I was reading this Reader/readers essay by Phillippe Bootz for the classI am taking with Loss Glazier at UB when I came across a video presentation by Phillippe Bootz in Erfurt, Thueringen. I used to live right next to there. I wonder when the presentation took place.

While the essay is interesting, the project itself looks dated. I wonder if e-poetry is all very dated looking but I am excited to learn more about it.

I have about 1000 new things I want to do with the site my problem is now time and balancing the site development with my homework load and job.

(e:nparkproject),[inlink]nparkproject,3[/inlink] you should record some songs for the elmwood radio station. Also, if you have any upcomming events you could post them on the calendar.

I have been working on lots of new features recently and decided to release two today. One is an rss news feed module for when you are logged in. It allows you to slect a news source and get the last 10 articles from that source. Currently, we have sources including boing boing, Buffalo News, Buffalo Employment, The Buffalo Report, The Beast, estrip, jambase, wired gadgets, wired politics, and yahoo top stories. If anyone knows of any other local rss feeds, I would love to add them to the list. Also, if anyone knows of any good local sports rss feeds, I'd happily add them too.




The second upgrade is the ability to see how many guests are online. Guests are people who are visiting the site but are not users or are not logged in.



More to come soon . . .

In reference to [inlink]paul,1914[/inlink] There is finally some good news in regards to information being published about the site in a local newspaper.

I received a phone call from Tony Violanti at the Buffalo News for an interview about web pages. (e:holly) said that they had called Medaille about web design and she gave them my info. I was so excited to talk about the site but still a little nervous. I don't usually get calls on my cell phone, I try to keep my number secret, so when it rang I picked up figuring it was (e:terry) or (e:southernyankee) calling from work and then all of a sudden I was being interviewed.

He asked me a lot of questions about web design in general and what I thought about it. One question he posed is, "Should people start their own webpages?" another question was, "Should people learn to code web pages or use deisgn programs such as Dreamweaver?"

I responded that everyone who feels that they have something important to say should have a web page. I also said that I encourage people to learn HTML from the ground-up as HTML coding is not that difficult and quickly becomes routinea dn used the intro students at Canisius as an exmaple. While some of them find coding daunting at first, they easily pick it up and can transfer the code from making one site to the next.

I explained that I created this site for people who have something to say but are unable to web program or are simply interested in drawing from the larger audience offered by the site. I also mentiioned that our readershp statistics reflect peoples interest in reality programming on televsion and in gerneral. People simply love to learn about the lives of others and when it can be people within their community it makes it even more interesting because they can meet each other.

[size=m]What do you guys think about it? Why do you keep a journal here?[/size]

So we have over 125 members now and I would really like to see that number grow to about 300 over the next couple months. At that point we will have a really good base to define what was the elmwood experience during our time here. I would like to branch out in some more in terms of user background, hopefully picking up some more younger people and some more older adults. Right now our average age is around 24-29.

I am also working on developing some new stuff and a new look although that might have to wait till my other projects are done.

Today, I sent an article about our site to Alt Press . I hope they carry it. I have been meaning to talk to more news sources about it but was so discouraged after the Artvoice, buffalo.com, and west side times let down.

[size=m]Art Voice[/size]
When I wrote to artvoice telling them about the site, I thought they would be excited about the development of a free local site where people could have a "local" voice on the internet. I was kind of hoping for an article but instead was offered a classified ad for free or a $500 spread. I was not interested in spending $500 on them. I chose neither. I have worked so hard for this project to be free and I felt like they were trying to exploit me.

[size=m]Buffalo.com[/size]
Then I had a similar experience with Buffalo.com. No need to retell it here, you can read it on the entry from the time it happend [inlink]paul,1818[/inlink].

[size=m]West Side Times[/size]
Then we wrote to the west side times. Didn't even get a response!

I guess that is why we created this site in the first place - as a way to circumvent the old media barriers to publication.

So anyhow, I am being brave and writing to Alt Press this time. Wish us luck.