| At
Large Business Briefs Cartoons District Court Report Editorial Gone Fishin' Letters to the Editor Real Estate Transactions Sports Sports Highlights |
| Art Bestsellers Dance Edibles Film In Print Music Theater |
| This
Week's Happenings Save
That Date Ongoing Events Groups Libraries Museums and Tours Children's Resources Hotlines 12-Step Programs Religious Services Volunteer Opportunities |
| Achievements Astrology Birds Births Community Shorts Dean's List Engagements Garden Notes Honor Roll Obituaries Off North Road Short Subjects Town Meetings Visiting Vet Weddings |
| Aquinnah Chilmark Edgartown Oak Bluffs Tisbury West Tisbury |
The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
May 26 - June 1, 2005 Edition
Web
Comments
- Email Submissions
Tough going The Martha's Vineyard Times May 26, 2005 By Doug Cabral We are about to add a feature to The Times web site, www.mvtimes.com. We’ve been working on it for a while, but you know how computer technology is — this is not compatible with that, you need a different cable, now there’s a new version of the software you bought a month ago, when you activate the new thing all the old things that have been working just fine stop working. That’s the way it’s gone. The whole web site business is frustrating, really. Over the years, The Times site, like the software that runs it and the hardware it runs on, has gone through several generations. Our first site, designed by Todd Cleland of Oak Bluffs, a very talented graphic artist and self-taught computer geek, delighted all of us, worked very well, was simple and functional, and pleased the visitors, but its content was limited. With the next generation, we wanted to do more with the site, make it a complete newspaper as well as a hub for information, community interaction (as if the community’s members aren’t already interacting more than may be good for them) and commerce. So, we hired a California outfit to design and build the new vision. It had a California price tag and an ahead-of-its-time air about it, and it won the prize for best web site from the New England Press Association. But lots of visitors hated it, there were more bugs than bits, and eventually, exhausted and disillusioned, we said, enough. That Left Coast wave had just washed over us and left us gasping for air on the beach. Then our web mistress slash editorial cartoonist Karen MacKay redesigned and rebuilt the site to be another NEPA prizewinner, this time with the whole paper posted every week, plus features of all sorts — and I’m talking about features that work. Still, there are a few more things we’d like to do, so we’ve made a new plan, which will be hatched upon you all in a few months. In the meantime, nearly 23,000 visitors stopped at mvtimes.com this week (more than 20,000 visit every week), so we thought we’d add this new feature. It’s a camera, perched on the widow’s walk on The Times building and overlooking Vineyard Haven Harbor. We thought it would be fun for visitors to the site to see the ferries come and go, watch the growing standby line, and handicap the fights that develop between exasperated standby drivers and their colleagues in the queue. Tony Omer, our techno-wiz, has been sorting out the software-hardware-cabling issues for a while, and last week he dangled from the railing on the rooftop to hammer the camera into place. Carefully, of course. While we wait for the first images to appear on the site, I’ve been monitoring activity, as seen by the Times web-cam. And right away, I can see a big problem. The problem is, it’s all gray. Everything’s gray, and the lens is drenched. I’m surprised the camera hasn’t blown off the roof. The weather for the past two months has been gray and wet, and the camera, speaking truth to power, tells it like it is. The only thing lively that our new web-cam has observed is the relentless easterly surf rolling carelessly ashore from Vineyard Haven’s outer harbor day after day. The best web-cam views these past few weeks have been at night. Oh, now and again I see a wind- and rain-lashed Islander, his face a crabbed, wincing mask of depression, clutching his hat and scurrying from his car to the Steamship Authority office, no doubt looking for a reservation off-Island. I’m thinking, nobody paying a virtual visit to the site from off-Island and seeing the web-cam view of the Island paradise in May is going to want to pay us an actual visit. It’s not yearning that the camera inspires, it’s pity: Those poor people, doesn’t the sun ever shine on Martha’s Vineyard? Honey, I think the Vineyard may be too depressed to visit this year. This web-cam thing may be another one of those high-tech excursions into the possibilities of the virtual world that just goes horribly, maddeningly wrong. We’ve been there before. |
|||
| Send this page to a friend: | |||
|
©The
Martha's Vineyard Times 2005 - www.mvtimes.com
|
|||
