Let's talk about HometownAnnapolis.com

Many discussions have taken place about the name HometownAnnapolis.com.

People ask: "Why is it such a different name than The Capital?"

We did this because we had big dreams for the future.

The future is arriving fast.

What's going on is we are developing a platform for all sorts of things which relate to Annapolis and Anne Arundel county. The site will eventually offer a lot of content and interactivity beyond what is in the newspaper itself.

We are very proud of our newspaper and what we print is the foundation of all our content. But we want to push far beyond what will fit on newsprint alone. Our goal is to be a strong print/online tandem team.

For the present, however, the site is still predominantly based on the daily news stories and features as they appear in the newspaper.

(The news story content is promoted very well on our news home page and indexed in our top stories page. The news home page is what you see if you come to the site using 'capitalonline.com').

What are these future interactive things?

Stay tuned and you will see several new launches after the first of the year. I cannot go into details yet, but suffice it to say HometownAnnapolis.com will become an even more exciting portal to online information for everyone in this county.

We are also dedicating the site to be a new communications 'place' for all the communities of Anne Arundel county.

This is your Web site.

It will be increasingly two-way. It will have a lot of user feedback and citizen journalism. Keep this in mind - we are looking for interested people, who want to have a say.

Other new things

In a more traditional vein (if you can talk about anything 'Internet' as having a tradition already) we have just launched some new web features that are creating a lot of buzz.

One is a new interactive calendar, which is now database-driven and allows you all sorts of searches and filters. Pick your venue, or your event type, or your geographic location.

In the near future you will be able to subscribe to feeds of updated calendar events to your iPods, personal web pages, cell phones or anything that will take RSS.

We have also launched a new and very comprehensive high school sports page.

Capital sports writer Aaron Gray has done a masterful job with video coach interviews (football), game updates and a new blog - The Aaron Gray Sports Blog.

Aaron's blog is a lot of fun - my family loves his YouTube links!

We also launched a new Navy sports section, featuring not only story links and score updates, but a new, popular blog by Capital sports writer Bill Wagner.

Earlier in the year we launched in-story commenting, and a tool for you to quickly see all the recent users' comments posted together on our 'Your Say' page.

User commenting on stories has taken off and has started many valuable, and often emotional, discussions about all sorts of issues and events.

We try to take a basic hands-off attitude towards the comments and let them run unless they violate stated rules. These are your comment boards.

What is this Community thing?

In the next post I want to write about a broader concept - community.

A large part of our goal with this Web site is to give you a place to speak, react, think and create online with us - and to help us all further define our sense of what our communities are.

What does it mean to live in Annapolis? or South County? or Crofton? or Pasadena? or Glen Burnie?

That is something we really want to explore and we are depending on your help.

Part of my blog is about my own experience and my family's experience as newcomers. But a lot of this blog is going to be about your sense of community - where you live.

Several have already written and I will post some and follow up on others.

Please write.