On August 24th, Channel 2 News and the Boy’s and Girl’s club of Buffalo are teaming up to collect backpacks and school supplies for kids in need. Check out the information on the channel 2 site to see how you can help.
2 Pack a Backpack
Channel 2 and the Boys and Girls Clubs will be at six Wal-Mart locations across Western New York from 7am to 9pm on August 24th collecting school supplies.
2 Pack A Backpack Locations
- Wal-Mart SuperCenter, 5033 Transit Road, Clarence, NY
- Wal-Mart 100 Thruway Mall, Cheektowaga
- Wal-Mart 4255 McKinley Parkway, Hamburg
- Wal-Mart 2055 Niagara Falls Blvd., Amherst
- Wal-Mart 555 Porter Road, Niagara Falls
- Wal-Mart 5783 S. Transit Rd., Lockport
- Wal-Mart 10401 Bennett Rd.,Fredonia
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Administrator Buffalo Sites
A friend of mine started a new clothing company in Buffalo. They are starting with T-Shirts and branching out from there. They have some cool stuff. Take a look at City Love Clothing
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Administrator Buffalo Sites
A friend of mine pointed out a real cool tool available at the Erie County website (erie.gov). The site is an internet mapping system. No, this isn’t like Google Maps, or Local from Live.com. It is much, much, much more. I have included a screen shot to show you some of the features and overlays. There is a nice search function that even allows you to search by name. Really. Are you wondering what Daniel Briere’s lot looks like, or where he lives? I am serious. You can easily locate this information. It is public record, after all.
One of the most useful functions, in my opinion, is the overlay of lot lines. This will show you the shape of a parcel of land or property in the county. This is especially useful when you are shopping for real estate and the listing agent doesn’t have that information available for you. You can use the flood plain overlay, a wetland map overlay and a number of other overlays such as school districts, and municipalities.
Do you prefer to view maps like you can at Google, with an aerial photo from a satellite? You can. In the left hand column, click on the selection to show the “2002 orthophotography” and click “refresh map”. You can use the “Pan” tool to drag the map.
The tools within the application take some getting used to, that is why I am linking to the help page as a start. Once there, click on the link that reads “Internet Mapping System”.
A couple of quick notes.
- Pop up blockers will probably interfere with some functions. You should turn them off, or hold your ‘ctrl’ key while clicking on links within the map.
- This works properly in IE (Internet Explorer web browser), but not in Firefox.
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Administrator Buffalo Sites
The Buffalo Niagara association of Realtors web site is called BuffaloNiagaraHomes.com. It is managed by a company that is contracted to handle the MLS for the group. They reconfigured parts of their site and made it rather frustrating.
As a web user, there is nothing more frustrating than landing on a page that gives me an error telling me that the page can’t be found. Well, recent changes at the Buffalo Niagara Homes site will have that happening with any property that was linked prior to the change. When you are making changes on a web site, especially one that many other parties rely on (Realtors), you should make the transition as smooth as possible. There is a rather simple method used to forward any old links. It is seamless to the visitor and should be a first step.
How about a bookmark this listing? Isn’t the growth area on the web social? Sharing of links and bookmarking is a key component of that. BNH eliminated the simple ability to share a listing with a friend, spouse, Realtor, etc. You can e-mail it, but that is much more intrusive (captures the user data). Make it simple. When you do a search and click on a listing, they are passing the information specific to the property in a way that hides it when you bookmark the page. How about adding the feature?
One other thing… How about presets values for minimum price and maximum price that are more reasonable. Are you basing this upon your own search data? Why don’t you start at “no minimum” and “no maximum” for price and give your users a little credit. They are smart enough to figure out how to modify form fields. If they aren’t, you are losing them anyway. Lock them in at $100,000-$150,000 and they will go away thinking you don’t have listings in their $300,000 price range. For the people who you don’t think can change some form fields, you are sending them away. I would bet they could navigate ‘next page’ if they can’t change a form field. Show them everything. Why don’t you give this a run for a week or two and then base your preset values on actual search data that you are capturing. If you are already doing this, my apologies.
Just trying to provide some feedback that I would imagine that BuffaloNiagaraHomes.com isn’t interested in.
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Administrator Buffalo Sites, Real Estate
Are you trying to reach out to businesses in the Lancaster, NY area? Have you considered advertising to the members of the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce? If so, please let me know about it. I am about to place a small advertisement with the Chamber and would love to know if this works.
I will be publishing the results after the ads have run. I am going to do a couple of test cases, and frankly, I hope that there is something to measure.
As it turns out, you need to be a member to advertise with the Lancaster Chamber. Not sure about Amherst or Clarence, but if this works, I’ll let you know.
I joined the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce. The membership was reasonable at $135 per year. If you are a new business (the corporation that I joined as is less than 6 months old) then the cost is only $62.50. Linda Stapleton walked through everything with me on the phone and was very helpful in answering any questions that I had.
For those web savvy folks, don’t forget about the link to your site that comes with the membership (from: http://www.laccny.org). The value of that should cover part of the cost (at least in theory).
I’ll add a follow up to this in a few weeks. Bookmark this and check back.
UPDATED 3/7/2007: As I mentioned above, I am posting about the ad that run in the chamber e-mail newsletter.
I advertised an office for rent in the Zesto. There were 0 inquiries from the 2 week run. Not much more to say.
I will be advertising via their print newsletter and with an insert in the mailing. As with the Zesto, I will post the results.
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Administrator Buffalo Sites
If you are the type who feels we have a bloated government in this region, you will be interested in some of the figures put together by whoever is behind the site OneBuffalo.com.
They do a comparison of our government and 4 others. Wait until you see the results. The amount of bloat is rather clear.
http://www.onebuffalo.com/CityComp.asp
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Administrator Buffalo Sites
