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FoundLocally.com has just added over 250 pages of content addressing the environment and ecology, and how it impacts the way we work, learn, shop, eat, play, and travel. The content is indicated by our Going Green graphic:
Most people don't realize that there's a lot more you can do, than simply using compact fluorescent bulbs in your home (the "good start" advocated by TV host David Suzuki, in the television commercials), or driving a hybrid automobile. Good environmental practices affect every aspect of our lives.
We initially planned to create a new Environment section in our website, but realized quickly that environmental best practices can-and should-be implemented everywhere. So we integrated our eco-content into every section of our web site.
See the Environmental home page in our Local Information section, which links to the appropriate pages throughout the FoundLocally site.
To further support a better environment, businesses and community groups also are able to comment on what they do for a better environment, in their listings in the free community directory. This information is displayed in green on each listing's PROFILE page, when provided. Many have already done so.
Also, Parliament is back in session next week. Feel free to use our Community Overview: Government & Politics which provides e-mail links (and office phone numbers) to all your elected officials, including your Members of Parliament, to let them know about the issues important to you.
Best Wishes, and please let me know what else we can do, using the 'Give Feedback' button at the top of any page of the FoundLocally web site.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
FoundLocally has grown significantly over the past year, having added a dozen communities in southern Ontario in the Calgary area. Many thousands of businesses and community groups had added themselves (thank you!) to our community directories, and posted thousands of coupons, jobs, news items and events for our readers to enjoy. We have added several new features to our site, to make it more useful for everyone, and made it much faster-loading.
Over the "Christmas Holiday" School Break there are a number of features that are quite popular:
We have a lot of items on our drawing board, and you will see changes coming quickly over the next few months. Please visit our site regularly, and tell your friends, family and colleagues about us. It's the word of mouth and "word of mouse" from our regular and satisfied readers that has helped us grows as we have over the years.
I trust everyone has enjoyed their Holidays, and we wish everyone a Happy New Year
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
This week we have launched a new version of the FoundLocally.com web site. See th eHome Page. The new site loads about 1/3 faster than the prior design, using more efficient coding and fewer graphics files for each page. As well, we have made each community's domain name "the brand", to reinforce to people visiting via global search engines (where we have about 400,000 links!) where they actually found the information they needed.
We also added a context-sensitive search on every page, to replace the blue Search Bar. This enhanced Search enables replaces a single pop-down list with a "combo" search by category, by area, by name, or by street (or mall/building name) for the businesses most appropriate to the current web page. You can also link to the full search form with even more options. We have kept the business keyword searches on the Home page, the Business section home, and the Shopping section home pages, to search for the word (or phrase) in a business's name, description, and products/brands fields. This provides a lot more functionality than the phone directory, and makes it easy to find--for example a "sushi" restaurant-where what you are seeking may not be in the business's name.
The new look also highlights the "Jump" feature, which enables you to jump to the same page or business search results in a neighbouring or nearby FoundLocally community. This is handy for things like ski information, home neighbourhoods, travel planning, and shopping. The "Canada" link takes you to the FoundLocally home page where you can go to any FoundLocally community across Canada, with the same features & navigation you are already familiar with.
We thank all of our subscribers for their support over the years, and always look forward to your feedback and suggestions.
This week (Thursday) we will be launching a new look to our web site, which simplifies our "look & feel" and speeds how fast each page loads. The new look will also increase the prominence of the other features associated with each business listing in the community directory: News, Jobs, Events, Savings, and Ratings.
With the economy slowing, there are TWO THINGS event business should do to raise their visibility: post Savings for consumers, and post Jobs. To add these items, click on the above link, click on the red "Login" button, go to the corresponding tab and then "Add New" tab.
1) The SAVINGS tab can be to post sales, discounts, or coupons, and you can measure how many people have looked at and redeemed your coupons. You can also post discounts for reduced off-season/shoulder-season pricing for tourism operators. The form includes a pop-up window with frequently used disclaimers ("limit: one per customer").
2) The JOBS tab can be used to post jobs ranging from part time to full-time, and from entry level to executive. Many businesses spend the equivalent of one salary per year on help-wanted and career ads. In tight times, you can balance the need to hire with the ability to do it cost-effectively. FoundLocally is the perfect solution for those in the retail and restaurant business. Non-profits can also post volunteer opportunities using their JOBS tab, so job seekers can pursue resume-building and contact-building opportunities.
For both SAVINGS and JOBS postings, you can set expiry dates, so you can post and forget. Offers automatically expire and are hidden from public view. We'll also send you an email reminder just prior to expiry, so you can choose to continue the offer (or not). Also, when another opportunity to post a job or savings offer arises, you can re-activate an expired item, with a mouse-click… no need to re-enter all the details!
Posting a Logo with your Web Link. We are streamlining the approach to uploading logos for the Logos & Link of your listing, and in the meantime, we invite all listed organizations who haven't yet posted their logo with their web link, to e-mail their logo and we will resize and post them to your listing. REPLY to this email and attach your logo file to the e-mail.
We sent a notice out last week to those whose logos were "broken", likely due to a website re-design, and realized after it was sent that we had e-mail server issues causing problems for those that replied. This has been fixed, and you can resend your e-mail.
FoundLocally has begun its weekly ski reports & snow conditions for resorts and ski hills across Canada. This past weekend, ski hills opened in the Rockies and will open shortly in the BC's coastal region, the Okanagan, and in the Laurentians. The weekly ski reports are updated as local hills & resorts announce their opening dates. Your local ski report is at /Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm
FoundLocally's ski reports cover 3605 slopes on 142 resorts in all provinces, and are updated each Thursday noon. This allows plenty of time for those planning long weekends or road trips, and they're updated daily over the holidays. Over the 2007-2008 ski season FoundLocally's ski reports were used by 70,000 visitors a month, and was key to directing about $30 million in skier spending.
This coverage is part of FoundLocally.com's chain of 30 community portals, which provide in-depth recreation & travel information to a half-million local and tourist visitors a month. Communities covered include Victoria, Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Okanagan-Shuswap, the Rockies, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, Barrie-Muskoka, Kitchener-Waterloo, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, the Greater Toronto Area (with 5 sites), Oshawa, Ottawa-Gatineau, Fredericton, Halifax, Charlottetown and St John's. The 9 year old site has evolved into over 37,000 pages of web information, integrating a business directory with just shy of 150,000 businesses.
Listed businesses in the directory include many hotels, bed & breakfasts, restaurants, tour operators, travel agents, and of course ski hills and sporting goods stores. For each business listed in the community directory your can view a description, product categories, as well as their events, coupons, news announcements and job openings.
To access the ski reports, click on the FoundLocally community on the home page's map of Canada, and then click on the Ski Report link. The ski reports are linked with information about the ski hills themselves, and you can make convenient online reservations for linked accommodation. Visitors planning out of town ski trips or vacations can use the FoundLocally sites' ski hills info just like you do here, locally!
Over the past few months we have seen increasing intrusions and attacks by hackers, who typically attempted to inject links to virus distribution servers into our web pages or our database. One serious attempt last week was caught within 10 minutes, and we not only restored our database from backups, but we locked our data from any updates while our programming was updated to prevent similar malicious intrusions.
This was no minor task since we have 176 input and search forms in various places around our website. All forms now block entry of HTML and SQL (programming) commands. These changes have been posted, and you can again post new or update your community and business listings, post ratings & reviews for businesses, and provide site feedback. If you get a warning message about something you've entered we hope you'll understand.
More importantly, we missed interacting with you and receiving your feedback last week.
You can checkout the many local events in our interactive events calendar. Just click on the Events icon or label at the top of any page and select the date you wish to view (you must allow pop-ups in your browser). You an also look 3 days (a weekend) ahead or a whole week ahead.
For fans following their favourite sports team(s), or those planning parties to coincide with game days, or plan charitable fundraisers or events to avoid conflicts, we have the local teams' schedules linked on the Home Page's "Sports & Recreation" section, and on the Sports home page. One click displays the entire season ahead. See
Home Page or the Sports Section
Local sports teams & leagues and local arts groups are welcome to add themselves to our community directory, and post their events, games and performances (please let them know there is absolutely no cost!)
We appreciate your support, and look forward to you visiting our site, and sending us your comments and suggestions.
Here are a couple of updates important to all consumers:
Consumers can now avoid those annoying dinner-hour calls from telemarketers by going to https://www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/index-eng and registering your phone number (we also link to it on the city's Communications & Media - Telecommunications page).
We have links to everything you need to know about the October 14th Federal Election including how to register, where to go for advance polls, how you may qualify for a mail-in ballot, and what ID you need to bring to the polling station. And last-but-not-least, information about the parties, their leaders and their platforms with links to their various websites. (it's also linked on the city's FoundLocally home page).
Plan family vacations around all the local school holidays and professional development days at http://Edmonton.FoundLocally.com/Education/LearnSchoolSchedule.htm (we also link to it on the city's FoundLocally home page).
We found over the years that many students use our site for research for their Social Studies projects. FoundLocally has created a page for teachers, with links to a lot of educational resources: /Education/LearnEducReferences.htm.
We also have a story with hundreds of things for kids to do: /Education/KidsThingsToDo.htm.
Keep in mind, too, that the great information we have for your community, we also have for other communities across Canada. FoundLocally now covers 31 communities coast-to-coast from Victoria to St John's, and this past Spring has added several sites in the Greater Toronto Area. See http://www.FoundLocally.com
Also, our free community listings are open to all schools, to add themselves to our database, where they can post news, events, and volunteer opportunities. We have lots of listings for tutors and supplementary education providers, which you can access using the pop-down category list in the Learning & Schools section of our site, or using the Educational Search form at /Education/FindShoppingLearn.asp.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
We welcome all the kids back to school, which means more work for parents getting their children ready for school each day, and of course homework for the students. We'd also like to remind drivers that daytime speed limits in SCHOOL ZONES now apply, so please drive more carefully.
We have a page with all the local school holidays and professional development days at http://calgary.FoundLocally.com/Education/LearnSchoolSchedule.htm (we also link to it on the city's FoundLocally home page).
We found over the years that many students use our site for research for their Social Studies projects. FoundLocally has created a page for teachers, with links to a lot of educational resources: /Education/LearnEducReferences.htm.
We also have a story with hundreds of things for kids to do.
Keep in mind, too, that the great information we have for our community, we also have for other communities across Canada. FoundLocally covers 31 communities coast-to-coast from Victoria to St John's, and since last Spring also in the Greater Toronto Area.
Also, our free community listings are open to all schools, to add themselves to our database, where they can post news, events, and volunteer opportunities. We have lots of listing for tutors and supplementary education providers, which you can access using the pop-down category list in the Learning & Schools section of our site, or using the Educational Search form at /Education/FindShoppingLearn.asp.
Best wishes to all over the new school year!
FoundLocally.com Media Inc. [FoundLocally.com] has just added detailed local coverage for Toronto with 5 new sites for Toronto, North York, Etobicoke, Scarborough, and the York Region. The 8-year-old company now has 31 sites across Canada from Victoria, BC to St John's, Nfld which already attract 15 million visitors a year.
FoundLocally's five separate sites provide community information based on the way people live, work, and play, without the traditional media focus on downtown business, sports, and arts. These complement sites launched over the past year for surrounding communities including Oshawa-Durham, Mississauga-Brampton, Oakville-Burlington, Hamilton, as well as Niagara Falls, Barrie-Muskoka and Kitchener-Waterloo.
New Communities
http://Toronto.FoundLocally.com
http://NorthYork.FoundLocally.com
http://Scarborough.FoundLocally.com
http://Etobicoke.FoundLocally.com
http://York.FoundLocally.com
Surrounding Communities
http://Oshawa.FoundLocally.com
http://Mississauga.FoundLocally.com
http://Oakville.FoundLocally.com
http://Niagara.FoundLocally.com
http://Barrie.FoundLocally.com
http://Kitchener.FoundLocally.com
Each http://FoundLocally.com portal site provides comprehensive community information for locals and new residents, including travel, entertainment, shopping, neighborhoods, sports, education and government. There are typically about a thousand pages of information, pictures and maps, along with popular resources like weekly ski reports and one-click movie showtimes. FoundLocally has become excellent trip-planning resource for business and leisure travelers.
Each FoundLocally.com site's community directory allows visitors to search for businesses by name, category, or address. All businesses and community groups may add themselves to FoundLocally's free community directory. Organizations adding and updating their listings to provide descriptions, contact details and web links. Especially welcome are small businesses, run from a home phone or cell phone and typically excluded from the phone company directory. Many FoundLocally listings are for businesses without a website, also ignored on global search engines. Once registered, businesses and organizations can freely post jobs, events, sales & coupons) and news.
Toronto area businesses may add themselves at Toronto.FoundLocally.com by clicking on "Free Listings" to go to http://Toronto.FoundLocally.com/General/FreeListings.htm FoundLocally earns its revenues from traditional web "banner advertising," which supports the free community directory.
We wish all our supporters and visitors a happy holiday season, and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.
With the kids off school, or your time off work, why not relax with FoundLocally's recommendations for what to do:
FoundLocally has your Holiday movie listings with parental advisories, capsule reviews and rankings.
Over the school break (Dec 22 to Jan 6) the Ski Reports are updated daily.
Check out winter sports, and your favourite hockey team's home game schedules.
Parents can also check out 'A Hundred Things to do with your Kids. When you are tired of turkey, we have the area's best restaurant listings; post your own reviews!
I am proud to introduce to you our new site for Kitchener-Waterloo & area. I invite you to visit our web site at http://Kitchener.FoundLocally.com This site covers Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, Guelph and surrounding area. We wish to thank local photographer Shawn Steinman for his great images.
This area is an industrial, technology and educational center about an hour's drive west of Toronto. Kitchener-Waterloo is also home to the colourful Oktoberfest celebration each fall.
If you have friends and relatives living there, please let them know they can now access this fine resource for things like their movie listings, restaurants, and planning recreational activities. If you have business locations in Kitchener and area, you are welcome to add yourself to that community's business directory by clicking on "Free Listings".
As well, we have re-branded our Oakville-Halton site as "Oakville-Burlington", and our Mississauga-Peel site as "Mississauga-Brampton", reflecting the focus on the largest communities covered in each site, rather than the region's name.
For those of you planning winter vacations and finding the best flights to Caribbean destinations happen to be connections through Toronto's Pearson International Airport, you can find all your hotel, restaurant and airport information in our Mississauga-Brampton site at http://Mississauga.FoundLocally.com
Its Fall, and time for us to review and update our Top Five Lists. See them on the Recreation: Dining & Restaurants section. You can let us know if any restaurants should be added or removed from a list using the "Feedback" button at the top of a Top Five List's web page. You can propose a new themed Top Five list using the Restaurant Feedback Form at http://StJohns.foundlocally.com/Dining/RestaurantFeedback.asp If you want to rate any specific restaurant (or any business in the FoundLocally community directory), find its listing and click on the "Rating & Review" icon.
This recently-added feature provides YOUR OPPORTUNITY to comment on the businesses that you frequent. You can now post a great review for all your favourite spots, and share your experiences with others. Or you can complain about that ones that weren't so stellar. You can check out the 100 Most Recent Ratings and Reviews in your community at http://calgary.FoundLocally.com/Business/View100Ratings.asp
To post a review, find the listing, using the Keyword search at the top of http://calgary.FoundLocally.com or on any city's home page, and post your Ratings and Reviews. Or, rebut a comment posted.
Each Rating posted earns you one entry to win an iPod Nano. You can post as many reviews as you want (subject to some restrictions). Contest ends Augsut 31, 2007. Contest open to all Canadian residents, other than Quebec residents, though anybody may post Ratings & Reviews.
The http://Oshawa.FoundLocally.com site covers the Oshawa and the Durham Region including the communities of Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Bowmanville, and Uxbridge. These are often considered "bedroom communities" in the Greater Toronto Area ("GTA"). The site also covers the nearby vacation & recreation areas including the Trent-Severn Canal & Kawarthas cottage country northeast of Oshawa, and the Quinte / Prince Edward County area to the east.
This site adds to FoundLocally's coverage of other communities in Southern Ontario, including Barrie-Muskoka, Niagara Falls, Hamilton Oakville-Halton, and Mississauga-Peel. See the ever-expanding coverage map on the FoundLocally home page
If you are traveling to the area east of Toronto, this is a great site for you. If you have friends who live there, please let them know about our new Oshawa-Durham site! And about the iPod contest, too.
We have just added a new feature for all FoundLocally Listings: Ratings & Reviews. Consumers can now post ratings (from 1 to 10) and reviews of any restaurant, store, or professional service. You can now post a great review for all your favourite spots, and share your experiences with others. (Or complain about that ones that weren't so stellar).
To review a business, go to their listing page, and click on the Post a Rating & Review icon to add one. Anybody can post reviews, though a business's Registered Contact is prevented from reviewing their own business.
We'll do a quick review for appropriateness & language, and activate the reviews--typically within a business day. Everybody can monitor all recently added reviews at http://Victoria.FoundLocally.com/Business/View100Ratings.asp Where one or more reviews exist (and the Ratings tab is blue) an average rating is calculated.
For the football fans, we've also posted the CFL home games schedules on the site…follow your favourite CFL team, linked from their city's home page.
FoundLocally/com Media Inc, publishers of the popular http://TransCanadaHighway.com website, Has announced a number of new features in its online itineraries for the "longest national highway in the world," running 7,821 km (4,860 mi.) from end to end.
The site has posted details on over 3500 points of interest along the highway. Itineraries include helpful overview information to help with planning and enjoying your trip. Unlike other travel sites focused on just the cities, this site integrates history & First Nations, geology & geography, flora & fauna information on http://TransCanadaHighway.com (no "www" needed!). Now you can be the Travel Trivia champion your next Canadian vacation!
The Trans-Canada is broken into forty handy 150-250 kilometre segments, between major communities with gas, services, and accommodation .Travelers can plan their routes by combining 2-4 segments per day of travel, depending on sightseeing, breaks with children, road conditions, or changing daylight hours.
We have added additional useful features to our http://transcanadahighway.com/general/itinerary.htm:
Segments are nicely "daisy chained" from one to the next, for virtual trip planning. The site includes major "branch" points like between Hope and Kamloops BC, talking the Toronto detour, visiting PEI, or taking one of two ferries from North Sydney to Newfoundland.
We've just rolled out a new "Web 2.0" look & feel with new features, simpler navigation, brighter colours, and cleaner forms.
We've dropped the $200 cost for Logos & Links, so all listings can now link to their websites. We now have enough advertising support, with almost a million monthly visitors, to afford to drop this annual charge for small businesses. You should update your listing, and add all your web clients to our directory.
We've made our listing tabs content sensitive, so they are a brighter colour when you & your clients post jobs, events, coupons and news to business listings. With the free Logos & Links, these also increase your Google PageRank by creating more links back to your web site. When you add clients, use the CONTACT tab to add one or more client contacts so they can update these tabs, so they can save money on traditional media & promotion, while improving your web marketing results.
And as they see the power of a more interactive website, there's more business for you!
Existing users
New listings
We've also added a Claim This Listing button so clients can start posting jobs, events, coupons and news to listings we've 'seeded' to the community database.
We've got a number of powerful features for larger/chain organizations, including cloning tools, and an Excel import feature. If you have a client who needs to add multiple locations to our site's directory, please phone or e-mail me for more information.
Mississauga.FoundLocally.com - Media Inc. has just launched a new community information portal catering to Mississauga and the suburbs just west of Toronto. The 7-year-old company now has 23 sites servicing major cities and communities across Canada from Victoria, BC to St John's, Nfld. FoundLocally sites consistently attract more than 12 million visitors a year.
FoundLocally.com Media Inc. has just launched a new community information portal, catering to Mississauga, Brampton and the Peel Region in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe region. The Mississauga site also includes lots of information about and relating to Toronto' Pearson International Airport, including the hospitality businesses, some of which are actually situated in the neighboring Etobicoke area of Toronto/
This adds to existing sites in the Toronto are, including Oakville.FoundLocally.com (Oakville, Burlington & Halton), Hamilton.FoundLocally.com, Niagara.FoundLocally.com (Niagara Falls & St Catharines), and Barrie.FoundLocally.com (Barrie, The Muskoka Region, and Georgian Bay from the Bruce Peninsula to Parry Sound.
FoundLocally's portal sites provide comprehensive information about each community including travel, entertainment, shopping, neighborhoods, sports, education and government. They are an excellent trip-planning resource for both business and leisure travelers. Site visitors can browse about a thousand pages of background information, pictures and maps about each community, and popular resources like weekly ski reports, movie show times and golf courses listings.
The sites also include a useful business directory where visitors can search for businesses by name, category, or location. The free business listings are entered by businesses themselves and they provide descriptions, contact details and other marketing information. FoundLocally.com is a popular marketing tool for small businesses often run from a home phone or cell phone, and therefore excluded from the phone directory. And once registered, businesses can post jobs, events, special offers and news announcements as part of their listings. This service is free and well suited to those businesses without a web site. Local businesses in the Mississauga area may add themselves by going to Mississauga.FoundLocally.com and clicking on "Free Listings."
The site earns its revenues from traditional web "banner advertising" and optional "Logos & Links" in the business directory, which combines a web site hot-link, placement priority before free listings, and logo placement on all listing pages, for a small annual fee. Significant discounts are given to non-profit groups, and to organizations with multiple establishments.
Communities now covered by the portal include: Victoria, Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Okanagan-Shuswap, Banff & The Rockies, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, Barrie-Muskoka, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, Oakville-Halton, Mississauga-Peel, Ottawa-Gatineau, Fredericton, Charlottetown, Halifax, and St John's.
About FoundLocally.com FoundLocally.com Media Inc. is a Calgary-based company that creates community information portals, and provides web design and web marketing services. It also runs TransCanadaHighway.com (about travel along the world's longest highway), and MovingInCanada.com (about relocations & real estate). The FoundLocally web sites are represented nationally by 24/7 RealMedia, the nation's largest interactive ad agency.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
We wish all our visitors and subscribers a "Happy Holiday", whether you choose to celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza or Festivus. We wish everyone a safe holiday and a prosperous 2007!
Over the holidays, we will be updating our Ski Reports daily at ../Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm. Our Movie Listings are always up-to-date with the current holiday releases at ../Entertainment/EntMovieTimes.htm, as are our Video / DVD Releases at ../Personal/GoodsVideoReview.htm for those who want to buy or rent their entertainment.
As well, over the last while we have updated our entire Business section of the site, with updated information on computers & software, as well as consumer electronics at ../Computers/index.htm and at ../Personal/index.htm, with lots of shoppers guides, how-to tips, and technical info for no-technical people. This should help with your last-minute holiday shopping, or with help you wisely use those very popular Gift Cards at lot of people are giving and receiving this year, and make the most of the electronic gift you have received.
Our Media section now includes all updated information about local radio stations (including addresses and phone numbers) so you can request your favourite songs to be played over the holiday-New Years break. We even have links to the latest TV program listings online (handy when you need to check from school or office). See ../Communications/Media.htm
Cheers!
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
FoundLocally has begun its weekly ski reports & snow conditions for resorts and ski hills across Canada. Since early November, hills in the Rockies have been open and ski hills across BC and some prairie communities are opening shortly.
FoundLocally's ski reports now cover 3457 slopes at 132 resorts in all provinces, and are updated each Thursday noon. This allows plenty of time for those planning long weekends or road trips, and they're updated daily over holidays.
See ../Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm
To access the ski reports, click on the FoundLocally community on the home page's map of Canada and click on the Ski Report link. The ski reports are linked with information about the ski hills themselves, as well as online reservations for linked lodging providers.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
FoundLocally has begun its weekly ski reports & snow conditions for resorts and ski hills across Canada. Since early November hills in the Rocky Mountains have been open, and ski hills across the Maritimes are opening this weekend or later this month. We'll be ready once your local hill is open!
FoundLocally's ski reports now cover 3457 slopes at 132 resorts in all provinces, and are updated each Thursday noon. This allows plenty of time for those planning long weekends or road trips, and they're updated daily over holidays.
See ../Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm
To access the ski reports, click on the FoundLocally community on the home page's map of Canada and click on the Ski Report link. The ski reports are linked with information about the ski hills themselves, as well as online reservations for linked lodging providers.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
FoundLocally.com Media Inc. has just launched two new community information portals catering to Hamilton and Oakville-Halton in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe region. The 6-year-old company now has 21 sites servicing major cities and communities across Canada from Victoria, BC to St John's, Nfld. FoundLocally sites consistently attract more than 12 million visitors a year.
The Hamilton.FoundLocally.com site covers the City of Hamilton as well as communities around it from Brantford south to Lake Erie. The Oakville.FoundLocally.com site covers the Halton Region and the municipalities of Burlington, Oakville, Milton and Georgetown, all of which are considered "bedroom communities" in the Greater Toronto Area ("GTA").
These two sites double the number of FoundLocally communities covered in Southern Ontario, adding to Niagara.FoundLocally.com, which covers the Niagara region on both sides of the Canada-US border and Barrie.FoundLocally.com, which covers the vast cottage country around Georgian Bay from the Bruce Peninsula, through the Trent-Severn Waterway, up to the Muskoka Lakes region.
FoundLocally's portal sites (http://FoundLocally.com) provide comprehensive information about each community including travel, entertainment, shopping, neighborhoods, sports, education and government. They are an excellent trip-planning resource for both business and leisure travelers. Site visitors can browse about a thousand pages of background information, pictures and maps about each community, and popular resources like weekly ski reports, movie show times and golf courses listings.
The sites also include a useful business directory where visitors can search for local businesses by name, category, or location. The free business listings are entered by businesses themselves and they provide descriptions, contact details and other marketing information. FoundLocally.com is a popular marketing tool for small businesses often run from a home phone or cell phone, and therefore excluded from the phone directory. And once registered, businesses can post jobs, events, special offers and news announcements as part of their listings. This service is free and well suited to those businesses without a web site. Local businesses in the each community may add themselves by clicking on "Free Listings" in their community's FoundLocally site.
The site earns its revenues from traditional web "banner advertising" and optional "Logos & Links" in the business directory, which combines a web site hot-link, placement priority before free listings, and logo placement on all listing pages, for a small annual fee. Significant discounts are given to non-profit groups, and to organizations with multiple establishments.
Communities now covered by the portal include: Victoria, Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Okanagan-Shuswap, Banff & The Rockies, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, Niagara Falls, Barrie-Muskokas, Hamilton, Oakville-Halton, Ottawa-Gatineau, Fredericton, Charlottetown, Halifax, and St John's.
We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our site visitors and newsletter subscribers a Happy Thanksgiving weekend!
The Fall marks the start of the Canadian hockey season (and the winding up of the Football season). We have the schedules for the major local teams, linked both on te right side of our local Winnipeg Blue Bombers CFL football schedule
If you do not want to receive these emails, we include an UNSUBSCRIBE link at the bottom of all our e-mails. Click it, enter your e-mail address, and you are removed.
We are cleaning up our lists, and removing all emails that have the following:
It's September, and almost Fall.
For many of you, you're going back to school, or your children are. We have the local school 2006-2007 calendars with all the holidays, and professional development days on our site, so you can plan vacations, field trips and /or day care for the coming months. See ../Education/LearnSchoolSchedule.htm
For those going back to school, keep in mind that FoundLocally is a first-rate educational resource, with well-researched and up-to-date local information, as well as photos and maps about communities across Canada. Educational use of text and images for assignments is permitted, as long as credit and/or link is given. See http://www.FoundLocally.com/ for all the communities. For those who haven't looked in a while, you'll notice we've added a few in Southern Ontario.
We have also updated our listings of Members of Parliament, with their office numbers (in Ottawa) and their local constituency office(s), so you can send them 'raves' or 'jeers' (we don't play any favourites!) by phone, fax or e-mail. See ../Local/Gov-FederalMPs.htm We have all elected officials in out Government & Politics section, at the municipal, school board, provincial and federal levels. See ../Local/Government.htm Let them know how you feel…we believe that our representatives make better decisions when they are informed about how the people who elected them (and would hopefully re-elect them) know how they feel. FoundLocally makes it easy!
Mark Ruthenberg
Gereral Manager
We have updated the site design, making it faster to load, especially on those using Mozilla browsers (about 15% of all users, now). This is our first major redesign in almost 2 years. Our new site makes many features easier to access, with similar features grouped closer together. Significantly, we made the business searches more accessible, placed it closer to our content, and made both the site search (content) and business search accessible on every page of the FoundLocally site. See http://Halifax.FoundLocally.com
For you the consumer, we moved the Shopping section above the Business section, and expanded the Consumer categories, which were grouped under one button on the left. Now Clothing & Fashion, Food & Groceries, Beauty & Grooming, Education & Learning, Consumer Goods & Services, and Pets & Animals each have their own left-hand menu button, and their own specific business search. We are continuing to add consumer information content for each of these areas.
We also made Autos the first option under Shopping, recognizing its importance to both consumers and advertisers. We have added significant consumer resources to this section, with over 250 pages of information per community. This new content covers
Thank you again, for all your feedback and your continued support & patronage.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
The Liberal minority government has fallen, and that means its time for a[nother] federal election. Keep a eye on FoundLocally for information about local candidates and their news & events. We'll also have links to all the major media outlets' election coverage too, so everything will be here in one spot:
../Local/Gov-FederalElection.htm (and for each community)
This age has current links and information about Canada's Parties, several of whom you may decide are either obscure or too regional in nature. We have links to their platforms, and their leaders, and in most cases to the candidates.
Needless to say it the nomination deadline is 21 days prior to the election date, so there's plenty of time to run -or this time of year, snowshoe! Our Elections information has links to Elections Canada, with the nomination forms and requirements.
Question of the Day: Wouldn't it be real interesting if the Bloc Quebecois would run in all ridings? Then people could once and for all if Quebec should leave, and the country no longer held up to Liberals (and the Bloc) spending money on our behalf to "keep Quebec"
We have added mapping to the listings information, using the address to pop to the appropriate MapQuest map for that business. It should be noted that since some businesses have posted two addresses, for example:
You can check up the latest and most complete golf course listings online at ../Sports/Rec-GolfCourses.htm.
If you are thinking about taking a golf vacation anywhere in Canada, we have links to FoundLocally golf listings across Canada. You can also use the links at the top of the page to book your accommodation for your golf vacation.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
We are getting lots of feedback from our visitors, making lots of suggestions for improving our site. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed like Santa must be this time of year, and it is certainly challenging trying to reply to everyone, not to mention work on the enhancements themselves.
We have now integrated the hotels listings on our site with the same global reservations engine and competitive pricing the airlines and travel agencies use. You can now not only search our listings in the travel section, but also check room rates and reserve your room right from our website! We have also integrated this feature with our http://www.TransCanadaHighway.com sister site for all hotels in each of the provinces and territories, and with our ski reports, ski hill listings & golf course listings for those planning a sporting vacation. See our hotels search at ../Travel/FindHotel.asp
The ski season is now upon us, and if your favourite ski hill is not yet open, we are pretty sure it won't be long before it is! We have all the latest weather and ski reports posted each Friday morning (for those of you who want to start their weekend early!) at h../Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm
We continue to improve our dining search and have added the major chains across Canada, including casual dining, fast food, food courts, and the popular coffee & donut chains. We continue to invite all other restaurants to add themselves to our Free Listings, and for consumers to nominate their favourite establishments for a themed Top Five List using our online form at ../Dining/RestaurantFeedback.asp
We have evolved in the past few years from being just a "community information site" to also having a great business directory, with many businesses and community groups not found in the phone company's directory. The other directories require a business phone line (typically $40 per month) to be listed, whereas FoundLocally welcome everybody. In recognition of the ever-improving depth of our Business Directory, we changed the link at the very top of our home page to "Business Searches" which links to a listing of all of our Search forms at ../Searches.htm
We have developed User Guides (brochures?) for specific audiences of our web site, including Teachers & Students,
Government & Politicians, and for Brand Managers and Chains. They provide tips for getting the most out of FoundLocally's web site. These are linked in PDF form from each city's home page, but are also viewed from our About FoundLocally page at ../General/index.htm We encourage you to pass these on to those you know could benefit.
Please use the Feedback Formon any page of the web site to contact us with your suggestions Thank you again for your support over the years.
Mark Ruthenberg,
General Manager
We are celebrating a doubling of traffic since the New Year, and are now able to accelerate the pace of content and feature development on our site based on user feedback:
1. Today is Voting Day!
It is the right & duty of every Canadian citizen to vote today, so if you want a say in how this country will be run, head down to your local polling place. If you are eligible to vote but not registered (and have not yet received a voter's card) head down with your photo ID, along with proof of citizenship and residence. For information about what the parties and candidates positions are, see our Elections coverage at ../Local/Gov-FederalElection.htm
Following the election, we will post election results to our site. We will update our listing of Members of Parliament at ../Local/Gov-FederalMPs.htm in FoundLocally's Local - Government section as soon as contact information & office assignments are made in the House of Commons (typically, this takes them 3-4 weeks). You can contact the newly elected (or re-elected) MPs in your area, and e-mail them with a single mouse-click!
2. Re-launch of TransCanadaHighway.com
We have had a lot of feedback on our sister web site about the Trans-Canada Highway, based on the 30,000 people a month who currently visit it.
Due to the level of spam we receive, we have removed our email address from our site, linking to our Site Feedback form instead. This form tells us what page on the site you are emailing us from, so we can react quicker to your suggested changes. We get 30-50 such messages a day and invite your feedback for continuing to improve our web site. See ../General/Feedback.asp
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
June 28th is the next Federal Election, and we have provided all-round information about the parties, the candidates and the leaders. We have also linked to each party's platform on their web sites, and the major news organizations. This information is linked from the Home page for each FoundLocally community.
../Local/Gov-FederalElection.htm
We have also done a major improvement to our MovingInCanada.com sister site, adding a lot of content about neighbourhoods across Canada, as well as "Quick Lists" of all the phone numbers and web sites you'll need when moving to (or in) a city. Also, if you, a friend, or colleague are in the relocation industry (home builder, realtor, mover, mortgage lender, property manager, etc), you should add yourselves to FoundLocally's free listings. You will be found on the MovingInCanada.com site as well as on FoundLocally.com. http://www.MovingInCanada.com
Last but not least, the much anticipated Harry Potter Film, "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" is out. Check out our weekly Movie Show times at ../Entertainment/EntMovieTimes.htm .
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
At 500 years old, St John's Newfoundland is Canada's oldest city and now FoundLocally.com's newest community information web site. This brings to four the number of Maritimes communities covered by 5 year old FoundLocally.com, which now attracts 6 million visitors a year with its coast-to-coast coverage.
Whenever movies are released in the middle of the week, as with week wit the much heralded Mel Gibson production "Passion of the Christ", we update the movie listings, as we have today. FoundLocally is your best source for movie information!
We have also updated our design for FoundLocally.com, which is mostly cosmetic (but wow!), but has built in a number of features enabling us to post updates to our site more efficiently.
We remind everybody involved with a community group, school, non-profit, club, association, or church, that you can have your organization added to our site's free listings and can then post your various events & fund-raisers as well as your ongoing volunteer opportunities. Another community service from FoundLocally.com. Just click on "Free Listings" to begin.
Thank you all for your support.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
We have had a lot of feedback over the past two months on the new functionality added in mid-July, and many of, quite frankly, found it overwhelming. We went back to the drawing board and looked at ways to simplify how people use our site, and made a couple of major changes.
REGISTERED USER LOGIN
Until now, there was no clear path for organizations updating their listing. For them, we have added a Login button, which also works for those who have posted resumes. We have also removed the "commercial" for Logos & Link advertising for those logging in. Businesses and community groups can use the Login button to post their events and jobs/volunteer opportunities, and even have their password emailed back to them.
CONVERTING EMAIL LINKS TO FEEDBACK FORMS
We have been inundated with spam and virus e-mails (which recently spiked at 5200 messages in a single day). Given how well we are spidered and registered with major search engines, we're not really surprised, but enough is enough! We have transferred out contact us email links to our existing feedback forms, which are directed to the right FoundLocally staff, and answered on a daily basis.
JOBS & RESUMES
Since people tend to post their resume once but come back for jobs listings more often, we mingled these two functions into one button.
NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
As a courtesy to our faithful subscribers, we have made the Unsubscribe function more explicit in our Subscribe process, and will add a link to it in our emails. We are also able to send formatted emails, with fonts and colours, as opposed to the plain text ones until now. We promise we won't get too fancy, to keep the emails quick to download and to read.
LASTLY, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
We have lots of great seasonal content in our Recreation-Festivals section, with Halloween information & tips for costumes and parties at http://Calgary.FoundLocally.com/Entertainment/Halloween.htm
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
We have just re-launched our http://www.TransCanadaHighway.com web site, with not only a new look & feel, but also with a new focus.
When we launched this domain four years ago, the idea was to develop a Canada-wide travel-focused site. It would also create awareness of FoundLocally by cross-promoting the two sites as FoundLocally expands to new cities, primarily along Canada’s major east-west highway. TransCanadaHighway.com now gets significant traffic because of its excellent general information about the country, including the recent addition of route itineraries.
We have re-designed our site to be more visual and to focus on the Trans-Canada Highway itself. We get lots of feedback from visitors and will continue to make significant additions over coming months, focusing on trip planning.
We’ve had a lot of e-mails from cyclists, and want to add cycling-specific information to this site. Things like hills, roadside camping, cycling prohibitions and detours. If you have anything you’d like to suggest, we’d love to hear from you!
On another note, local travel & hospitality businesses and groups that are listed in FoundLocally are automatically included in travel listings on TransCanadaHighway, so if you are not yet listed, please do so. Or let someone who should, know about it. Click on “Add Free Listings” in http://Charlottetown.FoundLocally.com to begin.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
Public Service & Non-Profits | 4 |
Accommodation | 14 |
Business | 54 |
Food & Beverage | 7 |
Health | 11 |
Home | 35 |
Shopping | 65 |
Travel | 3 |
Vehicle | 3 |
We are undergoing significant changes to improve the site dramatically for all users. Our site receives 10,000 visitors each day, which has changed the way that we -- and our visitors -- perceive our web site. Please let us know what you think of the changes, using the Feedback Form linked at the top of any page
NEW "MAGAZINE" LOOK
We realize that only a small proportion of our digital photographs get displayed on our site, and that few visitors grasp the range of editorial content (almost a thousand pages per city). We're showcasing these two elements into a magazine-like look on key pages of the site (Home, Local, Business, Shopping, Entertainment and Travel). We'll keep all the familiar quick links to key content on those pages, but move them the right.
SITE SEARCH MADE FASTER
The site search (at the top of each page) is getting over 4000 keyword searches a day, and is now split into two to speed it up. The first search scans local businesses (using the Name, Description and Products fields), and a second "tab" repeats the search on web site content. This halves search times, and showcases local businesses and community groups that have provided us their information.
Businesses may want to update their Description and Products/Brands to improve your search visibility. Click on "Add Free Listings" to add or edit your listing.
MAKE YOUR TOP FIVE LISTS SUGGESTIONS
Please help us update our various Top Five lists for restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. Which do you think are worthy of a "Top Five" ranking. A couple of guidelines: a) use a common "theme" b)provide a one-line reason for each business in the list and c) tell us how you want your name to be published (or not) as the author of the list. Use the Feedback Form.
MAKING RESUMES VISIBLE TO MORE EMPLOYERS
The Resumes will now be made accessible to ALL registered businesses and community groups, not just the Logo & Link advertisers. Job seekers will get noticed by a broader audience and this helps businesses and community groups find the best people faster. You can post or update your resume for both paid or volunteer positions using the "Post Your Resume" button at the top of any page.
THIRD PARTY EMAIL OPTION HELPS FOUNDLOCALLY
Advertisers have requested we add the ability to send third party advertiser emails to our newsletter subscribers. While this will provide a significant revenues for FoundLocally to support our mostly-free service, we want to make it an OPTION for our subscribers, who will receive no more than 2- 4 emails a month from third parties. We will also ensure the list is carefully monitored for potential abuse. PLEASE re-subscribe as your "donation" to FoundLocally!
Mark Ruthenberg
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