A ‘MidWeek’ Website Facelift
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Years ago, in addition to my wonderful geeky job in the systems department, I was also honored to be MidWeek’s webmaster. Every week I would tediously update it, and even though I didn’t create the website from its beginning, I still think of it as sort of my baby. Well, the time has come -midweek.com has received a nice facelift thanks to the hard work and countless hours online advertising director Troy Fujimoto put in.
The new and improved midweek.com includes your favorite stories from MidWeek, and now MidWeek the Weekend. The top portion of the webpage links to Island Homes, job listings, Wheels and Star Classifieds. The Quick Links feature on the right side gives you access to the newspapers’classified ads, retail ads, coupons, legal notices, travel ads and the popular Bidding Advantage online “auction.” The left sidebar includes links to just about everything else with MidWeek and the Weekend‘s cover and feature stories, business, the editor’s desk, entertainment, food, lifestyle, movies, sports/fitness, travel, classified ads and the Click Chick Corner by yours truly.
One of the more appealing features of the new design is that you can see the two newspaper full-color covers of the week immediately as you go to the home page. The teaser text/link under the covers takes you right to the respective cover stories. Right under that you see the feature stories, Newsmaker, Don Chapman’s special section covering his visit to South Korea, Food, Kimo’s Vegas Travel, Entertainment, Sports/Fitness, Politics, Movie Reviews, Business and Lifestyle. In addition, there’s also a link to our sister newspaper the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (www.starbulletin.com) with links to some key stories located on the bottom right of the page.
The new midweek.com design definitely makes it easier to share MidWeek with those who do not receive it in their mailbox. You now have the ability to comment on stories, e-mail a friend, or access a printer-friendly page, standard features most websites have these days. According to Fujimoto, the best added feature is the RSS feed for each columnist. It’s definitely an excellent feature, but for those of you who don’t know what an RSS feed is, it stands for Real Simple Syndication. It’s basically a service (usually free) that allows Internet users to subscribe to web-sites, such as ours. It’s typically used for news websites and weblogs (blogs). For example, you can RSS feed the text of our columnists onto your iPod or into a screen saver.
Don’t forget to check out www.midweek.com for yourself and share it with your away-from-home ohana.
Helping Keiki Patients At Kapiolani. The holidays are here, and ‘tis the season for giving! Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children needs your kokua to help meet the needs of its keiki patients through the Child’s Play program.
Child’s Play is a national charity that was created to allow gamers and geeks around the world to raise money and collect toys and games for sick keiki in children’s hospitals. Within the past three years more than $1 million in cash and goods has been raised. So far for this year, more than $200,000 has been contributed.
This year Child’s Play expanded worldwide to assist children’s hospitals across the globe.
Kapiolani Children’s Hospital is one of the fortunate hospitals selected as a part of the Child’s Play Network. The network was created by the creators of online gaming comic Penny Arcade (www.penny-arcade.com).
You don’t have to be a gamer or a geek to participate in this worthy effort. Go to www.childsplaycharity.org and click on the game controller on Hawaii. Doing this will take you right to Kapiolani’s Amazon (www.amazon.com) wish list. Your items will be sent directly to the hospital, but remember to change the shipping address to Kapiolani’s address during the checkout process to ensure it gets there directly. If you order at least $25 worth of goodies, the shipping is free.
When you go to Kapiolani’s wish list, you’ll see a variety of items ranging from books to video games to game consoles.
Each item indicates the desired amount, priority (low, medium or high) and how many were actually received. Conveniently, you can also view the items by purchased/purchased or product categories to help make your decision. Whatever your donation budget is, you can surely spare some extra bucks and a few mouse clicks to contribute.
Quick Tips On Maximizing Battery Performance. OK, so you’ve opened your Christmas presents and chances are you received at least one gadget that uses a battery. Remember that batteries don’t last forever. They lose capacity over time, but there are a few steps you can take to help prevent them from degrading as fast as they could if they are mis-treated.
* Charge batteries properly. If your battery is nickel-based, keep in mind that they require conditioning, so make sure you completely charge and discharge it a few times before initial use. Failure to properly condition nickel batteries will result in the formation of crystals, which can lead to batteries that will not hold a charge. Lithiumion and lithium-polymer typically arrive in a partially charged state, so just make sure you fully charge them before use, otherwise they do not need to be conditioned.
* Store batteries correctly. It’s best to use your batteries regularly, but if you must store them, make sure your nickel batteries are at least 50 percent discharged. As for the lithiums, just make sure you charge them when you’re ready to use them again.
* Battery disposal. When the end of your battery’s life arrives, it’s important that you practice proper disposal, since it’s made out of hazardous material. Some stores offer collection points, but check the Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation’s home page (www.rbrc.org) to find a drop-off location.
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