Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Noticed any changes on the stardem Website?
I need to note a couple of changes to the stardem.com Website. The PDF versions of the newspaper sections are now back to being restricted to subscribers only. The PDF’s had been accessible to all since we changed to the new look.
The special section and supplement PDFs are still open to all. They can be accessed through a link at the bottom of the right-side column. Look for the “STAR DEMOCRAT SUPPLEMENTS” title. It is just above the access point for my blog.
Several special supplements are set off by themselves under “Special Sections” in the news story column. The most recent Waterfowl Festival program and the current Passport to the Arts are available in PDF form.
We’ve also reinstituted the polling feature on the site. We currently have two polling questions active. On the home page we as your opinion on the proposal to have monorail service over the bay to relief traffic congestion. A narrow majority of 56 percent to 44 percent favored the proposal as of this writing. In the sports area we ask with of the No. 1 seeds in the men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament is most likely to win. Florida led in the balloting 67 percent to 17 percent for both North Carolina and Ohio State. No votes had been tallied for Kansas as of this writing.
I’ll leave these polling questions up for a couple of days after this column appears in print and report the results next week.
If you have a suggestion for a poll question, email it to me (rpolk@chespub.com) and we will consider it for inclusion.
Now, if you hate animated gifs, let me apologize up front. You’ll probably encounter some of these little gems when you visit the site. I’m having a great time playing with them. I know, like anything else, they can be overdone. Share your thoughts on this.
We’ve also added a number of advertisers to the site in recent weeks. Check them out. There are some links to some pretty innovative Websites. I was surprised at how sophisticated some of the sites are.
I subscribe to a number of tech oriented podcasts. I often interesting tips on Websites of interest. Here are a couple I’ve heard of recently.
Ever wondered what a house in your neighborhood sold for? Would you like an estimate of what your house might go for? Or would you like to know what a house sold for in any community in the country? You should visit http://www.zillow.com. Enter your address in the address field and it will give you a “Zestimate” of your home’s value. Type in a town and a map will appear with flags of different colors. A click on a flag and you’ll get details on sale or asking price. It is quite interesting and a little depressing.
As a lark I checked on an area of Sunnyvale, CA where we lived when my dad was stationed at Moffett Field Naval Air Station back in the 1960s. We had to move early because he got transferred back to Washington, D.C. when another officer had to retire early due to illness. The short of it is my parents had to sell our home quickly to be able to invest in a home in Northern Virginia. It went for something in the high 40’s. I checked on zillow and found that the house next door recently when for $895,000. What a difference 40 years and the transformation of the area into what is now called “Silicon Valley” makes. Sigh.
Another site you might find interesting is http://flightaware.com/live/. This site lets you track commercial aircraft. It opens with a map of North America that is covered with little red dots. It is fascinating to see how many planes there are in the sky at any one time. You can also keep track of activity at various airports. Try it out.
These are just a couple of the stops you can make on the World Wide Web. I’ll share some other interesting ones in future columns.
The special section and supplement PDFs are still open to all. They can be accessed through a link at the bottom of the right-side column. Look for the “STAR DEMOCRAT SUPPLEMENTS” title. It is just above the access point for my blog.
Several special supplements are set off by themselves under “Special Sections” in the news story column. The most recent Waterfowl Festival program and the current Passport to the Arts are available in PDF form.
We’ve also reinstituted the polling feature on the site. We currently have two polling questions active. On the home page we as your opinion on the proposal to have monorail service over the bay to relief traffic congestion. A narrow majority of 56 percent to 44 percent favored the proposal as of this writing. In the sports area we ask with of the No. 1 seeds in the men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament is most likely to win. Florida led in the balloting 67 percent to 17 percent for both North Carolina and Ohio State. No votes had been tallied for Kansas as of this writing.
I’ll leave these polling questions up for a couple of days after this column appears in print and report the results next week.
If you have a suggestion for a poll question, email it to me (rpolk@chespub.com) and we will consider it for inclusion.
Now, if you hate animated gifs, let me apologize up front. You’ll probably encounter some of these little gems when you visit the site. I’m having a great time playing with them. I know, like anything else, they can be overdone. Share your thoughts on this.
We’ve also added a number of advertisers to the site in recent weeks. Check them out. There are some links to some pretty innovative Websites. I was surprised at how sophisticated some of the sites are.
I subscribe to a number of tech oriented podcasts. I often interesting tips on Websites of interest. Here are a couple I’ve heard of recently.
Ever wondered what a house in your neighborhood sold for? Would you like an estimate of what your house might go for? Or would you like to know what a house sold for in any community in the country? You should visit http://www.zillow.com. Enter your address in the address field and it will give you a “Zestimate” of your home’s value. Type in a town and a map will appear with flags of different colors. A click on a flag and you’ll get details on sale or asking price. It is quite interesting and a little depressing.
As a lark I checked on an area of Sunnyvale, CA where we lived when my dad was stationed at Moffett Field Naval Air Station back in the 1960s. We had to move early because he got transferred back to Washington, D.C. when another officer had to retire early due to illness. The short of it is my parents had to sell our home quickly to be able to invest in a home in Northern Virginia. It went for something in the high 40’s. I checked on zillow and found that the house next door recently when for $895,000. What a difference 40 years and the transformation of the area into what is now called “Silicon Valley” makes. Sigh.
Another site you might find interesting is http://flightaware.com/live/. This site lets you track commercial aircraft. It opens with a map of North America that is covered with little red dots. It is fascinating to see how many planes there are in the sky at any one time. You can also keep track of activity at various airports. Try it out.
These are just a couple of the stops you can make on the World Wide Web. I’ll share some other interesting ones in future columns.
# posted by Richard Polk @ 11:08 AM 
