Tuesday, December 29, 2009

The New Year.

Listeners of the World,

It has been some time since my last post for the holiday season is getting the better of the OurTown Team with constant work! We have just decided on a design team (Minimaal) to tackle the redesign of our site and bring it into the Web 2.o world. Minimaal IT is a company out of the UK with great design and UI skills that will properly showcase our new site with the new features. They will start working on different ideas after the new year and will have something up by the spring of next year. Our programming team is also making great progress showing that they are on track and on time to be able to launch the new site in the spring of 2010. As for marketing team and I we have been hard at work recruiting the "right" local editors to make this site a success. We have also been working hard on taking on the social media arena and making a competitive contest schedule for the new year. We hope that all of this change will spark a new interest in hyper-local news for it is great need to many people across the United States.

Your OurTown SuperHero,

Chris

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Happy Holidays!


Listeners of the World,

We wanted to thank all of you for reading and for supporting OurTown.com this year as we went through a re-organization. We have worked really hard to set up the next phase of OurTown and we are certain that it will impress everyone. So for now we just want to wish everyone a happy holiday from the OurTown family!

Your OurTown SuperHero,

Chris

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

.NET


Listeners of the World,

Let me take a moment to go more in depth on how .NET is going to improve the Ourtown experience. First, .NET is going to speed up the Ourtown website. All the pages created are compiled unlike classic ASP, therefore they are able to run faster on the server. This also gives us the ability to trap more bugs during the development of Ourtown 3.0 so that we have a more stable environment. Next, .NET gives us the ability to seperate the business logic of the site from the interface which allows us to more easily "skin" the site. For the future this allows us to more easily update the look and feel of the site without needing to do a major overhaul. Finally, having the site written in a much newer and up to date language than Classic ASP allows us to implement better measures for security.

Overall, .NET gives us better speed, stability, flexibility, and security.

Your tech wizard,
Michael

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Whats Coming...................................Continued!


Listeners of the World,

Today I am here to tell you about another feature that we will be unleashing with the new OurTown update, which will help all local editors. This feature is the new ad-bot/ad-network that will be put into place to help local editors make more money off advertising. We have focused a lot of time and effort into this because this is what makes OurTown worth it compared to other hyper-local news sites. On most sites you can post your stories, photos, comments, and events just like on OurTown.com, but with OurTown you can make money while doing what you love. We have upgraded this to be more user friendly and to be a self severing ad system as well. Now local editors will get much needed help from our new "corporate portal" which will help sell ads for local editor sites without the local editor doing anything! Without giving too much away all I have to say is that this will be an ad network/portal that no one has ever seen before!

Your OurTown SuperHero,

Chris

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Check us out on Facebook!


Listeners of the World,

OurTown is now connected through Twitter, Facebook, blog spot, and soon to be with Digg and Linkedin. We are trying to connect our site with all social media to keep the freshest news and updates flowing to the people who need to hear about it. This will be a big part of our new site where you will be able to sign in and upload pictures from Facebook while updating your tweets from twitter at the same time. We believe this will make it the one stop shop with news, friends, and stories. If you enjoy this blog we invite to become out friend on Facebook to keep up with even more happenings from OurTown.com.

Your OurTown SuperHero,

Chris

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Ourtown On the Go


Listeners of the World,

A lot of technology lately has been moving towards mobile. Whether it's mobile apps, mobile web pages or mobile computing in general web sites need to be able to be seen and accessed on small screens. You could be sitting at a bus stop or waiting for dinner, being able to access everything from your phone is very useful in our busy lives today.

Ourtown 3.0 is taking this into account and as we develop the new site we are testing on the iPhone, android enabled devices, Windows Mobile, as well as other smartphone operating systems so that you will be able to take Ourtown with you on the go. Imagine being out in the community and reporting an event directly from your phone as it is happening.

Your tech wizard,
Michael

Happy Early ThanksGiving!


Listeners of the World,

I just wanted wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving from me and the OurTown staff who will be taking off the rest week off to spend with families. We will be back to our regular posting next week with some more new features that are coming soon on the new site.

Your OurTown Super Hero,

Chris

Monday, November 23, 2009

What's Coming!

Listeners of the World,

As everyone is aware (at least if you have been up to date on this blog) we are in the process of doing a major over haul on our site OurTown.com. The project is big and time consuming and will be released in about 5 months. Until then I wanted to give our viewers a little more information each week about the new features and capabilities of the site. This week I wanted to focus in on the new home page.

As you can see our current homepage has a lot of information on it, maybe too much information. We are in the process of eliminating all of the extra information that is not that important. We are rebuilding our search on the home page to make it simpler to find the town or area that you are looking for and to also make it faster. This new search will be the prominent piece of the new front page. We are also only going to include the latest local stories written by our local editors instead of national news that you can get anywhere. The design overall will be a simpler design focused in on the local aspect of the site. This should provide for a cleaner, easier, and more informative front page.

Just remember this is just one of the changes coming............stayed tuned for more!

Your OurTown Super Hero,

Chris

Friday, November 20, 2009

Football and OurTown!

Listeners of the World,

We at the corporate office have been blessed with a great sports fall overall with us being based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. We are all big football fans and for once we really have something to cheer for besides Ohio State Football! We now have the undefeated Cincinnati Bearcats who are at an impressive 10-0 start and the Cincinnati Bengals who are leading their division with a 7-2 record. Plus to top it all off The Ohio State Buckeyes are going to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1997. Yes we are loving the weekends watching our teams win again and again and for the first time in a long time we might see extra football for all three teams in one season. As for OurTown we have started the process on the new site and hopefully you will see the highlights for all of these teams on there real soon. But until then please check out the active site which is still running some impressive material!

Your OurTown Super-Hero,

Chris

Friday, November 13, 2009

The Process


Listeners of the World,

As you well know we are in the middle of a redesign to our site "OurTown.com". I just wanted to give an update on where we are in the process and maybe get some feed back at the same time. We have just narrowed down our designers to a possible three companies that are now in the process of creating mockups for our new OurTown site. We should have all of them by the end of the week and then we will announce the winner to the world. Also our team of programmers have already begun on the rewrite of the site and we will have updates on the different features they lets us know about them. Please feel free to comment with any type of feature that you think would be helpful or "cool" to have if you were creating a news site (which you can, sign up at OurTown). Until next time, keep searching for the real news!

Your OurTown Super Hero

Chris

Wednesday, November 11, 2009


Listeners of the World,

Ourtown 3.0 will be a complete overhaul of the system built from the ground up using new technology to keep up with your needs. The new site will be made using the ASP.NET framework to give it flexibility and power. Not only are we changing the language used to power Ourtown we are completely redesigning the database used to store your data. This will give the site both speed and greater flexibility. We are also completely redesigning the look and feel of Ourtown to give it more of a 2.0 look so the site can stay simple and compelling. All of these changes behind the scenes will allow us to build for the future and allow for smooth integrations with other applications such as Social Media software.

Your Tech Wizard,
Michael

Monday, November 9, 2009

The Ever Changing OurTown!


Listeners of the World,

OurTown.com has been through a couple of site changes and looks very different now from when it first showed up on the scene in Beta a little over two years ago. Well we have learned from our mistakes and have gathered a lot of feedback from our local editors and have put together plans for the "real deal" OurTown. We are not only re-designing our site look and logo, but also our marketing and business plan to meet the needs of the forever growing news market. We have just set the plan in motion with the completion of the new Design Document for OurTown.com and are well on our way of making the world a little more informed one "OurTown" at a time. Of course we will keep all of you updated as we move forward with the new re-design and how we are still improving the current site.

Your OurTown Super-Hero,

Chris

Thursday, November 5, 2009

What is OurTown????

Listeners of the World,

Local News, Views, Search, and Commerce is the tag line that sums up what OurTown.com is all about. We provide a platform or "pedestal" if you will, to let the people in the community post and write about what is important to them and their community. Instead of the same old news you will find very hyper-local articles unique to each community or town across the United States. We also provide these same people with a unique way to make money while doing what they love. Unlike other hyper-local sites where you continuously provide the site with information or stories for free, we have developed a system where you have the chance to make a nice amount of money. As of right now we are expanding out and trying to fill in the US map with local editors from all over the country. Once we have this done the possibilities will be endless. If this sounds interesting please visit OurTown.com and let us know what you think!


Your OurTown Super-hero,

Chris

Monday, November 2, 2009

OurTown Goals!



Listeners of the World,

Welcome to the new and improved OurTown.com information and news blog. This blog will be dedicated to bringing you the latest news and information about OurTown. You will be reading updates from a variety of people involved in the OurTown Community and maybe some who are not! We hope that you will find this fun and compelling as well as informational. If you would like to know more information right away please visit OurTown.com and go to our " About OurTown" section. Otherwise check in each day for something NEW!

Your OurTown Super-hero,

Chris