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Robinson's Web Winners & Wieners

Winners and WienersSITE OF THE WEEK

Who's hot and who's not on the e-Coast in 2004? Don't worry, we won't name names. This week we'retrend tracking. Whcih groups and companies are making good use of the Internet. Who is processing information and who is sitting on their hands? Click on.

We are approaching, gentle reader, the 200 th consecutive essay in this web site series. I have penned enough words to fill four mystery novels and burned enough midnight oil to fill a small tanker. Four years ago people openly questioned whether I could possibly come up with a new web site to review every week. It was never hard. The Web has become as much a part of American life as cereal in the morning and television in the evening.

I did meet one woman recently who told me that she has no place for the Internet in her life. She prefers books. She doesn’t watch TV either. There just isn’t much online that she finds interesting, she said disdainfully as if speaking about something that crawled out from underneath the linoleum. I imagine there were similar people in the Dark Ages who had a similar abhorrence for books.

I can say with confidence after covering the local Web scene these last four years that we really live in the "e-Coast". There are more companies and groups and individuals with web sites per capita here than elsewhere. We just spent a week in Victoria, British Columbia, a city of 300,000, and the place is still in the web stone age. But Seacoast New Hampshire has been and remains on the cutting edge of the web site world.

Off the top of my spinning head, here are the best and worst groups online locally.

THE WINNERS

Newspapers
More and more of us are getting our news online. That says a lot for newspapers since they, more than anyone, are being threatened by digital communication. Futurists predict that the printed page will simply fade away as the GameBoy generation grows up. News online is free and instantaneous. It doesn’t eat up trees or have to be recycled. Nobody has figured out how to make real money delivering news online and yet national and local newspaper companies continue to serve up great reporting seven days a week.

The Tourism Industry
Restaurants and lodging companies saw the Web coming miles away. Most of their sites are still simply "brochureware" but that is good enough. As travelers increasingly plan their itineraries online, nearly 100% of our local attractions can be found on the Web. When the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company started selling ferry tickets online last August, orders began flowing in instantly. The audience was already there just waiting to buy. Many small bed and breakfasts have literally been saved by guests who can now book in advance from anywhere in the world. Fewer are printing costly color brochures. While ordering pizza online has yet to catch on, just about everything else in this industry has.

Real Estate
Some of the worst web sites in the region belong to real estate agents, but that doesn’t matter. One report suggests that 87% of home buyers today begin their search online and the agents know they are as good as dead without a web site. Now that the multiple listings are available to everyone, the agent who does the deal is becoming more a matter of trust and convenience than a desperate necessity. When everyone is selling the same thing, customer service levels rise. One of my relatives just sold her summer camp for a tidy sum just by putting a few photos online. Offers poured in without anyone hammering a "For Sale" sign into the lawn. .

Historians
Every day local independent historians are spackling in the gaps of our past. Thanks to Google, the most obscure pieces can be assembled into an increasingly coherent view of what early America was really like. Around here a cluster of dedicated researchers like Bill Teshek at Hampton’s Lane Library are making this material available to the online public. Nobody knows the impact this is having on increased preservation, more tourism, museum acquisition, genealogical study. No one knows, but I’m betting the impact is huge.

Artists
Creative types also came early to the Web, not just because they are comfortable with change, but because they are poor. Now every rock band, every painter, most writers and every single talented photographer is showing his or her wares online.

Towns
The great thing about small towns is that they generate a lot of numbers and the Internet loves numbers. Not every local town has its act online like Dover and Portsmouth, for example, but they are getting the message. Through web sites, town officials can reach most of their constituents with tax rates, big trash dates, minutes of meetings and office hours. I can renew my library books online. Eventually towns, like the IRS, will become increasingly interactive and, we can only hope, more efficient.

Web Designers
I truly believe, and I am totally biased, that this region has as many great web site developers as it has great restaurants. Having viewed thousands of local sites, I still never know what one of them will come up with next. In four years the web site business has evolved into a sophisticated and highly interconnected industry. Lots of the best designers are still working out of a spare bedroom, not because they’re bad, but because they like it that way. And increasingly the people hiring them don’t care. What matters is whether they can build sites that do communicate effectively.


THE WIENERS

Schools
When was the last time you read a great public school web site? I know kids are using the Web because I get email from them and their parents regularly. Every school seems to have its computer guru, but overall the public schools have missed the boat when it comes to utilizing the Internet with their students to produce top notch web sites. Now and again teachers like Sue Reynolds in North Hampton will inspire students to break free from the classroom. Her "Lighthouse Kids" convinced Senator Judd Gregg to find matching funds to preserve New Hampshire’s only offshore lighthouse (although no action has happened yet). This dynamic medium that could change young lives is still mostly used like an old cork bulletin board to display lunch menus, "best of" class work and the cast of the school play. Every kid in school should be encourage to publish web sites. The more they know about how the Web works, the more it will become a tool and not just a toy.

Lawyers and Doctors
Just imagine the knowledge trapped inside the brains of our well-paid legal and medical professionals. And there it sits. While we have some spiffy hospital and nonprofit medical web sites on the Seacoast, our best paid professionals don’t seem keen to share info online. And let’s not even talk about insurance companies, CPAs and other professionals. They must be too busy making money to share their wisdom with the world.

Chambers of Commerce
Our local chambers of commerce might have used the Internet to perform regional miracles. Not so. While they all have workable web sites, none has really tapped the power of online databases. Sure we can see a list of chamber members and tourists can get brochures online, but the potential of so many allied local companies has yet to be tapped for the public good. The same is true for philanthropic groups like Rotary, Lions, Elks, and so on. If they really want to make the world a better place, why aren’t they in cyberspace? It’s all about sharing information.

Commercial Radio
Talk about a black hole. The local radio industry has been sliced and diced into formulaic, computer-programmed, commercial-crammed corporate cash cows. While public radio stations like WBUR, WGBH and NH Public Radio have made incredible strides in online streaming and Internet programming, the commercial stations are DOA online. Most of the sites are as robotic as the music itself, run from the same central corporate office and as uninspired as the Web gets. Too bad the people who have the ear of our youth can only offer them dribble online. Good thing the FCC doesn’t require radio stations to be relevant.  

I did meet one woman recently who told me that she has no place for the Internet in her life. She prefers books. She doesn’t watch TV either. There just isn’t much online that she finds interesting, she said disdainfully as if speaking about something that crawled out from underneath the linoleum. I imagine there were similar people in the Dark Ages who had a similar abhorrence for books.

I can say with confidence after covering the local Web scene these last four years that we really live in the "e-Coast". There are more companies and groups and individuals with web sites per capita here than elsewhere. We just spent a week in Victoria, British Columbia, a city of 300,000, and the place is still in the web stone age. But Seacoast New Hampshire has been and remains on the cutting edge of the web site world.

Off the top of my spinning head, here are the best and worst groups online locally.

THE WINNERS

Newspapers
More and more of us are getting our news online. That says a lot for newspapers since they, more than anyone, are being threatened by digital communication. Futurists predict that the printed page will simply fade away as the GameBoy generation grows up. News online is free and instantaneous. It doesn’t eat up trees or have to be recycled. Nobody has figured out how to make real money delivering news online and yet national and local newspaper companies continue to serve up great reporting seven days a week.

The Tourism Industry
Restaurants and lodging companies saw the Web coming miles away. Most of their sites are still simply "brochureware" but that is good enough. As travelers increasingly plan their itineraries online, nearly 100% of our local attractions can be found on the Web. When the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company started selling ferry tickets online last August, orders began flowing in instantly. The audience was already there just waiting to buy. Many small bed and breakfasts have literally been saved by guests who can now book in advance from anywhere in the world. Fewer are printing costly color brochures. While ordering pizza online has yet to catch on, just about everything else in this industry has.

Real Estate
Some of the worst web sites in the region belong to real estate agents, but that doesn’t matter. One report suggests that 87% of home buyers today begin their search online and the agents know they are as good as dead without a web site. Now that the multiple listings are available to everyone, the agent who does the deal is becoming more a matter of trust and convenience than a desperate necessity. When everyone is selling the same thing, customer service levels rise. One of my relatives just sold her summer camp for a tidy sum just by putting a few photos online. Offers poured in without anyone hammering a "For Sale" sign into the lawn. .

Historians
Every day local independent historians are spackling in the gaps of our past. Thanks to Google, the most obscure pieces can be assembled into an increasingly coherent view of what early America was really like. Around here a cluster of dedicated researchers like Bill Teshek at Hampton’s Lane Library are making this material available to the online public. Nobody knows the impact this is having on increased preservation, more tourism, museum acquisition, genealogical study. No one knows, but I’m betting the impact is huge.

Artists
Creative types also came early to the Web, not just because they are comfortable with change, but because they are poor. Now every rock band, every painter, most writers and every single talented photographer is showing his or her wares online.

Towns
The great thing about small towns is that they generate a lot of numbers and the Internet loves numbers. Not every local town has its act online like Dover and Portsmouth, for example, but they are getting the message. Through web sites, town officials can reach most of their constituents with tax rates, big trash dates, minutes of meetings and office hours. I can renew my library books online. Eventually towns, like the IRS, will become increasingly interactive and, we can only hope, more efficient.

Web Designers
I truly believe, and I am totally biased, that this region has as many great web site developers as it has great restaurants. Having viewed thousands of local sites, I still never know what one of them will come up with next. In four years the web site business has evolved into a sophisticated and highly interconnected industry. Lots of the best designers are still working out of a spare bedroom, not because they’re bad, but because they like it that way. And increasingly the people hiring them don’t care. What matters is whether they can build sites that do communicate effectively.


THE WIENERS

Schools
When was the last time you read a great public school web site? I know kids are using the Web because I get email from them and their parents regularly. Every school seems to have its computer guru, but overall the public schools have missed the boat when it comes to utilizing the Internet with their students to produce top notch web sites. Now and again teachers like Sue Reynolds in North Hampton will inspire students to break free from the classroom. Her "Lighthouse Kids" convinced Senator Judd Gregg to find matching funds to preserve New Hampshire’s only offshore lighthouse (although no action has happened yet). This dynamic medium that could change young lives is still mostly used like an old cork bulletin board to display lunch menus, "best of" class work and the cast of the school play. Every kid in school should be encourage to publish web sites. The more they know about how the Web works, the more it will become a tool and not just a toy.

Lawyers and Doctors
Just imagine the knowledge trapped inside the brains of our well-paid legal and medical professionals. And there it sits. While we have some spiffy hospital and nonprofit medical web sites on the Seacoast, our best paid professionals don’t seem keen to share info online. And let’s not even talk about insurance companies, CPAs and other professionals. They must be too busy making money to share their wisdom with the world.

Chambers of Commerce
Our local chambers of commerce might have used the Internet to perform regional miracles. Not so. While they all have workable web sites, none has really tapped the power of online databases. Sure we can see a list of chamber members and tourists can get brochures online, but the potential of so many allied local companies has yet to be tapped for the public good. The same is true for philanthropic groups like Rotary, Lions, Elks, and so on. If they really want to make the world a better place, why aren’t they in cyberspace? It’s all about sharing information.

Commercial Radio
Talk about a black hole. The local radio industry has been sliced and diced into formulaic, computer-programmed, commercial-crammed corporate cash cows. While public radio stations like WBUR, WGBH and NH Public Radio have made incredible strides in online streaming and Internet programming, the commercial stations are DOA online. Most of the sites are as robotic as the music itself, run from the same central corporate office and as uninspired as the Web gets. Too bad the people who have the ear of our youth can only offer them dribble online. Good thing the FCC doesn’t require radio stations to be relevant.  

 

I did meet one woman recently who told me that she has no place for the Internet in her life. She prefers books. She doesn’t watch TV either. There just isn’t much online that she finds interesting, she said disdainfully as if speaking about something that crawled out from underneath the linoleum. I imagine there were similar people in the Dark Ages who had a similar abhorrence for books.

I can say with confidence after covering the local Web scene these last four years that we really live in the "e-Coast". There are more companies and groups and individuals with web sites per capita here than elsewhere. We just spent a week in Victoria, British Columbia, a city of 300,000, and the place is still in the web stone age. But Seacoast New Hampshire has been and remains on the cutting edge of the web site world.

Off the top of my spinning head, here are the best and worst groups online locally.

THE WINNERS

Newspapers
More and more of us are getting our news online. That says a lot for newspapers since they, more than anyone, are being threatened by digital communication. Futurists predict that the printed page will simply fade away as the GameBoy generation grows up. News online is free and instantaneous. It doesn’t eat up trees or have to be recycled. Nobody has figured out how to make real money delivering news online and yet national and local newspaper companies continue to serve up great reporting seven days a week.

The Tourism Industry
Restaurants and lodging companies saw the Web coming miles away. Most of their sites are still simply "brochureware" but that is good enough. As travelers increasingly plan their itineraries online, nearly 100% of our local attractions can be found on the Web. When the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company started selling ferry tickets online last August, orders began flowing in instantly. The audience was already there just waiting to buy. Many small bed and breakfasts have literally been saved by guests who can now book in advance from anywhere in the world. Fewer are printing costly color brochures. While ordering pizza online has yet to catch on, just about everything else in this industry has.

Real Estate
Some of the worst web sites in the region belong to real estate agents, but that doesn’t matter. One report suggests that 87% of home buyers today begin their search online and the agents know they are as good as dead without a web site. Now that the multiple listings are available to everyone, the agent who does the deal is becoming more a matter of trust and convenience than a desperate necessity. When everyone is selling the same thing, customer service levels rise. One of my relatives just sold her summer camp for a tidy sum just by putting a few photos online. Offers poured in without anyone hammering a "For Sale" sign into the lawn. .

Historians
Every day local independent historians are spackling in the gaps of our past. Thanks to Google, the most obscure pieces can be assembled into an increasingly coherent view of what early America was really like. Around here a cluster of dedicated researchers like Bill Teshek at Hampton’s Lane Library are making this material available to the online public. Nobody knows the impact this is having on increased preservation, more tourism, museum acquisition, genealogical study. No one knows, but I’m betting the impact is huge.

Artists
Creative types also came early to the Web, not just because they are comfortable with change, but because they are poor. Now every rock band, every painter, most writers and every single talented photographer is showing his or her wares online.

Towns
The great thing about small towns is that they generate a lot of numbers and the Internet loves numbers. Not every local town has its act online like Dover and Portsmouth, for example, but they are getting the message. Through web sites, town officials can reach most of their constituents with tax rates, big trash dates, minutes of meetings and office hours. I can renew my library books online. Eventually towns, like the IRS, will become increasingly interactive and, we can only hope, more efficient.

Web Designers
I truly believe, and I am totally biased, that this region has as many great web site developers as it has great restaurants. Having viewed thousands of local sites, I still never know what one of them will come up with next. In four years the web site business has evolved into a sophisticated and highly interconnected industry. Lots of the best designers are still working out of a spare bedroom, not because they’re bad, but because they like it that way. And increasingly the people hiring them don’t care. What matters is whether they can build sites that do communicate effectively.


THE WIENERS

Schools
When was the last time you read a great public school web site? I know kids are using the Web because I get email from them and their parents regularly. Every school seems to have its computer guru, but overall the public schools have missed the boat when it comes to utilizing the Internet with their students to produce top notch web sites. Now and again teachers like Sue Reynolds in North Hampton will inspire students to break free from the classroom. Her "Lighthouse Kids" convinced Senator Judd Gregg to find matching funds to preserve New Hampshire’s only offshore lighthouse (although no action has happened yet). This dynamic medium that could change young lives is still mostly used like an old cork bulletin board to display lunch menus, "best of" class work and the cast of the school play. Every kid in school should be encourage to publish web sites. The more they know about how the Web works, the more it will become a tool and not just a toy.

Lawyers and Doctors
Just imagine the knowledge trapped inside the brains of our well-paid legal and medical professionals. And there it sits. While we have some spiffy hospital and nonprofit medical web sites on the Seacoast, our best paid professionals don’t seem keen to share info online. And let’s not even talk about insurance companies, CPAs and other professionals. They must be too busy making money to share their wisdom with the world.

Chambers of Commerce
Our local chambers of commerce might have used the Internet to perform regional miracles. Not so. While they all have workable web sites, none has really tapped the power of online databases. Sure we can see a list of chamber members and tourists can get brochures online, but the potential of so many allied local companies has yet to be tapped for the public good. The same is true for philanthropic groups like Rotary, Lions, Elks, and so on. If they really want to make the world a better place, why aren’t they in cyberspace? It’s all about sharing information.

Commercial Radio
Talk about a black hole. The local radio industry has been sliced and diced into formulaic, computer-programmed, commercial-crammed corporate cash cows. While public radio stations like WBUR, WGBH and NH Public Radio have made incredible strides in online streaming and Internet programming, the commercial stations are DOA online. Most of the sites are as robotic as the music itself, run from the same central corporate office and as uninspired as the Web gets. Too bad the people who have the ear of our youth can only offer them dribble online. Good thing the FCC doesn’t require radio stations to be relevant.  

 

I did meet one woman recently who told me that she has no place for the Internet in her life. She prefers books. She doesn’t watch TV either. There just isn’t much online that she finds interesting, she said disdainfully as if speaking about something that crawled out from underneath the linoleum. I imagine there were similar people in the Dark Ages who had a similar abhorrence for books.

I can say with confidence after covering the local Web scene these last four years that we really live in the "e-Coast". There are more companies and groups and individuals with web sites per capita here than elsewhere. We just spent a week in Victoria, British Columbia, a city of 300,000, and the place is still in the web stone age. But Seacoast New Hampshire has been and remains on the cutting edge of the web site world.

Off the top of my spinning head, here are the best and worst groups online locally.

THE WINNERS

Newspapers
More and more of us are getting our news online. That says a lot for newspapers since they, more than anyone, are being threatened by digital communication. Futurists predict that the printed page will simply fade away as the GameBoy generation grows up. News online is free and instantaneous. It doesn’t eat up trees or have to be recycled. Nobody has figured out how to make real money delivering news online and yet national and local newspaper companies continue to serve up great reporting seven days a week.

The Tourism Industry
Restaurants and lodging companies saw the Web coming miles away. Most of their sites are still simply "brochureware" but that is good enough. As travelers increasingly plan their itineraries online, nearly 100% of our local attractions can be found on the Web. When the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company started selling ferry tickets online last August, orders began flowing in instantly. The audience was already there just waiting to buy. Many small bed and breakfasts have literally been saved by guests who can now book in advance from anywhere in the world. Fewer are printing costly color brochures. While ordering pizza online has yet to catch on, just about everything else in this industry has.

Real Estate
Some of the worst web sites in the region belong to real estate agents, but that doesn’t matter. One report suggests that 87% of home buyers today begin their search online and the agents know they are as good as dead without a web site. Now that the multiple listings are available to everyone, the agent who does the deal is becoming more a matter of trust and convenience than a desperate necessity. When everyone is selling the same thing, customer service levels rise. One of my relatives just sold her summer camp for a tidy sum just by putting a few photos online. Offers poured in without anyone hammering a "For Sale" sign into the lawn. .

Historians
Every day local independent historians are spackling in the gaps of our past. Thanks to Google, the most obscure pieces can be assembled into an increasingly coherent view of what early America was really like. Around here a cluster of dedicated researchers like Bill Teshek at Hampton’s Lane Library are making this material available to the online public. Nobody knows the impact this is having on increased preservation, more tourism, museum acquisition, genealogical study. No one knows, but I’m betting the impact is huge.

Artists
Creative types also came early to the Web, not just because they are comfortable with change, but because they are poor. Now every rock band, every painter, most writers and every single talented photographer is showing his or her wares online.

Towns
The great thing about small towns is that they generate a lot of numbers and the Internet loves numbers. Not every local town has its act online like Dover and Portsmouth, for example, but they are getting the message. Through web sites, town officials can reach most of their constituents with tax rates, big trash dates, minutes of meetings and office hours. I can renew my library books online. Eventually towns, like the IRS, will become increasingly interactive and, we can only hope, more efficient.

Web Designers
I truly believe, and I am totally biased, that this region has as many great web site developers as it has great restaurants. Having viewed thousands of local sites, I still never know what one of them will come up with next. In four years the web site business has evolved into a sophisticated and highly interconnected industry. Lots of the best designers are still working out of a spare bedroom, not because they’re bad, but because they like it that way. And increasingly the people hiring them don’t care. What matters is whether they can build sites that do communicate effectively.


THE WIENERS

Schools
When was the last time you read a great public school web site? I know kids are using the Web because I get email from them and their parents regularly. Every school seems to have its computer guru, but overall the public schools have missed the boat when it comes to utilizing the Internet with their students to produce top notch web sites. Now and again teachers like Sue Reynolds in North Hampton will inspire students to break free from the classroom. Her "Lighthouse Kids" convinced Senator Judd Gregg to find matching funds to preserve New Hampshire’s only offshore lighthouse (although no action has happened yet). This dynamic medium that could change young lives is still mostly used like an old cork bulletin board to display lunch menus, "best of" class work and the cast of the school play. Every kid in school should be encourage to publish web sites. The more they know about how the Web works, the more it will become a tool and not just a toy.

Lawyers and Doctors
Just imagine the knowledge trapped inside the brains of our well-paid legal and medical professionals. And there it sits. While we have some spiffy hospital and nonprofit medical web sites on the Seacoast, our best paid professionals don’t seem keen to share info online. And let’s not even talk about insurance companies, CPAs and other professionals. They must be too busy making money to share their wisdom with the world.

Chambers of Commerce
Our local chambers of commerce might have used the Internet to perform regional miracles. Not so. While they all have workable web sites, none has really tapped the power of online databases. Sure we can see a list of chamber members and tourists can get brochures online, but the potential of so many allied local companies has yet to be tapped for the public good. The same is true for philanthropic groups like Rotary, Lions, Elks, and so on. If they really want to make the world a better place, why aren’t they in cyberspace? It’s all about sharing information.

Commercial Radio
Talk about a black hole. The local radio industry has been sliced and diced into formulaic, computer-programmed, commercial-crammed corporate cash cows. While public radio stations like WBUR, WGBH and NH Public Radio have made incredible strides in online streaming and Internet programming, the commercial stations are DOA online. Most of the sites are as robotic as the music itself, run from the same central corporate office and as uninspired as the Web gets. Too bad the people who have the ear of our youth can only offer them dribble online. Good thing the FCC doesn’t require radio stations to be relevant.  

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