Downtown Elgin Blog Celebrates 2nd Anniversary

Oops, March 11th was the second anniversary for the Downtown Elgin blog. We have been so consumed by upgrades to our other web tools that the two year mark slipped under the radar.

The blog may have been suffering from the classic sophomore slump but the junior year looks promising. Several changes are in store for 2007. A move to the New Blogger along with a new layout. The blog will see a content shift to news flashes and follow up stories, rather than event listings, as features such as the Upcoming.org calendar feed and news feeds are now on the web site.

Speaking of changes, here is the update schedule for the Downtown Neighborhood Association web tools.

• The April/May Newsletter was published on April 9th with a new look.
• The popular Downtown Elgin Top 10 List format will be updated in May.
• downtownelgin.org will receive a well deserved makeover this summer.
• The blog changes will appear before the leaves fall.

Click here to be added to the weekly Top 10 List or the Newsletter mailing list.

Downtown Elgin Blog on the Front Page of the Courier News

New media profiled on old media, "Elgin wired up on the Web". The Downtown Elgin and Elginite blogs were on the front page of the Monday, October 16th Courier News. I was interviewed by Kent Green several weeks ago. It's good to see the story, but I didn't expect the placement it got.

Nothing like vistors to inspire you to straighten up. My posting has been very light lately.

How Far Does Our Web Presence Reach?

The Internet exposes life in Elgin, IL to the world. The vast majority of visitors to the DNA's web site and blog are from the Fox Valley but every week there are hits from other states and other countries. Today I took note of a visitor from Cote d'Ivoire. Now it has been many years since my last geography test but I still recognize most countries listed in the log but this one stood out so I did a quick Google search to enlighten me. These are the facts on Cote d'Ivoire according to the CIA. Go to the link for all the details.

Cote d'Ivoire
Location: Western Africa, bordering the North Atlantic Ocean, between Ghana and Liberia
Area - Comparative: slightly larger than New Mexico
Climate: tropical along coast, semiarid in far north; three seasons - warm and dry (November to March), hot and dry (March to May), hot and wet (June to October)
Terrain: mostly flat to undulating plains; mountains in northwest
Elevation extremes: lowest point: Gulf of Guinea 0 m highest point: Mont Nimba 1,752 m
Natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, diamonds, manganese, iron ore, cobalt, bauxite, copper, gold, nickel, tantalum, silica sand, clay, cocoa beans, coffee, palm oil, hydropower
Population: 17,654,843
Note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2006 est.)
Economy - overview: Cote d'Ivoire is among the world's largest producers and exporters of coffee, cocoa beans, and palm oil. Consequently, the economy is highly sensitive to fluctuations in international prices for these products and weather conditions.

Now if I had studied French it wouldn't have taken me until this point for the light bulb to go off and to realize that Cote d'Ivoire was formerly known as the Ivory Coast. The Google translation is Dimension Ivory, so maybe someone that did study French can comment on the translation.

If the person who viewed our site from Cote d'Ivoire happens to read this, please post a comment so we know the circuitous (I had to use the dictionary for this one) path that lead you to us.

Anyone else who uses the web to keep up with What's Happening Here or just happened to land here, please post a comment to let us know where you are located and what you were looking for.
It would interesting to hear from our regular visitors from Arizona, France and Texas.

The Downtown Elgin Blog is Back

We were identified as a Spam Blog by Bloggers automated system and have been out of commission since Friday. A human finally reviewed the blog and gave it the OK to go back online. See the email from Blogger below:

Hi there,
Thanks for writing in. It seems that your blog was mistakenly targeted by our automated spam classifying system. However, I have checked your blog and can verify that it complies with our Terms of Service. I was able to restore it to your account, so you should see it the next time you log in. I also whitelisted it so that this problem will not recur. Note that you will need to republish your blog in order for it to be visible online again. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue has caused.

Sincerely,
Sarah
Blogger Support

Thank you Sarah. I was feeling like Dave in 2001 A Space Odyssey. "Sorry Dave, I can't do that."

Downtown Blog Is One Year Old

The first posting on the downtown blog was on March 11, 2005. It has been a learning experience with many rewards. A year ago many in the community didn't know what a blog was. Now, the blog has become the source for downtown information. It has enhanced the presence of downtown Elgin in internet search engines. We have been able to rapidly add new features such as a community calendar, mapping and photo sharing.

In year two we will be moving many of the side bar features to a revamped web site while shifting the focus of the blog to downtown stories and coverage of events. I look forward to another year of posts and comments.

New Features on Downtown Elgin Blog

Several new features and changes have occurred during the past week.

• RSS subscription buttons moved to the top of the side panel
• In The News section added for links to newspaper articles
• Calendar section added with downtown events from upcoming.org and links to the City of Elgin and Elgin Area Chamber calendars
• Photos from Flickr section shows the three most recent pictures
• A Google map from Communitywalk.com with downtown points of interest. A limited number of locations have been entered, more to come.
• A Google map from ATMLocator with ATM locations in the downtown

The Flickr photos and Google maps appear at the very bottom of the page if you are using Internet Explorer (IE) but work correctly in Firefox. We're working on this issue.

Blogging Seminar

A seminar on blogging was held at the Gail Borden Public Library on August 11th. The presenters were: Steve Munson (Downtown Elgin), Rick Sopha (The Elginite) and Mike Kemmler (CMLNow, FCCMission). Sixteen people came out to learn about blogging. We created a blog during the presentation and demonstrated mobile blogging by taking a photo of the audience and posting it using a camera phone. The presentation materials are available at the Downtown Tech blog.

New Elgin Blog with Several Downtown Posts

I found a link to The Elginite on the Elgin Wiki. Several downtown posts are listed below:

Fountain Square layouts
Spiess building update
New concert hall
Harvest Market

The site has a clean design and excellent photos, especially the header photo of Douglas Ave facades.