First and foremost – thank you for being a part of the FlashReport website. On January 1, it will be three months since we took the site online, and moved away from the e-mail newsletter format. The response from readers, old and new, has been tremendous.
SIGN UP FOR FREE UPDATES
I wanted to first encourage you, if you haven’t done so already, to sign up for the free FlashReport updates (sign up to the left). What do you get with this feature? Each morning, when the site is updated, I send out an e-mail. So no more constantly checking, wondering when lazy-bones it done culling through 45+ websites each morning – I’ll tell you! The e-mail also contains the headlines of every story on the main page, for a quick look if you don’t have time to click-through right away. Finally, when there are interesting stories on the blog, or a major piece of breaking news in California politics, I will send out an ‘alert’ to subscribers. Many thousands are signed up already – are you?
NEW FORMATTING ON THE MAIN PAGE
You will probably notice that my development team has helped me to enhance the functionality of the main page. I am still bringing you today’s "must read" news and commentaries on California politics, but now I can help guide your eyes a little more. Now I can ad ‘headlines’ above the link to a story, and when I want, I can also put in a little description beneath a link. Hopefully these changes will help you to enjoy using this feature of the site. Of course, how ‘crazy’ I go on all of this is a function of how much time I have in the morning…
ABILITY TO EASILY PRINT
The site has now been adjusted so that when you print a Commentary, or a Featured Column, or an entry on the Weblog, it will be formatted. Before, when you tried to print, it was a total mess. The developer will be adding some handy print icons, too, to remind you about this feature.
COMING NEXT…ABILITY TO COMMENT ON MY COMMENTARY…AND ON BLOG POSTS
The next challenge for my development team is to set up this feature. The vision is this: Any FR readers who wish to do so can add their comments to my daily Commentary, or to any one of the entries on the FR Blog. You will only see the comments if you click on the comments button at the end of the entry, otherwise you can enjoy the FR the way it is now.
In order to comment, site registration will come into play. You will have to sign up and be ‘verified’ (by me) in order to become an approved ‘commentor’. This is part of the ongoing efforts by FR management (me) to try, as best as possible, to make sure that we don’t have abuses to the site (whether that is advertisers, foul-mouthed comments, etc). The system isn’t going to be foolproof (like I said, I’m running the show – ha!) – but we’ll see how it goes. This feature should ad a fun dynamic to reading my Commentary and to reading the Blog!
ANY OTHER IDEAS?
I am always open to more ideas on how this website can be improved. Some comments that I have received already include:
- Making the site "PDA friendly" for those surfing from their Trio or Blackberry.
- Concern about the fact that the site opens so many new windows.
- Adjusting the main page to make it easier to find the Commentary and Weblog.
- More e-mail updates when breaking news is on the site.
Please share your thoughts and ideas with me on any and all of these. Just go to the top right corner of this page and you can "Send me an e-mail" or you can "Send anonymously" if you prefer.
Your feedback is vital and appreciated.
Jon Fleischman,
Publisher