thebatavian

We're migrating The Batavian to a new server tonight. The switch is scheduled for 10 p.m.  This could lead to some down time. The site might be unaccessible for up to an hour.

I've taken over The Batavian as my full-time and only job.

Over the next week, I'll be moving the site to a new server. I don't anticipate any disruption in service.

I want to thank Philip Anselmo and Brian Hillabush for all the great work they've done on the site. They're a huge part of the site's success. Philip is moving on to another reporting position.  Brian and I are discussing how we'll be able to continue working together.

Next week, I'll be in our Batavia office ready to cover the news and sell advertising.  As time goes by I'll have more announcements about what we'll be doing with the site. I still have new features to add, many of which will please local advertisers.

My wife and I are listing our house in Pittsford for sale and as soon as it sells, we will rent a place in Batavia (or maybe elsewhere in Genesee County).  I expect we'll see my wife's byline in The Batavian before too long.

Many of you have noticed -- I know because I've gotten calls and comments -- a link that joined the top navigation of the site a couple of weeks ago: Local Businesses.

It is a new online business directory for Genesee County.

Every business in Genesee County gets a free basic listing.  We encourage you to use it to find local goods and services.

For business owners and managers, here's what  is important for you to know: Upgrades are available.

For a fee, business get enhanced listings which includes more information about the firm.

Our first two enhanced listings have been posted:

• Diegelman's Plumbing
• Fastec Automative

But an enhanced listing is not the coolest part of this directory.

We're working with a company out of California called Search Initiatives to power our directory.

As most business owners now recognize, hardly anybody uses the yellow pages these days. When people with online access want to find a business, they go to Google or Yahoo.  If your business isn't part of the top search results, it's almost as if your business doesn't even exist.

Search Initiatives specializes in helping businesses get found on the Web.  They've been helping businesses for a number of years and is maybe the leading such firm in the world.  We're proud they picked The Batavian to launch its new directory product.

So when you buy an enhanced listing on The Batavian, you're not just buying an ad on The Batavian, you're helping improve your business's search ranking in Google and Yahoo!

The standard package is $49 to set up and then $59 per month.  Businesses that sign up prior to March 31 will get a free "trackable" phone number -- what that means is we'll be able to deliver monthly report showing you how many times you're phone rang because of the service.

We also can offer a limited number of upgraded packages that adds more features to help your business be among the best ranked in Google and Yahoo. These packages are $70 set up and $89 per month.

Here's a full media kit for directory advertising.  And as long as we're talking about advertising, here's our display advertising media kit.

If you want to get your business started advertising on The Batavian, or have questions, contact me at howard (at) thebatavian dot com.

Jerome Grasso, LeRoy representative of the Genesee County Legislature has posted 14 comments over the past four weeks as Michael Barney.

In a conversation this afternoon, Grasso admitted that he made the posts because in his new part-time job he is discouraged from blogging.

"I love the site," Grasso said. "I ain't going to bullshit you, but I missed the site and I enjoy the site immensely."

A few weeks ago, Grasso took a two-day-a-week job with State Senator Mike Ranzenhofer working out of his Erie County office.

"They haven't banned me from it (leaving comments on The Batavian), but they just don't want me on there.  But it's a good source for news and let's be real, it's damn entertaining. What can I say? I missed it."

We were alerted by local Democrats (we will let them reveal their identities in comments if they wish) that they suspected Barney was really Grasso. They noted similarities in outlook and writing style.

Upon further investigation, we found that on a handful of occasions, Barney left comments from the IP address associated with previous comments by Grasso. The Barney persona and Grasso where the only users to ever post from this IP address.

When we spoke to Grasso this morning, Grasso identified Barney as a good friend and member of the GOP county committee.  He said he wasn't surprised Barney might post from the same IP address because they were close friends.

During the conversation -- which covered a range of local topics -- Grasso mentioned that he didn't post as frequently on the site because his new employer "wasn't keen" on him blogging.

We checked with local election commissioners and found that there is no Michael Barney on any GOP committee, nor is there a Barney registered to vote in Genesee County.

During our second call with Grasso, he quickly fessed up and said he and his wife discussed the issue on a shopping trip around noon and agreed he should admit to the nom de plume.  "I can't bullshit you, Howard," he said. "I shouldn't have done it, but I just missed the site."

The Barney comments can be viewed here. Some of them do discuss county business, particularly related to the recent ambulance service controversy.

Outside of sticking up for the county's position on the ambulance service and a general conservative/Republican point of view, none of the Barney comments can be said to promote Jay Grasso. Though in one comment, he clearly contradicts the fact that Barney and Grasso are one and the same person:

Most local electeds will contact you if you reach out to them by phone. Perhaps you see Mallow and Grasso on here because they are younger. I am not sure how old they are. Does anyone know their ages? I am thinking older electeds are not familiar with blogs.

There is a term on the Web for prominent people who use fake names to promote their own causes: Sock puppets.

While I sympathize with Jay's predicament and constraints related to his new job, we clearly can't knowingly allow elected officials to post under false identities. The sock puppet issue is one of the primary reasons we do our best to enforce a real name policy on The Batavian.

We're upgrading our web server.  We're moving The Batavian to a bigger, better, faster server (you should notice the site loads faster after the move).

We're making the switch at 11 p.m. tonight.  The Batavian will be off line for about 15 minutes.

The Batavian site was down for at least 30 minutes today after one of the databases used to manage the site developed a problem and required an emergency rebuild.

After the site came back up, there was another database problem that prevented users from logging in.

All seems back to normal now.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Join us at 11:30 for a non-partisan celebration of a free country's peaceful transfer of power, to witness history and to see if Barack Obama can live up to the hype of his inaugural address (will it be Lincolnesque, FDResque or Clintonesque? If like Clinton, we won't be getting out of their until late in the afternoon).

We'll be at TF Brown's and The Batavian will be providing free finger foods (you'll need to buy your own drinks or own full lunch, if that's what you want).

On The Batavian, we have a policy -- which most members of the site seem to support -- of requiring people to post using their real names.

From the first week of the site, we had a user with a first name of Laz who posted quite regularly.  I had initial doubts as to whether this was a real name, but the way people responded to him initially, I kind of got the impression that this was somebody that other people knew, so I let the name go.

A couple of weeks ago, I got complaints suggesting that Laz wasn't his real name.  I wrote him an e-mail and asked for confirmation.  I didn't get a response.

Earlier tonight, I banned his account. 

He sent me an e-mail after the banning suggesting another name was his real name, and then later suggested that name was one of three aliases he uses.

Here's the thing: We can't check physically the ID of everybody who posts to the site.  To some extent, this is an honor system. 

But if I have any reason to suspect that a user is not posting under his or her real name, I'm going to suspend that account, or at least challenge the user on the name.

We can't guarantee everybody on The Batavian is posting under his or her real name, but we will make every best, honest effort to ensure real names are used.

Join The Batavian and your friends and neighbors Tuesday for the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

Whether you're a Republican, Democrat or independent, you're surely mindful of historic event we'll witness Tuesday as Obama takes the oath of office and delivers his First Inaugural Address.

The Batavian will supply some appetizers/finger foods.  Guests will be responsible for the purchase of any lunches or beverages.

The Inauguration Party starts at 11:30 and will run until shortly after Obama completes his speech.  Obama takes the oath at noon.

We look forward to seeing you Tuesday at TF Brown's, 214 East Main Street.

Here at The Batavian, we're in a constant mode of making improvements and upgrades to the site.

One feature requested a while back was discussion boards, or forums, a place for people to start their own topics of conversation.

Tom Gilliatt, whom many of you have known as Tom G since the site launched, has agreed to help monitor and manage the forums.

Thanks, btw, to both Tom and Gabor for recently changing their user profile to include their full real name to comply with our requirement for real names on the site. 

You can reach the discussion boards through the Forums link in the navigation bar across the top of the Web page.

Most viewed posts on The Batavian for December:

• Christmas lights 12-13-08: DiSalvo's always best in show, by Brian Hillabush
• Batavia: My T Acres barns engulfed in flames, by Howard Owens
• Greater Rochester football selections overlook Genesee County standouts, by Brian Hillabush
• My 'T' Acres fire pictures, by Howard Owens
• No state wrestling in Rochester, by Brian Hillabush
• Thanks for the advice, But..., by Charlie Mallow
• On the Beat: More charges, jail time, for alleged abuser, by Philip Anselmo
• Governor releases budget proposal: Plans to eliminate deficit in two years, by Philip Anselmo
• Hoy's Geneseo basketball team gets ESPN's top play, by Brian Hillabush
• A month later, McCormick still touching Hornell and Section 5, by Brian Hillabush

From all of us at The Batavian, Happy New Year to you and your family.

The first eight months of The Batavian has been fun, interesting and challenging.  The site has grown quickly and we appreciate your support and participation in the site.

We're looking forward to the promise of 2009 and hope that your New Year will lead to many happy returns.

Good Morning Batavia,

I sit here at my trusty computer this morning mulling over the "new look" Batavian website with nothing but "awe".

To be able to view the events and happenings in my home town is just amazing.  I especially enjoy the video of the basketball games and comments. I can almost see myself, Jon Walton,Bill ,Randy, Gary,Sonny,Charlie, and the rest of the gang on the floor. It's too bad we didn't have the technology back then, it would be nice to see ourselves (then again maybe not!) The gym almost looks the same.

The view around town just astonished me. My congratulations goes out the staff of the Batavian for a job well done. Keep it comin'. I hope the folks in Batavia appreciate what you have done, and if not I sure do.

I look forward to more.

P.S. If there are any folks from the 1974 graduation class still in town, speak up!. Sign my guest book. Love to hear from ya.

Nate...

Some of you have already noticed the site color has changed. 

Those of you familiar with the first three months or so of The Batavian's existence will recognize this site design. It's what we started with.  It was a default theme for the content management system we use and never intended to be a long-term site design.  For various reasons, however, we haven't yet been able to invest in a formal redesign of the site.  As a stop-gap, I went out and found that black-based theme and liked it at first.

But we all grew tired of it pretty quickly.  We always got a few complaints about it being hard to read, especially the links in the right and left columns.  But because the site had grown so much, we couldn't just switch back without some effort.  We're making that switch now.  There's still some kinks to work out, but we're not going back to black.

Eventually, we'll come up with some snazzy redesign and stick with that for a while.

There's also been a couple of other site upgrades that you may have noticed over the past couple of weeks.

First, if you go to the People page now, you'll notice that for any member of the site who isn't your "Friend" yet, you will see a link that says "Add as a Friend."  This will help you better identify people whom you know and should be on your friends list, or people you would like to know.

When people are on your friends list, it makes it easier, through the "Friend Feed" on the left side of the page or your own profile page, to follow their contributions to the site.

Second big upgrade is a new photo sharing tool.  Now you can have, essentially, your own photo blog on the site.  You can upload as many photos as you like. 

To add a photo, click "Create Content" and then "Share Photos." The process for adding a photo should be pretty self-explanatory, but let us know if you have problems.

Unlike adding a photo to a blog post, which requires you to manually resize the photos, you can now upload photos just as they come out of your camera (if you like) and our software will automatically resize the photos for you.  You can also use this feature to upload photos that you plan to use in a blog post. There is now a button on the blog entry form to allow you to easily navigate to your own photos, find the photo you want to use and add it to your post.

As always, we will continue to work on expanding and improving The Batavian.

UPDATE: I forget to mention: If the new template seems faster: It is.  The code is a little cleaner than the old template, plus we made some other performance enhancements to the software and the server. 

If you haven't guessed by now, our small staff is pretty much in holiday mode.  Expect posting to be light through the weekend.

Of course, we'll continue to monitor the site and if you hear of any news -- do a blog post yourself, or leave a comment, and we'll pick up on it.

It looks like the crew at WBTA is also taking a well deserved break for Christmas.  There are some fresh stories on the Daily's site, if you're looking for some news, and I suspect they will continue to post on their regular editorial schedule.

Merry Christmas. 

We're really proud of the coverage that Philip Anselmo and Brian Hillabush provided today. If you liked the coverage, please e-mail all of your friends -- be sure they know that a visit to The Batavian is worthwhile because we're going to provide complete and timely coverage of the important and interesting news of Genesee County.

We've had so many posts so far today that some of our earlier posts have flowed off the home page.

And we've got more posts coming from Brian Hillabush and Philip Anselmo.

If you're just hitting the site for the first time today, or might otherwise have missed some coverage, please scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "next" link on the pager to see any coverage you might have missed.

Also, we continue to welcome any weather pictures or stories you might want to post.

So, we keep hearing warnings: Lots of snow heading our way.

First, we encourage you to be safe, but if you do happen to stick your head outside and snap a picture, post it to The Batavian.  Or video. Or tell your storm-related story on the site. Let your Genessee County neighbors know how the storm is affecting your part of the community.

We've added a "Business" section to The Batavian.

We will continue to cover business news as we can, but we want local business owners and managers to know that they are welcome to post their own business on The Batavian.

What is allowed: Anything that qualifies as news -- information that will be interesting to readers.

What is NOT allowed: Pure advertising/marketing messages, such as "20 percent off sale" or "we have the best store in town."

Examples of "press releases" you might want to post:

• New business opening
• Relocation
• A new manager or key employee
• Retirement
• Grand Re-Opening event
• Anniversary (good chance to write about the history of the business)
• Advice to readers related to the business specialty.
• New product or service (but this needs to be informational, not promotional)

Please be careful not to republish verbatim material for other publications, which would constitute a copyright violation.

The Batavian reserves the right to remove any content editors determine doesn't meet our guidelines. We may also promote your post to our home page, but make no promise to put any particular post on the home page.

We are eager to get news from any business in Genesee County.

To learn how to post your own news, check out our tutorials on our Help Page.

If you are interesting in advertising, contact Howard Owens, (howard (at) the batavian (one word) dot com, or 585-260-6970).

Cindy Morelli says in her "about" on her profile that she's looking for a job.

We have a Jobs section for employers looking for help, but we haven't really set up a way for a process for job candidates to let potential employers know of their availability, but if you write a blog post about your experience, qualifications and the kind of job you're seeking, we'll find a way to highlight your post.