Alex Reid

It’s been exactly 137 months (11 years and 5 months) since I started up newwinnipeg.com but now it’s time to move on to bigger and brighter things as the goodbye and thank you note, here, states.

I’ve learned a lot about public engagement, and the problems with anonymity in this type of forum, and I believe the moderators did too (who shall remain anonymous along with the rest of the community).

The timing to close the web site has been way overdue, partly due to branding confusion between the business (.net) and the community (.com), partly a liability concern but mostly because it was too time consuming; the moderators and myself are entering our mid-thirties and forties. We have other projects that we would rather spend our time on.

I know some people will be sad, maybe even disappointed but it should go without saying that they are free to take on the torch and maintain a web site for the next decade. Much like being a politician, it’s a thankless job, but the stories told and the experiences we had were well worth it.

Thank you Winnipeg!

New Winnipeg Media turned 9 years old on Saturday and we celebrated the evening at the Yellow Dog Tavern in Downtown Winnipeg.

Big thanks to all those who showed up on Saturday night to celebrate with us.

I was a bit surprised when I learned that I reached a limit on my YouTube account’s ‘favourites’ (a collection of both witty, funny and/or tasteless videos). I was surprised that you could have a million subscribers in, but you couldn’t give props out to over 500 by way of linkage.

One more reason to have one’s own web site; I’ll just bookmark my favourites here.

Google seems to pull out a new rabbit out of its lab every week.

Google has setup yet another brill project called the Co-op Custom Search Engine which allows you to customize your own search engine by choosing what will be indexed.

The idea is for organizations or people who want to organize a viewpoint or simply to catalogue resources. Adverts are shown in the search results. However, you can host the search box and search engine results on your own website, preserving branding.

For me, it’s a lifesaver in my web searching. I’ve created a private engine that only searches the web bookmarks and resources of my choosing. The sheer size of links and picky categories in the bookmark memory of all my different web browsers.. is so overwhelming, it’s difficult for me to sort through my resources. This way, I can quickly refer to all of those sites (of which many are search engine friendly) looking for related information.

Pretty handy.

As a beta, I setup a ‘Winnipeg Search Engine‘.

A nice individual choice, instead of censorship by consensus.

.. with concrete, that is.

Skatepark West will be the latest skatepark to be built in St. James (Winnipeg), funded in part by the $43 million Recreation and Leisure Facility Enhancement Program – the provincial and city funding intended originally for the Rapid Transit concept.

The residents in the area who founded and supported their own “Skatewest Park Committee” deserve the due credit, especially for raising about $53,000 themselves for the park.

It will be completed in the spring of 2007.