At Large : Again, with extra oomph, a new mvtimes.com
By Doug Cabral
Published: August 6, 2009
Moving on down the trail toward online apotheosis, The Martha's Vineyard Times website, mvtimes.com, sheds the skin with which visitors are familiar and introduces its new self. With some special oomph we think you'll come to love.
Today, the mvtimes.com you've adored for years has become the mvtimes.com you won't be able to do without. We've tinkered relentlessly with the site, as you know. But, at heart, it was always a print newspaper's website, including everything published in the paper, and a few fun web-a-licious features tacked on.
But, that was then. Now, mvtimes.com is many times bigger than it was, still complete with everything that appears in the print paper, still including the features you like - As You See It, Comment, Buy Photos, Archives, the Store - but easier to navigate, and full of information that's categorized and cross-referenced, searchable any way you want to search. It's a full-featured gal, with an amiable disposition and a matchless determination to be helpful.
Want a restaurant in Oak Bluffs with reasonable prices and a kids menu? Search and you shall find. See what it looks like. Look at a map to see how to get there. And, if the restaurant offers the service, make a reservation, online, right now.
Want a kayak rental, a horseback ride, a sailboat charter? Search and you'll find it, with all the information you'll need to decide whether this is the activity for you.
Want to listen to a kick-ass band, or attend a fun and appealing fundraise? Search and you'll find it. Click, and you'll have your ticket.
Stuck in your car in Woods Hole, rushing along in the fast ferry from Manhattan, hurrying along the street in Boston trying to get out of town before the Vineyard-bound traffic wrecks your chance to make the boat - fire up that Blackberry or iPhone, or whatever PDA you fancy, find a restaurant in Edgartown that serves prawns, and reserve a table, and that special bottle of wine you've been dreaming about all day at the office.
Or, maybe you're heading to the Vineyard, but you haven't made any advance plans. Where will you sleep? Not on the beach, we hope. A tycoon like you doesn't do that sort of thing any more. Maybe when you were a 20-year-old driving a cab in Vineyard Haven and rooming with 17 college buddies in a one-room cottage at Tisbury Great Pond, but not today. At mvtimes.com, on your PDA, you can find the hotel, inn, or bed and breakfast - the only one, as it turns out - that has a bed available.
Handy, don't you think?
The fully searchable business and services directory includes business descriptions in summary and detail. We are still loading listings, so if you're a business owner or operator, don't hesitate to call or email or stop by with fresh information about what you do. We'll be happy to have it.
There are maps and directions to all businesses and hot links to any business (restaurant, accommodation provider or other) that will take bookings online. You can even add social networking links to all business listings, including Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and who knows what else. And you can load up to 13 photos, video files, logos and virtual tours (slide shows). Plus, businesses may include long and short descriptions, menus for restaurants, and you can link to a chosen favorite online review site.
The new mvtimes.com Calendar of events, in collaboration with TicketsMV.com, will also link to the business listings of Island impresarios and to their events.
Visit the new mvtimes.com from your home computer, from the computer at work (if the boss doesn't mind) and now from your mobile phone. Everything - listings, phone numbers and web links - are live, searchable, and way cool.
We expect a variety of reactions to the changes we've built into the new mvtimes.com. When we upset settled habits and expectations, we know some of our faithful friends will wonder why. The answer is, because we can. We can keep the web site complete. We can make it more useful. We can add tons of information, some of which was available before but hard to get at and hardly inviting to use. We can answer lots of your questions with the new search functions and enrich those answers with editorial material from our archives, as well as new material prepared exclusively for online publication. We can let you know what's going on Island-wide, more quickly, more narrowly tailored to your interests, more comprehensively, and from wherever you are, using whatever communication device you favor.
We can, or, that is, mvtimes.com, in its new, latest virtual incarnation, can do all of this, without leaving out any of the stuff to which you've grown attached. And, for all those many prospective visitors, who may not have thought of mvtimes.com when they wanted to have one of their many questions about Martha's Vineyard answered, mvtimes.com can do that too.
Editors' Note: We don't know why he's resorted to all this peppy, heated up, with-it lingo. Maybe it's the promotional requirements of the subject. We've talked to him about it, and he's promised it won't happen again.
