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FoundLocally.com Newsletter January 20, 2007

FoundLocally.com Launches Mississauga Site

Mississauga.FoundLocally.com - Media Inc. has just launched a new community information portal catering to Mississauga and the suburbs just west of Toronto. The 7-year-old company now has 23 sites servicing major cities and communities across Canada from Victoria, BC to St John's, Nfld. FoundLocally sites consistently attract more than 12 million visitors a year.

FoundLocally.com Media Inc. has just launched a new community information portal, catering to Mississauga, Brampton and the Peel Region in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe region. The Mississauga site also includes lots of information about and relating to Toronto' Pearson International Airport, including the hospitality businesses, some of which are actually situated in the neighboring Etobicoke area of Toronto/

This adds to existing sites in the Toronto are, including Oakville.FoundLocally.com (Oakville, Burlington & Halton), Hamilton.FoundLocally.com, Niagara.FoundLocally.com (Niagara Falls & St Catharines), and Barrie.FoundLocally.com (Barrie, The Muskoka Region, and Georgian Bay from the Bruce Peninsula to Parry Sound.

FoundLocally's portal sites provide comprehensive information about each community including travel, entertainment, shopping, neighborhoods, sports, education and government. They are an excellent trip-planning resource for both business and leisure travelers. Site visitors can browse about a thousand pages of background information, pictures and maps about each community, and popular resources like weekly ski reports, movie show times and golf courses listings.

The sites also include a useful business directory where visitors can search for businesses by name, category, or location. The free business listings are entered by businesses themselves and they provide descriptions, contact details and other marketing information. FoundLocally.com is a popular marketing tool for small businesses often run from a home phone or cell phone, and therefore excluded from the phone directory. And once registered, businesses can post jobs, events, special offers and news announcements as part of their listings. This service is free and well suited to those businesses without a web site. Local businesses in the Mississauga area may add themselves by going to Mississauga.FoundLocally.com and clicking on "Free Listings."

The site earns its revenues from traditional web "banner advertising" and optional "Logos & Links" in the business directory, which combines a web site hot-link, placement priority before free listings, and logo placement on all listing pages, for a small annual fee. Significant discounts are given to non-profit groups, and to organizations with multiple establishments.

Communities now covered by the portal include: Victoria, Greater Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Okanagan-Shuswap, Banff & The Rockies, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, Barrie-Muskoka, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, Oakville-Halton, Mississauga-Peel, Ottawa-Gatineau, Fredericton, Charlottetown, Halifax, and St John's.

About FoundLocally.com FoundLocally.com Media Inc. is a Calgary-based company that creates community information portals, and provides web design and web marketing services. It also runs TransCanadaHighway.com (about travel along the world's longest highway), and MovingInCanada.com (about relocations & real estate). The FoundLocally web sites are represented nationally by 24/7 RealMedia, the nation's largest interactive ad agency.

Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager

FoundLocally's December 20th 2006 Newsletter

We wish all our visitors and subscribers a "Happy Holiday", whether you choose to celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza or Festivus. We wish everyone a safe holiday and a prosperous 2007!

What to do

Over the holidays, we will be updating our Ski Reports daily at ../Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm. Our Movie Listings are always up-to-date with the current holiday releases at ../Entertainment/EntMovieTimes.htm, as are our Video / DVD Releases at ../Personal/GoodsVideoReview.htm for those who want to buy or rent their entertainment.

Updated Computers, Software and Consumer Electronics

As well, over the last while we have updated our entire Business section of the site, with updated information on computers & software, as well as consumer electronics at ../Computers/index.htm and at ../Personal/index.htm, with lots of shoppers guides, how-to tips, and technical info for no-technical people. This should help with your last-minute holiday shopping, or with help you wisely use those very popular Gift Cards at lot of people are giving and receiving this year, and make the most of the electronic gift you have received.

Updated Radio & TV information

Our Media section now includes all updated information about local radio stations (including addresses and phone numbers) so you can request your favourite songs to be played over the holiday-New Years break. We even have links to the latest TV program listings online (handy when you need to check from school or office). See ../Communications/Media.htm

Cheers!

Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager

December 7, 2006: FoundLocally.com Begins Weekly Ski Reports for Season (Ontario & Maritimes)

FoundLocally has begun its weekly ski reports & snow conditions for resorts and ski hills across Canada. Since early November, hills in the Rockies have been open and ski hills across BC and some prairie communities are opening shortly.

FoundLocally's ski reports now cover 3457 slopes at 132 resorts in all provinces, and are updated each Thursday noon. This allows plenty of time for those planning long weekends or road trips, and they're updated daily over holidays.

See ../Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm

To access the ski reports, click on the FoundLocally community on the home page's map of Canada and click on the Ski Report link. The ski reports are linked with information about the ski hills themselves, as well as online reservations for linked lodging providers.

Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager

November 28, 2006: FoundLocally.com Begins Weekly Ski Reports for Season (the West)

FoundLocally has begun its weekly ski reports & snow conditions for resorts and ski hills across Canada. Since early November hills in the Rocky Mountains have been open, and ski hills across the Maritimes are opening this weekend or later this month. We'll be ready once your local hill is open!

FoundLocally's ski reports now cover 3457 slopes at 132 resorts in all provinces, and are updated each Thursday noon. This allows plenty of time for those planning long weekends or road trips, and they're updated daily over holidays.

See ../Sports/Rec-SkiReport.htm

To access the ski reports, click on the FoundLocally community on the home page's map of Canada and click on the Ski Report link. The ski reports are linked with information about the ski hills themselves, as well as online reservations for linked lodging providers.

Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager

Popular Local Search Portal FoundLocally.com Launches Hamilton and Oakville Sites

Oct 23, 2006

October 6, 2006 FoundLocally.com Newsletter

Local Sports Featured on FoundLocally (using Winnipeg as exemple)

The Fall marks the start of the Canadian hockey season (and the winding up of the Football season). We have the schedules for the major local teams, linked both on te right side of our local Winnipeg Blue Bombers CFL football schedule

Manitoba Moose AHL hockey schedule

If you are involved in a team or league, you are welcome to do the same for your organization. Click on Free Listings to register, and add the team or league. After adding one game, use the CLONE button to quickly add additional games! You can post an entire season quite efficiently.

Major Email List Cleanup underway

If you do not want to receive these emails, we include an UNSUBSCRIBE link at the bottom of all our e-mails. Click it, enter your e-mail address, and you are removed.

We are cleaning up our lists, and removing all emails that have the following:

First Name=Last Name ("Mark Mark")

Name= Email address ("janedoe@hotmail.com")

Name is bogus or random letters (like "qwerty" or "sdsdsd")

Name is just initials ("JD")

If your Name (see the very top of this email) fits any of these patterns, please RE-SUBSCRIBE. Your current email subscription will be automatically cancelled by our software, and only by re-subscribing with a real name, will you continue to receive these. THIS WILL BE YOUR ONLY NOTICE!

Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager

FoundLocally.com newsletter for September 1, 2006

It's September, and almost Fall.

For many of you, you're going back to school, or your children are. We have the local school 2006-2007 calendars with all the holidays, and professional development days on our site, so you can plan vacations, field trips and /or day care for the coming months. See ../Education/LearnSchoolSchedule.htm

For those going back to school, keep in mind that FoundLocally is a first-rate educational resource, with well-researched and up-to-date local information, as well as photos and maps about communities across Canada. Educational use of text and images for assignments is permitted, as long as credit and/or link is given. See http://www.FoundLocally.com/ for all the communities. For those who haven't looked in a while, you'll notice we've added a few in Southern Ontario.

We have also updated our listings of Members of Parliament, with their office numbers (in Ottawa) and their local constituency office(s), so you can send them 'raves' or 'jeers' (we don't play any favourites!) by phone, fax or e-mail. See ../Local/Gov-FederalMPs.htm We have all elected officials in out Government & Politics section, at the municipal, school board, provincial and federal levels. See ../Local/Government.htm Let them know how you feel…we believe that our representatives make better decisions when they are informed about how the people who elected them (and would hopefully re-elect them) know how they feel. FoundLocally makes it easy!

Mark Ruthenberg
Gereral Manager

FoundLocally Newsletter for January 15, 2006

We have updated the site design, making it faster to load, especially on those using Mozilla browsers (about 15% of all users, now). This is our first major redesign in almost 2 years. Our new site makes many features easier to access, with similar features grouped closer together. Significantly, we made the business searches more accessible, placed it closer to our content, and made both the site search (content) and business search accessible on every page of the FoundLocally site. See http://Halifax.FoundLocally.com

For you the consumer, we moved the Shopping section above the Business section, and expanded the Consumer categories, which were grouped under one button on the left. Now Clothing & Fashion, Food & Groceries, Beauty & Grooming, Education & Learning, Consumer Goods & Services, and Pets & Animals each have their own left-hand menu button, and their own specific business search. We are continuing to add consumer information content for each of these areas.

We also made Autos the first option under Shopping, recognizing its importance to both consumers and advertisers. We have added significant consumer resources to this section, with over 250 pages of information per community. This new content covers

• shopping for a car,
• operating a vehicle
• key automotive maintenance issues, as well as
• resources for non-automotive transport (sail & power boats, hang gliders & planes, RVs…).

We have invited major automotive services companies to add their stores and garages to our listings, and over the coming weeks you should see a significant improvement in the where-to-shop information.

Thank you again, for all your feedback and your continued support & patronage.

Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager

FoundLocally Newsletter - November 29th

The Liberal minority government has fallen, and that means its time for a[nother] federal election. Keep a eye on FoundLocally for information about local candidates and their news & events. We'll also have links to all the major media outlets' election coverage too, so everything will be here in one spot:

../Local/Gov-FederalElection.htm (and for each community)

This age has current links and information about Canada's Parties, several of whom you may decide are either obscure or too regional in nature. We have links to their platforms, and their leaders, and in most cases to the candidates.

Needless to say it the nomination deadline is 21 days prior to the election date, so there's plenty of time to run -or this time of year, snowshoe! Our Elections information has links to Elections Canada, with the nomination forms and requirements.

Question of the Day: Wouldn't it be real interesting if the Bloc Quebecois would run in all ridings? Then people could once and for all if Quebec should leave, and the country no longer held up to Liberals (and the Bloc) spending money on our behalf to "keep Quebec"

FoundLocally.com Begins Weekly Ski Reports for Season

FoundLocally has begun its weekly ski reports & snow conditions for resorts and ski hills across Canada. This past weekend, ski hills opened in BC's coastal region, the Rockies and in the Laurentians, with hills in BC's interior and in Manitoba expected to open this coming weekend. Over the 2004-2005 ski season FoundLocally's ski reports were used by 50,000 visitors a month, and was key to directing about $25 million in skier spending.

FoundLocally's ski reports cover 3180 slopes on 134 resorts in all provinces, and are updated each Thursday noon. This allows plenty of time for those planning long weekends or road trips, and they're updated daily over holidays. The reports compile reports emailed to ski@FoundLocally.com.

This coverage is part of FoundLocally.com's chain of 20 community portals, which provide in-depth recreation & travel information to a half-million local and tourist visitors a month. Communities covered include Victoria, Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Okanagan, the Rockies, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Sault Ste Marie, Sudbury, Ottawa-Hull, Niagara Falls, Fredericton, Halifax, Charlottetown and St John's. The 6 year old site has evolved into over 19,000 pages of web information, integrating a business directory with just shy of 100,000 businesses.

Listed businesses in the directory include many hotels, bed & breakfasts, restaurants, tour operators, travel agents, and of course ski hills and sporting goods stores. Businesses listed in the community directory can post a description, choose categories that describe their goods & services, as well as post events, coupons, news announcements and job openings. Most businesses get everything they need with a free listing, and registered contacts can update their listings at any time.

To access the ski reports, click on the FoundLocally community on the home page's map of Canada and click on the Ski Report link. The ski reports are linked with information about the ski hills themselves, as well as online reservations for linked lodging providers.

Mark Ruthenberg,
General Manager

April 12th, 2005 FoundLocally.com Newsletter

FoundLocally adds Mapping to Business Listings

We have added mapping to the listings information, using the address to pop to the appropriate MapQuest map for that business. It should be noted that since some businesses have posted two addresses, for example:

street address & mailing address or post office box,

street address and driving directions, or

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 ../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. You can also use the links at the top of the page to book your accommodation for your golf vacation.

Mark Ruthenberg
General Manager

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 t o 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! T hey 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 ../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 h../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 ../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 ../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 ../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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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 ../Personal/LearnSchoolSchedule.htm
   
   
3. 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").
   
   
4. 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 ../General/FreeListings.htm
   
   
5. 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 ../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 ../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.

Community information for all the towns along the way, to increase its value as a tip planning tool.

Significant content for towns & cities in Quebec, which do not yet have FoundLocally.com coverage at this time.

Route itineraries in 200-300 km segments to facilitate trip planning, and put eastbound and westbound distances (in both miles and kilometres) on the same page

For a limited time, a printable PDF version of ALL of these itineraries, for you to take on your tip (please provide us feedback!)

Information and itineraries for getting to & from Toronto, Canada's largest city, which does not lie on the Trans-Canada Highway

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 ../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. ../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 ../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://Charlottetown.FoundLocally.com 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 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 GoogelTranslate 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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