WHAT'S NEW?
SITE OF THE WEEK
We were at the Cape last weekend. Around here no one asks -- "Which Cape?" Even
people from Cape Neddick know I don’t mean Cape Canaveral or Cape Bretton or Cape
Horn. When a New Englander goes to "the Cape", it is always that crooked cranberry-covered
peninsula to the South called Cape Cod.
An enormous number of people go to the Cape. Veterans of Cape summers trade war
stories about who sat in traffic longest waiting to get over the Bourne or the
Sagamore bridge. Half the trip when I was a kid, took place in a crawling line
of cars within view of the bridges. For Massachusetts residents, the annual Cape
migration is practically required by state law. I spent my first dozen summers
at little cottages in the Falmouth area. My wife, brought up in Connecticut, summered
at Wellfleet. It was, I assume, all those summers that drove us both to settle
in Portsmouth near the sea.
It seems a little redundant now to drive through the heart of Boston and across
those mighty bridges and over the canal to see more ocean. Despite our 18 mile
coast vs. hundreds of miles of Cape Cod, it seems more crowded thanks to the long
wait at the bridge. It seems more commercial too, but isn’t. Where there used
to be humble weathered cottages loom mansions. Roadside berry and vegetable stands
have become malls. But it is the Cape, after all, and the urge to migrate – if
only for a weekend in the Spring – is still strong. The ocean is massive. The
sand is endless. The air is more briny. If you drive way up the hook and probe
deeper down the side streets, there are still wild places.
As we were getting ready for a quick trip, it occurred to me that not once, not
ever, have I explored Cape Cod online.
THE UP SHOT
It’s confusing. In two hours of surfing Google links under "Cape Cod" I never
found the ideal homepage. I guess I was hoping to find a single site that told
all – a guide to Cape news, travel, history, events, lodging, dining. I was hoping
for a central voice, a personality, a sage and witty, native Cape Codder to guide
me to the heartland. I imagined a character speaking for the region like the Wizard
spoke for Oz. No such luck.
Initial searches turned me over to a range of largely commercial web sites that
lacked in spirit what they lacked in data. The Cape is a pretty big place and,
like our own seacoast, each town has its own personality as diverse as Woods Hole
is from Provincetown. What Plato might have called the essence of "capeness" is
largely imaginary, I guess. The icons have all been reduced to bric-a-brac made
in China that you buy for 70% off at the Christmas Tree shop. It’s a swirling
mix of cliché images – shells, seagulls, lighthouses, pilgrims, sea captains and
shipwrecks, craggy bent trees and sandy dune beaches, lobster pot buoys, sailboats,
Kennedies, fishermen and of course, weathered capes.
What I was looking for was my grandfather’s camp with the back yard piled high
in discarded scallop shells, mucky eel grass and a pebbly dirt road. What I found
online were slick pix and real estate rates. Web sites were soft on culture and
hard on shopping. Commercially there’s even a Cape Cod Internet Council (www.capeinternet.org) comparable to our eCoast group.
On the positive side, there are a lot of good small web sites being built on
Cape Cod. Any place where you get an isolated intelligent population, you get
good web content. The meat is in the smaller independent sites rather than the
portals. But it can still be confusing. Visitors looking for specific data – places
to eat, places to buy crafts, where to surf real waves, parks and picnic spots
– will find their answers easily online. Web users quickly seeking first-time
generic info have a trickier task. Caperestaurants.com, for example, is actually
the Yarmouth Restaurant Association. Many of the portals have spotty data or link
only to advertising or member businesses.
THE WEB SITE MAKERS
Certainly there are great sites I didn’t find, but the point here was to look
quickly and to see what comes up in the first 100 Google offerings. It wasb’t
always clear who runs these sites or what their motivations are. Here’s what floated
to the top.
eCape
An interesting collection of thematic web sites, each with its own URL and slick
graphics. Besides the tourism component (listed below) there are also business,
real estate, shopping, auto and newsy sections – each with their own domain name.
This was the only web site we saw advertised along the highway.
CapeCod.com
Locally owned portal site. Small classified ads section. Small photo
gallery. Dining, lodging and other listings draw from Yahoo Get Local.
Cape Cod Online
The best place if you only have time for one site. A service of Cape Cod Times
out of Hyannis. Nicely designed with daily news and effective archive search.
Good events calendar and classifieds. Superb community overview with easy-to-understand
maps, town and school guides.
All Cape Cod
A "celebration" of cape cod. Some events in a handy calendar format.
Good number of outside links and works like a regional search engine. Small
town guide
Cape Cod Chamber
There are at least 20 chambers of commerce on the cape that you can search separately.
This is a centralized chamber web site. Nice clickable accommodations lets you
click on region, then on type of lodging. Top vacation planning buttons are too
small and makes navigating confusing until you find them. Food events section
and good for wedding and vacation planning.
Cape Cod Life
Cape Cod Magazine
Cape Cod Magazine and Cape Cod Life are great publications. The web sites, however,
are merely an ad for the print publication. No other info.
Cape Code Travel
Created by the free "Best Read" advertising guides. There is a lot of
data here, but the web site takes a long time to reload. The click-down
menus can be confusing and obtrusive. Lots of links in Things To Do.
Virtual Cape Cod
Quick easy town guide for first-timers. Interesting feture on Thoreau’s
Cape Cod. Some good outside links, but not all are clickable. Search
box on home page is a good place to start.
Cape Links
Search for links town to town or category or use Word search box.
Cape Search
Good workable search engine with lots of data.
Cape Cod Search
And one more with what looks like a good database.
Click Cape Cod
I couldn’t figure this one out quickly. First click on your search
subject, then on a town, the instructions say, but my searches didn’t
turn up much.
Cape Cod Visitors Directory
An independent site, but with an interesting graphical homepage that is easy
to understand. Visually the most appealing, but not always the deepest data.
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