Migration to Fusion Tables

Google Maps is increasingly wonky.
I’m seriously tinkering with Fusion Tables, not because it seems more reliable, but because it’s more current. Google has a way of letting their older, creakier products rust.

Here’s an image of what I’m seeing as I play with this:

Scary.

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Custom Header

I finally got around to designing a header for the website!
It’s a little cartoonish, but at least it’s not a generic fern leaf anymore.
Below are the work-in-progress designs.
I used Inkscape as the image editor (freeware).
I chose Poor Richard as the font despite the fact that it’s once been voted the 5th worst typeface of all time. Harsh.

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Meet Durham’s Newest Neighborhood Mailing List

Neighborhood: Stadium Heights
Current membership: 1

The moderator, Derrick, moved to Stadium Heights last June with his wife and found that there was an awesome community, but no mailing list.
Thanks to Kevin’s article last Monday though, he decided to go ahead and make one himself.
You go, Derrick!

If you live in or near Stadium Heights, why are you still reading this? Join already!

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RSS Feed Edit

Another visitor wrote in about RSS feeds displaying incorrectly. I can independently confirm this problem from where I’m sitting.

Despite being a very nice platform, WordPress can be buggy from time to time. This particular issue will not allow readers to view the full content of any given blog post from their reader, forcing them to visit the site.

So, this is a very long way of saying that this post is intended to test an adjustment I’ve made since the issue has been brought to my attention.

Carry on

:)

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A Word About Nomenclature

Thanks to a wonderful post at Bull City Rising, I have been getting unprecedented traffic this morning. With traffic, comes suggestions. Many suggestions.
It will take time to implement them all.
But hey, keep them coming. This is our city and I want this website to be the best it can be.

One visitor, Ben, let me know that:

“Listserv” is a patented electronic mail list app and probably none of these lists actually use it.

I have since changed every instance of “listserv” to “electronic mailing list.” It’s not nearly as punchy, but words matter.

Thanks Ben!

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Future Plans and Current Priorities

To do list:

  • I’d like to try to publicize this project in order to increase exposure to the most important demographic: Durhamites that are not yet connected via listservs electronic mailing lists. I’ll probably reach out to Bull City Rising (Done), The Independant Weekly, and The Durham News (Done) first. I would love to hear your ideas about how to get the word out.
  • A custom header would be nice. Done.
  • Address general ease-of-use issues. One example: a concise explanation of how to use the map needs to penned and placed in a prominent location, like directly under the map on the main page. Done.
  • I’d like to draw the neighborhoods that don’t yet have listservs electronic mailing lists (but probably should) to make it easier for someone to create it.
  • Create color-coded clickable links for each Partners Against Crime district just below the list of neighborhoods.
  • Broad neighborhood listserv electronic mailing list enrollment mixed with communication between neighborhoods may correlate with reduced crime. I’d like to study that using my map and publicly available crime data.
  • Something that would be really cool would be some way to dynamically/automatically obtain listserv electronic mailing list enrollment data so that I could relay that information here. That feature would be difficult and tedious to implement manually. Done.
  • In each neighborhood, I’d like to list links to blogs whose authors live within that neighborhood.
  • Desperately need a contact form. Done.
  • I got a savvy suggestion from the Splat Space listserv mailing list: offer advertising space to local realtors. Interested at the prospect.

For now, the number one priority is to complete the list of neighborhood pages available. I’m up to five or six, with ~60-70 more to go. oof.

What else could this website use?

Update: I accomplished the task of dynamically updating membership numbers for most listservs electronic mailing lists. Surprisingly, most of the issues come from the Google hosted listservs electronic mailing lists. Yet another reason to use Yahoo groups instead (and this is coming from a Google fanboy).

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Welcome!

durhamhoods.com is Live as of Saturday February 12, 2011.
Please bear with me as I construct this web page and continue working on the main map. Unfortunately most of the work will be relegated to weekends since my week days are already extremely full. Please leave a comment if you’d like to make a suggestion!
-Phil

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