam/diesel schedule they're going to have. This is exactly the kind of stuff that should be on their website, so hopefully they'll hop to.

Happy New Year, everyone. 2008 is upon us.

2008 is a fairly big year for Carson City. It was 150 years ago that a group of folks named Curry, Proctor, Musser, and Green came over the mountains from California looking to buy some land and start a town. The land they bought was the Eagle Valley, and the town they started was named after the nearby Carson River. So this year marks what some of us like to call the Sesquicentennial, but it's okay if you just want to say it's Carson City's 150th birthday.

There's a brain trust that's been formed around the 150th, tasked with the job of strategizing ways to commemorate the occasion. Me, I'm not so much for the strategizing. My way is more to stumble in blindly, blazing a fresh trail with code like us web wonks are wont to do. And so it's in the spirit of stumbling blindly that I today unveil two new websites in the Around Carson family, both geared to the Sesquicentennial and the history of Carson City. They're both a little undercooked, and I might have liked a bit more time to polish them up before releasing them to the public, but the symbolism of being able to launch them on January 1 was too much to pass up. So here they are, with all their rough edges intact. But it's okay. I know we're friends. I know you won't judge on first impressions, but rather look to the potential of the sites and admire them for the ambitious promise that they hold. Right?

Okay, so here are the two sites. They both revolve around telling the history of Carson City, coming from two different angles: pictures and words. First up, with pictures, is the inelegantly-named Western Nevada Historic Photo Collection. It can be found at wnhpc.aroundcarson.com. It is a photo gallery specializing in historic photos of the Carson area. Carson City, Virginia City, Carson Valley, Lake Tahoe, all the usual suspects that are included underneath Around Carson's banner.

The WNHPC (as I've affectionately dubbed it) is kind of slim right now, but that's because I've been frantically programming behind the scenes to meet my little deadline here. That's right, just like Around Carson, the WNHPC was coded from scratch with my own two hands. I'm responsible for all the programming on the site, so I'm responsible for any hiccups, errors, or general funny business you might encounter during your visits.

The idea of an online photo gallery is one I've been kicking around for a long time, and indeed I started the programming on the WNHPC last summer. After quite a few stalls and lulls in progress, it's finally at a point where I'm proud enough to show it off, and ready to start adding pictures from my collection. I've built in quite a few sharing features, and the capacity to view larger sizes of the photo if they're available. I tried to build this into the kind of historic photo collection I've always wanted to see, and I'm just getting started so I'm sure there will be more changes to come.

Go check it out.

The second site, committed to attacking history with words, is Carsonpedia (www.carsonpedia.com). This is the online encyclopedia for Carson City. If you're familiar with Wikipedia, you'll feel right at home at Carsonpedia. In fact, you may start to feel like I ripped them off. And that is because I did. The software that runs Wikipedia is available to everyone for general use, so I snagged a copy and got it running underneath the site. Yes, it's a website that I didn't do all the programming on. Go figure.

The idea behind Carsonpedia is to build up a general storehouse of knowledge regarding Carson City and its neighbors. Much like Wikipedia, I intend to write individual entries for every town, building, person of note, and historical event, tying them all together in a web of hyperlinks. Right now the content there is pretty scant. This idea came to me in a haze as I was drifting off to sleep a couple of weeks ago, and I've barely had time to flesh it out to something that's truly useful yet. But, of course, we're all friends here, so remember that you're evaluating based on its potential. The promise of the site. Some of the articles I do have written are ones on Carson City, Abraham Curry, Mark Twain, and Major William Ormsby. That only leaves about 10,000 articles left to be written. The major selling point of the software I'm using, though, is that any of you, the esteemed audience, can jump in to create and embellish articles yourself, making this a true community encyclopedia. My goal is to surpass the Online Nevada Encyclopedia in both size and usefulness by the end of the year. Think we can make it?

Oh well, keep dreaming. Go check out the site.

And happy 150th, Carson City.

I got an e-mail today from a journalism grad student at UNR, asking me to write about Around Carson, what I'm doing here, what kind of response I get to the site, and how it relates to traditional media like the Nevada Appeal. I thought my answer was a good insight into how I look at the site and where I'd like to see it go in the future, so I'm publishing it here too.

I have no background in journalism, except for a 101 class at UNR in the early 90s, and two bylines in the Sagebrush that were so bad that they didn't ask me back for a third (I only did it because I had a crush on the editor). I got started blogging about five and a half years ago, mostly because I had been reading a lot of good blogs and I wanted to try it for myself. I first started at my personal blog (www.computer-vet.com/weblog), mostly writing about technology and my personal life.

As time went on, I found myself writing more and more about local issues, putting up pictures of things that had happened around town or writing about local concerts and museums. And at the same time there was a lot of excitement on the web about hyperlocal sites, community sites and blogs that focused on one town or community. So it was around May of 2005 that I decided to spin off all of the writing I had been doing about Carson City and start a new site. And that's where Around Carson got its start.

When I'm writing for the site, I never think about if I'm filling a need, except for the need to please myself and create the kind of site that I think Carson should have. There are times that I'll see a story in the paper, and I'll wish there were more photos, so I'll go out and take some pictures and put them up on my site, with a link back to the original story. And I'll add in some of my opinions, and maybe some background or history, that I thought the article had passed over. So in situations like that I feel like I'm filling in a gap in the paper's coverage. Or not necessarily filling a gap, but just building on top of what they've done so the story becomes richer. Almost like a companion piece. I never see myself in competition with the newspaper, or deliberately trying to one-up them or beat them to the punch. And I really don't think of what I do as "journalism". There's no hard news or politics on the site, because those subjects don't interest me. I don't interview anybody to get a deeper view of the facts, I just go with my own thoughts and impressions. Mostly when I write it's because there's something inside me that has to get out, something I really want to share. I don't set assignments for myself, or deadlines, or quotas. I can go five or six days at a time, adding nothing to the site, and then all of a sudden have a flood burst out and I'll write four posts in two hours. It all depends on how inspired I am. I'll come across a picture that I want to share, and use it to launch into a small history lesson. Or I'll see some construction happening on the way to work and write about the progress. It's a haphazard way of building a site, but the result is that I only publish stuff I'm really happy with. And the blog form allows you to be as haphazard as you want anyway, so I don't worry about it.

The response from the community hasn't been huge, but it has been satisfying. I do have a small core of readers that I know about. Some of them are other local bloggers, and some of them are just readers that send in a comment or e-mail from time to time. My family and I kind of live a hermit lifestyle, so I haven't really met with any of my readers ever, but I know they're out there. In some ways I'm glad the audience isn't too big, because if it was I'd start to scrutinize my writing too much, or wonder if I was wasting people's time with the topics I choose to write about. Or I'd feel guilty about not writing enough, and feel the pressure to bump up the quantity of posts even though I know the quality wouldn't be there.

I have a few different types of readers that I try to keep in mind when I'm writing. First, I'm obviously writing with other residents in mind, and trying to point out things that they might have missed or upcoming events that I want them to know about. Second, I'm writing for expatriates, like my parents, who lived in Carson City for years and are still interested in what's going on, but their only link to the town now is through the web. I try to think of changes and new developments in town that they'd like to hear about. And third, I'm writing for Google. I'm writing to give Carson City a presence on the web that people can stumble across, a reference of sorts that anyone from anywhere in the world can find. I try to write articles that are timeless, and that cover a topic that no other website currently does, so that if someone is doing a Google search, they'll actually find a relevant result for what they're looking for, and not just unrelated or outdated pages. I know that when I'm looking for information on other cities, I like to look for placeblogs in the Google results, and for locally run travel guides, because I know the best source of information on a town is the people who live there.

Where I see the site going in the future is actually back to the past. When I first started the site I had a lot of ambitious ideas, and I built them out partway, and then I lost touch with them and let them stagnate. You can still see them on the left-hand sidebar, sections like the Dining Guide, where I was going to put up pictures and menus from every restaurant in town. Or the Buildings Database, which was going to be a reference guide to all the historic buildings in town. I also wanted to put up guides to all the parks in the area, and all the places in town you could drop off recyclables, and photo tours of different neighborhoods so you could stroll around the town without ever leaving your desk. None of that ever came to be, but it's all still on my wish list for what the site would become if I had unlimited time, energy and inspiration. I'd also like to put together audio and video podcasts about the town, kind of like a travelogue type show, but I really lack the skills to make that happen.

I was also hoping for more involvement from the community in adding their own stories to the site. I have a couple of people who add press-release-type posts on upcoming events, and I really appreciate that. And a couple of contributors add some nice photos to the site, both recent and historic. So it's not just me keeping the site going all by myself, and that's good because I don't want it to all be on my shoulders. But I was hoping to get more people writing for the site, like columnists just writing about what it's like to live in Carson City. Instead of writing on my site, though, the few people who are inclined to write on the web have their own blogs. And that's great, so I try to link to other sites as much as I can, to build up a sense of online community among all the Carson area bloggers. I guess I just wish there was more activity on that front, but at the moment I'm kind of glad there's not because I'd never be able to keep up with it all anyway.

Right now with the new baby the site is kind of running on autopilot, with me posting three or four times a week, whenever something strikes me. Hopefully as he grows up and becomes more independent I'll have more time, and I can get back to some of those mothballed sections of the site. I really wanted the site to be more than just a blog, but I'm happy with the way it is now, and happy that most of the feedback I do get is positive. I must be doing something right.

Photo from ForgottenNevada.org

Yes, even in the wild backroads of Nevada you can find organizations and people stealing content from little-known websites and using it on their own, without even as much as a thank you or a link. This latest offense was brought to attention by Forgotten Nevada. First, take a look at this page on the Forgotten Nevada site, about the history of Williams Station, the Pony Express stop where the Paiute Indian War of 1860 started. Then, look at this page on the Silver Springs Chamber of Commerce website. It's pretty much a direct lift of the Forgotten Nevada article, even down to the photo they use of Lake Lahontan.

Certainly, the good folks at the Chamber, or at K & J Computers who built the site, know that it's a big boo boo to lift content from other sites and use it on yours. And that even if you do, it's at least courtesy to give credit and a link back to the original author, not to just pass it off as your own. But that's what's happening here.

We who live on the web know that this is one of the hazards. There is no way to truly protect content from being taken and used in other ways. That's why a lot of us have stopped fighting it, and even embraced philosophies like Creative Commons, which encourage others to use our work. But we always expect something back in exchange. Whether it's money, if the content is being used in a commercial work, or just a thanks and a credit line. "This article originally published on ForgottenNevada.org". Is that too hard to do? Apparently so.

Forgotten Nevada has already been in contact with the offenders and is hoping to see some results soon.

By the way, the photo I used for this article is from Forgotten Nevada. See how if you click on it it goes to his site? That's the right way to do it. And the photo is not of the Williams Station in question, but of Desert Station on the other side of the lake. I just thought it was a cool picture. There's a lot to like about Forgotten Nevada. If you like ghost towns, you should for sure go check it out.

I think I've talked about this site before, but I want to link to it again because it's just so good. Richard Moreno's Backyard Traveler is one blog you should be checking in with regularly. Richard used to write Backyard Traveler as a column for the Nevada Appeal and the Lahontan Valley News, and even published an anthology in book form. But now he's putting the articles right on his web site. And every one of them is worth the time it takes to read.

The Backyard Traveler is all about the hidden gems of Nevada, places you probably never knew about but can visit as a day trip or over a quick weekend. There's a lot on his site about ghost towns, forgotten places like Berlin, Jumbo, Fairview, Olinghouse, and Clifton. But he also has articles on the new V&T, Virginia City's ghost stories, Scotty's Castle, and even the story of hunting for a lonely piece of rebar that marks the geographic center of Nevada. You can tell he's traveled back and forth across Nevada more than once, and probably knows the back roads that pepper the desert as well as I know the way to my bathroom. Everything he writes betrays an in-depth knowledge of Nevada, and its byways and hidden corners. The site is definitely one you'll want to visit again and again, poring over the last twelve months worth of articles while you're waiting for him to publish a new one.

The Carson City Historical Society is debuting a redesigned website this week. There are a few sections still under construction, but they do have links on there to recent Society newsletters, details about this year's Victorian Christmas Tour, and history essays on the Wungnema House and the Foreman-Roberts House, headquarters of the Society. And I have a feeling there's still more information to come.

There's a new website up and running housing a full listing of all the businesses in Carson City. It's called Carson 360, and it's a fairly complete directory, with just about every category you can think of. From restaurants and real estate to travel and entertainment. Just think of it as your online yellow pages for Carson City.

It's run by Joe Childs, the same guy who also keeps up CarsonWeather.com, which provides that weather button on the left sidebar that I use just about every day.