street address and shopping mall name
Click on the "Map It!" feature beside the street address to generate the appropriate map.
The map is in a pop-up window so you can still review the other business information on your FoundLocally screen while checking the map
Golf Season is Upon Us!
You can check up the latest and most complete golf course listings online at http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/Sports/Rec-GolfCourses.htm.
If you are thinking about taking a golf vacation anywhere in Canada, we have links to FoundLocally golf listings across Canada, and you can even use the links at the top of the page to book your accommodation.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
Previous FoundLocally newsletters:
March 18, 2005 FoundLocally.com Newsletter
NEW NIAGARA FALLS SITE LAUNCHED
I am proud to introduce to you our new web site for the Niagara Falls area, our first in Southern Ontario. I invite you to visit our web site at http://Niagara.FoundLocally.com This site is unique, compared to all other resources for the region in that it covers both Ontario & New York sides of the Niagara Region.
Like all the other FoundLocally communities, it also has about a thousands pages with photos, maps, and details about shopping, business, travel, sports, entertainment, and local information. In the Niagara site, we also include information about golf courses, wineries, the historic Welland and Erie canals, the Bruce Trail, and the unique geology of the region. When thinking about Niagara Falls, why look anywhere else?
FoundLocally.com now provides content for other cities (from west to east): Victoria, Fraser, Fraser Valley, Okanagan, Banff & Rockies, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Ottawa , Fredericton, Charlottetown, Halifax and St John's. See these at http://www.FoundLocally.com
VACATION PLANNING TIPS
If you are planning your summer vacation, think of FoundLocally.com. There are two recently added features of interest to our visitors:
1) FoundLocally sites now include links to hotel reservations, making it convenient to planning your travel arrangements Our Hotel Search in each city is the best filter anywhere for finding the right hotel, with the features you really want, whether it's a pool, room service, even if they allow travel with pets. There's a handy search by area on most Travel section pages for each community.
2) The http://www.TransCanadaHighway.com site has a handy downloadable PDF route itinerary for those planning to travel across Canada. It's the first part of an upcoming book based on the web site, and we welcome your feedback. All we ask is that you provide us contact information so we can let you know when the book is our. We are already seeing almost 200 downloads a month!
SMALL BUSINESS LOVES OUR SITE!
If you know a small business, like one run from home, or an independent contractor growing their business from their cell phone, FoundLocally is perfect for them. Unlike with the Phone Company's directory, they do not need a business line t o get listed, and unlike the Internet search engines, they don't even need a web site. It's the best of all worlds! They can click on "Free Listings" on any page to begin promoting themselves on our site.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
December 7, 2004 FoundLocally.com Newsletter
We are getting lots of feedback from our visitors, making lots of suggestions for improving our site. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed like Santa must be this time of year, and it is certainly challenging trying to reply to everyone, not to mention work on the enhancements themselves.
HOTEL BOOKINGS
We have now integrated the hotels listings on our site with the same global reservations engine and competitive pricing the airlines and travel agencies use. You can now not only search our listings in the travel section, but also check room rates and reserve your room right from our website! We have also integrated this feature with our http://www.TransCanadaHighway.com sister site for all hotels in each of the provinces and territories, and with our ski reports, ski hill listings & golf course listings for those planning a sporting vacation. See our hotels search at http://StJohns.FoundLocally.com/Travel/FindHotel.asp
SKI REPORTS
The ski season is now upon us, and if your favourite ski hill is not yet open, we are pretty sure it won't be long before it is! We have all the latest weather and ski reports posted each Friday morning (for those of you who want to start
their weekend early!) at http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm
RESTAURANT LISTINGS
We continue to improve our dining search and have added the major chains across Canada, including casual dining, fast food, food courts, and the popular coffee & donut chains. We continue to invite all other restaurants to add themselves to our Free Listings, and for consumers to nominate their favourite establishments for a themed Top Five List using our online form at http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/Dining/RestaurantFeedback.asp
ENHANCED BUSINESS SEARCHES
We have evolved in the past few years from being just a "community information site" to also having a great business directory, with many businesses and community groups not found in the phone company's directory. The other directories require a business phone line (typically $40 per month) to be listed, whereas FoundLocally welcome everybody. In recognition of the ever-improving depth of our Business Directory, we changed the link at the very top of our home page to "Business Searches" which links to a listing of all of our Search forms at http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/Searches.htm
AUDIENCE-SPECIFIC ONLINE GUIDES
We have developed User Guides (brochures?) for specific audiences of our web site, including Teachers & Students,
Government & Politicians, and for Brand Managers and Chains. They provide tips for getting the most out of FoundLocally's web site. These are linked in PDF form from each city's home page, but are also viewed from our About FoundLocally page at http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/General/index.htm We encourage you to pass these on to those you know could benefit.
Please use the Feedback Formon any page of the web site to contact us with your suggestions Thank you again for your support over the years.
Mark Ruthenberg,
General Manager
September 8th Newsletter
We are celebrating a doubling of traffic since the New Year, and are now able to accelerate the pace of content and feature development on our site based on user feedback:
- We have made the SITE CONTENT SEARCH more prominent, by putting it on the major section pages (Local, Business, Shopping, Recreation and Travel) by placing it above the most popular links lists on the right side of those pages. See http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/
- With all kids back in school, our updated School Calendars link to School Trustees contact info and e-mail addresses (in Local - Government section) which also links to area school boards. See http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa//Personal/LearnSchoolSchedule.htm
- In recognition of concerns about "spam", businesses considering a Logo & Link can now use a "contact us" web link instead of an e-mail address. Users can bow choose to show their e-mail address or web URL or display a choice of alternate text ("visit our web site").
- To raise the visibility of organizations that support our Logo & Link advertising, the Search Results page will now display their logos and business Descriptions. Of course our advertisers are also listed first, before the usual alphabetical order Free Listings (of course, Free Listings, continue to be free!). See http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/General/FreeListing.htm
- To help many local businesses grow effectively, FoundLocally has negotiated a Limited -Time One Year FREE Subscription to InnerSell. InnerSell is a unique online sales lead exchange platform, and is used by thousands of sales professionals and businesses to exchange timely information on the needs of motivated buyers. Subscribers (you must subscribe yourself, it's not automatic!) to InnerSell learn of sales opportunities sooner, influence a buyers' choice, and as a result get higher prices, higher close ratios, shorter sales cycles, and more loyal customers. Learn more at http://www.InnerSell.com/tutorial.html. Joining InnerSell via Found Locally gets you a one year subscription (A $295 US value) for FREE! https://www.innersell.com/SupplierSignup.aspx?RAID=511 You must subscribe by September 30, 2004 to take advantage of this introductory FoundLocally subscriber pricing.
I wish to thank all subscribers, community groups and businesses that have supported our site over the past five years, and appreciate all your comments that help use make our site event better.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
June 28, 2004 FoundLocally.com Newsletter
1. Today is Voting Day!
It is the right & duty of every Canadian citizen to vote today, so if you want a say in how this country will be run, head down to your local polling place. If you are eligible to vote but not registered (and have not yet received a voter's card) head down with your photo ID, along with proof of citizenship and residence. For information about what the parties and candidates positions are, see our Elections coverage at http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/Local/Gov-FederalElection.htm
Following the election, we will post election results to our site. We will update our listing of Members of Parliament at http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/Local/Gov-FederalMPs.htm in FoundLocally's Local - Government section as soon as contact information & office assignments are made in the House of Commons (typically, this takes them 3-4 weeks). You can contact the newly elected (or re-elected) MPs in your area, and e-mail them with a single mouse-click!
2. Re-launch of TransCanadaHighway.com
We have had a lot of feedback on our sister web site about the Trans-Canada Highway, based on the 30,000 people a month who currently visit it.
Integration with relevant FoundLocally.com searches (for hotels, etc) better with the site information.
See http://www.TransCanadaHighway.com
3. Stronger Feedback Form
Due to the level of spam we receive, we have removed our email address from our site, linking to our Site Feedback form instead. This form tells us what page on the site you are emailing us from, so we can react quicker to your suggested changes. We get 30-50 such messages a day and invite your feedback for continuing to improve our web site. See http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/General/Feedback.asp
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
June 4, 2004 FoundLocally.com Newsletter
June 28th is the next Federal Election, and we have provided all-round information about the parties, the candidates and the leaders. We have also linked to each party's platform on their web sites, and the major news organizations. This information is linked from the Home page for each FoundLocally community.
http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/Local/Gov-FederalElection.htm
We have also done a major improvement to our MovingInCanada.com sister site, adding a lot of content about neighbourhoods across Canada, as well as "Quick Lists" of all the phone numbers and web sites you'll need when moving to (or in) a city. Also, if you, a friend, or colleague are in the relocation industry (home builder, realtor, mover, mortgage lender, property manager, etc), you should add yourselves to FoundLocally's free listings. You will be found on the MovingInCanada.com site as well as on FoundLocally.com. http://www.MovingInCanada.com
Last but not least, the much anticipated Harry Potter Film, "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" is out. Check out our weekly Movie Show times at http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/Entertainment/EntMovieTimes.htm .
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
FoundLocally Newsletter May 14, 2004
FoundLocally.Com Adds St John's, Newfoundland Tourism & Community Resource Site
At 500 years old, St John's Newfoundland is Canada's oldest city and now FoundLocally.com's newest community information web site. This brings to four the number of Maritimes communities covered by 5 year old FoundLocally.com, which now attracts 6 million visitors a year with its coast-to-coast coverage.
Our St John's site has everything you expect about the capital of Canada's easternmost province (properly called 'Newfoundland & Labrador'), including where to stay and eat, and what to see & do. The site has thousands of pages with photos, maps, and info about living in and visiting St John's and area. This one-stop web site is a total resource of information for students and businesses, and is suitable for all ages. Content areas include shopping, business, travel, sports, entertainment, local information & history (even a Newfoundland dictionary), all without spending needless hours searching and surfing. Visit our new web site at http://www.FoundLocally.com/StJohns.
Our Travel-Nearby section includes info about all the communities in the Avalon Peninsula as well as around the province. See http://www.FoundLocally.com/StJohns/Travel/Nearby.htm.
The site has content for other cities (from west to east); Victoria, Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, Okanagan, the Rockies, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury Ottawa, Fredericton, Charlottetown and Halifax See these at http://www.FoundLocally.com, as well as our sister site http://www.TransCanadaHighway.com
Mark Ruthemberg
General Manager
FoundLocally.com February 25, 2004 Newsletter
Whenever movies are released in the middle of the week, as with week wit the much heralded Mel Gibson production "Passion of the Christ", we update the movie listings, as we have today. FoundLocally is your best source for movie information!
We have also updated our design for FoundLocally.com, which is mostly cosmetic (but wow!), but has built in a number of features enabling us to post updates to our site more efficiently.
We remind everybody involved with a community group, school, non-profit, club, association, or church, that you can have your organization added to our site's free listings and can then post your various events & fund-raisers as well as your ongoing volunteer opportunities. Another community service from FoundLocally.com. Just click on "Free Listings" to begin.
Thank you all for your support.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
FoundLocally Newsletter for October 27, 2003
We have had a lot of feedback over the past two months on the new functionality added in mid-July, and many of, quite frankly, found it overwhelming. We went back to the drawing board and looked at ways to simplify how people use our site, and made a couple of major changes.
REGISTERED USER LOGIN
Until now, there was no clear path for organizations updating their listing. For them, we have added a Login button, which also works for those who have posted resumes. We have also removed the "commercial" for Logos & Link advertising for those logging in. Businesses and community groups can use the Login button to post their events and jobs/volunteer opportunities, and even have their password emailed back to them.
CONVERTING EMAIL LINKS TO FEEDBACK FORMS
We have been inundated with spam and virus e-mails (which recently spiked at 5200 messages in a single day). Given how well we are spidered and registered with major search engines, we're not really surprised, but enough is enough! We have transferred out contact us email links to our existing feedback forms, which are directed to the right FoundLocally staff, and answered on a daily basis.
JOBS & RESUMES
Since people tend to post their resume once but come back for jobs listings more often, we mingled these two functions into one button.
NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
As a courtesy to our faithful subscribers, we have made the Unsubscribe function more explicit in our Subscribe process, and will add a link to it in our emails. We are also able to send formatted emails, with fonts and colours, as opposed to the plain text ones until now. We promise we won't get too fancy, to keep the emails quick to download and to read.
LASTLY, HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
We have lots of great seasonal content in our Recreation-Festivals section, with Halloween information & tips for costumes and parties at http://Calgary.FoundLocally.com/Entertainment/Halloween.htm
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
FoundLocally.com's September 10, 2003 Newsletter
We have just re-launched our http://www.TransCanadaHighway.com web site, with not only a new look & feel, but also with a new focus.
When we launched this domain four years ago, the idea was to develop a Canada-wide travel-focused site. It would also create awareness of FoundLocally by cross-promoting the two sites as FoundLocally expands to new cities, primarily along Canada's major east-west highway. TransCanadaHighway.com now gets significant traffic because of its excellent general information about the country, including the recent addition of route itineraries.
We have re-designed our site to be more visual and to focus on the Trans-Canada Highway itself. We get lots of feedback from visitors and will continue to make significant additions over coming months, focusing on trip planning.
We've had a lot of e-mails from cyclists, and want to add cycling-specific information to this site. Things like hills, roadside camping, cycling prohibitions and detours. If you have anything you'd like to suggest, we'd love to hear from you!
On another note, local travel & hospitality businesses and groups that are listed in FoundLocally are automatically included in travel listings on TransCanadaHighway, so if you are not yet listed, please do so. Or let someone who should, know about it. Click on "Add Free Listings" in http://www.FoundLocally.com/Oshawa/ to begin.
Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager
FoundLocally.com's July 14 2003 Newsletter
We have made a number of important changes to our site, indicated by our new colours.
IMAGE GALLERY ADDED
We have hundreds of images per city, many of which are not used on the site. These are now available for our visitors to view. You may use these images for educational or non-profit use for FREE, as long as we have a photo credit and a link to FoundLocally.com. For commercial use, please email prior to use us for permission. They are linked in our left-hand menus under Local-Local Photos.
NEW CATEGORIES
We have added over 200 new categories to our business listings, based on feedback & what businesses have noted in their "Other" fields. We have added these categories now to all pop-down lists and search forms. All Internet-related categories are now in the Communications section, reflecting today's Internet prevalence.
Public Service & Non-Profits | 4 |
Accommodation | 14 |
Business | 54 |
Food & Beverage | 7 |
Health | 11 |
Home | 35 |
Shopping | 65 |
Travel | 3 |
Vehicle | 3 |
NEW EVENTS CLONING
This new feature makes it easier for community groups and businesses to post similar events to our site (for example, fundraising dinner at church each Monday, singer at a bar each Wednesday through Saturday, etc). To post an event, add your organization to our free listings, and post all your events. You can add events as far ahead as you plan, but can only clone 6 month's events at a time.
NEW SPORTS INFORMATION
We have expanded our Sports & Fitness section, adding skateboarding and ringette, as well as water polo, tennis, squash, racquetball, badminton and mini-golf. We have now the best listing of skate parks in Canada, handy for those who are travelling. We invite all those offering activities in the above sports to add themselves.
MOVINGINCANADA.COM
Our sister site, MovingInCanada.com, has added "hot sheets" of key phone numbers and web links when moving for things like utilities, motor vehicles, health care when moving. For Quebec info, we've even linked it trough GoogleTranslate so that French pages display in English! You can look up this info for any major city in Canada, at http://www.MovingInCanada.com
IMPROVED ADMINISTRATION
Part of our quality control is to have a person review each listing for completeness, accuracy and appropriateness (ie, is it "local") With ever-growing volume of new listings, we wanted to clear the backlog faster, and helping new listings promote their events. New listings now get an auto-email and we expect shortly to respond to most new listings within a day.
Thank you again for your support.
FoundLocally June 20th 2003 Newsletter
We are undergoing significant changes to improve the site dramatically for all users. Our site receives 10,000 visitors each day, which has changed the way that we -- and our visitors -- perceive our web site. Please let us know what you think of the changes, using the Feedback Form linked at the top of any page
NEW "MAGAZINE" LOOK
We realize that only a small proportion of our digital photographs get displayed on our site, and that few visitors grasp the range of editorial content (almost a thousand pages per city). We're showcasing these two elements into a magazine-like look on key pages of the site (Home, Local, Business, Shopping, Entertainment and Travel). We'll keep all the familiar quick links to key content on those pages, but move them the right.
SITE SEARCH MADE FASTER
The site search (at the top of each page) is getting over 4000 keyword searches a day, and is now split into two to speed it up. The first search scans local businesses (using the Name, Description and Products fields), and a second "tab" repeats the search on web site content. This halves search times, and showcases local businesses and community groups that have provided us their information.
Businesses may want to update their Description and Products/Brands to improve your search visibility. Click on "Add Free Listings" to add or edit your listing.
MAKE YOUR TOP FIVE LISTS SUGGESTIONS
Please help us update our various Top Five lists for restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. Which do you think are worthy of a "Top Five" ranking. A couple of guidelines: a) use a common "theme" b)provide a one-line reason for each business in the list and c) tell us how you want your name to be published (or not) as the author of the list. Use the Feedback Form.
MAKING RESUMES VISIBLE TO MORE EMPLOYERS
The Resumes will now be made accessible to ALL registered businesses and community groups, not just the Logo & Link advertisers. Job seekers will get noticed by a broader audience and this helps businesses and community groups find the best people faster. You can post or update your resume for both paid or volunteer positions using the "Post Your Resume" button at the top of any page.
THIRD PARTY EMAIL OPTION HELPS FOUNDLOCALLY
Advertisers have requested we add the ability to send third party advertiser emails to our newsletter subscribers. While this will provide a significant revenues for FoundLocally to support our mostly-free service, we want to make it an OPTION for our subscribers, who will receive no more than 2- 4 emails a month from third parties. We will also ensure the list is carefully monitored for potential abuse. PLEASE re-subscribe as your "donation" to FoundLocally!
Mark Ruthenberg
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