McDargh CD hits thankful note

Peg McDargh is no stranger to Athenians. Nor is her fight against cancer. And it probably won't come as a surprise to those who know her that she's taking a thankful approach to her remaining days among us.

She's just released a CD, "A Christmas Thank You from Peg," recorded in November on her Steinway baby grand. I recently interviewed Peg for this blog post, and recorded some of her playing as well.

Listening to the CD has been a pleasure, and it accomplishes exactly what she wants it to do in that it calms our spirit. During these hectic, difficult times, we need more spirit-calming. So it is we who should be grateful. And of course, when it comes to knowing Peg, we are beyond all measure grateful.

New navigation aid added to athensi.com

We've made a minor (but hopefully very helpful) change to the athensi.com web page today. In the right hand column is a new navigation aid, with all of the non-news categories listed in alphabetical order. They include:

» BLOGS
» COMMUNITY
» EAT ATHENS
» ENTERTAINMENT
» GOOGLE: ATHENS
» GOOGLE: OU
» LIBRARY NEWS
» MARKETPLACE (formerly "business")
» OU NEWS
» OPINION
» PHOTO GALLERY
» PODCASTS
» SPORTS
» WORLDLINK

Unless users scrolled down the page on athensi.com they may not have even known that these categories exist. And a couple of them are relatively new additions to site. GOOGLE: ATHENS and GOOGLE: OU bring in content that Google News automatically finds about Athens, Ohio and Ohio University, respectively.

Users may also have noticed that the weather information has been changed. We've scaled it back considerably to allow the navigation section to be seen "above the fold."

Get ready for January '09

Come January '09 I hope you'll be hearing a lot about (and from) athensi.com.

First, a bit of background. athensi.com actually started out as actv7news.com, shoveling content from the student-produced newscast, ACTV-7 News. Then, in February 2001 the site became more of a portal page for Athens-based media. When rss technology came along a few years ago we completely changed how content reached athensi.com.

Now, as athensi.com approaches its eighth anniversary, I've come to realize that the site -- along with the Internet itself -- is just starting to reach its potential to be a real marketplace of ideas. But it can reach that potential only if you, dear users, decide to participate not only as consumers but as producers in the marketplace. Here's how you can do just that.

BLOGGING:

Start a blog and send me the address (stewartr@ohio.edu). If you feel shy, check out what other bloggers in Athens are saying on their blog.

If you are part of a community organization, start up a blog for that organization and pass the address along to me (again, stewartr@ohio.edu). We'll add it to the community section on athensi.com.

If you are a business and want to reach buyers and other members of the community in Athens, start up a blog and write about your business, your products and services, etc., and we'll add it to our business section. Cool, huh?

ADD PHOTOS:

You also can add pictures to athensi.com's photo gallery. Just set up a free account on flickr.com and tag your photos "athens, ohio" (make sure to use the quotation marks so that your tag will be athens, ohio and not just athens and ohio, which won't work).

The reason that I'm excited about January '09 is that I'm teaching a course in the JSchool that will work specifically on getting the word out about athensi.com. Students in the class will go out into the community to teach individuals and organizations that want to have their voice heard on athensi.com how to blog, how to upload photos, etc., so that those blogs and photos can be included on athensi.com Then, and only then, will athensi.com be all that it can be for the community of Athens, Ohio.

Businesses in Athens, Ohio, start blogging!

athensi.com includes a business blog section now, which means that area businesses can reach their customers on athensi.com through a free blogging service such as wordpress or blogspot. If you start up a blog for your business, send Bob Stewart (stewartr@ohio.edu) the address of your blog and he'll add it to athensi.com's business blogs.

NOTE: to find the business section scroll down to the bottom of athensi.com. If more businesses start feeding their rss feeds to athensi.com, we'll move that section up.

To bloggers on blogspot: please fix your site feed

Hey folks, if you're using blogspot for a blog that's included on athensi.com, please help us out by making the following fix:

1. select "Settings" for the blog
2. select the tab labeled "Site Feed"
3. switch to Advanced Mode
4. change the settings for "Blog Comment Feed" and "Per-Post Comment Feeds" to "None"

What this "fix" will do is prevent your blog from sending out rss notices for comments made on your blog. This doesn't mean you can't have a notice sent to your own email when a comment is made. It just prevents an rss notice from being sent out. For some reason, those notices appear on athensi.com as "empty" messages, which are confusing to folks.

thanks...

When it's time to change, you've got to rearrange...

Spring is an exciting time for ATHENSi.com and you'll see why in the weeks to come. Already we've made a few changes to the site. For instance, now with the addition of the Business Feed, you'll be able to find out what's hot and new with local businesses.

You also may notice that Do/See Athens and Arts and Entertainment have come together. Through much negotiations these two sections were able to set aside their differences and agree that it should be easier for you to find out what's going on in Athens that day or over the weekend. Check it out!

Keep an "i" out for more changes... and have a Happy Friday

The Big Upgrade...

You may have noticed a few subtle (but Very Important) changes to the athensi.com site. The most obvious: additional xml/rss feeds, each noted on the graphic above the associated content category. Whereas our old site only had athensi.com original content (which hardly exists) in an outbound feed, this new version of athensi.com bundles up content from partner sites, presents it on athensi.com while ALSO making an rss feed of that bundled content.

Our goal hasn't changed, however: improving the flow of information about Athens, Ohio to the community of Athens. This means trying to drive traffic to all of the content providers in Athens... whether they be of the Big Media variety (relatively speaking) or part of the local blogger community.

In the process of updating the functionality of the site, with the help of programming Claus Rasmussen (based in Denmark, of all places!), I also tried to look around for more potential content providers who have rss feeds on their sites. To do this search, I googled the terms: athens ohio rss ... and did, indeed, find some sites I'd never heard about before. The addition of those sites, plus the culling of some sites and blogs that hadn't been updated in several months, should make the content on athensi.com more relevant, up-to-date, useful, etc., etc.

I hope you find ATHENSi.com to be of use to you, and if you can think of ways to improve it (e.g., if you know about sites with rss feeds that aren't showing up on our site), let me know. My email: profstewartrk@gmail.com

Thanks,
Bob Stewart