MyHalton: New forum for Halton residents

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MyHalton.com is a new forum for Halton residents to share information and post comments about their respective communities.

What has impressed me most about MyHalton is, despite the fact that it is a young forum, knowledgable moderators ensure that virtually every posting had a response in a day or so.

This has enabled anyone to find Halton-specific information from others who live and work in the area. They share information fast with a lot of collaboration—every post or question that I came across had a minimum of one reply.

Comprehensive what’s on listings for Burlington, Oakville, Milton, Georgetown and Acton include theatre, arts, comedy, clubs, music, classes, special events and more! The site also provides a handy event calendar. All members are invited to post upcoming events.

Its aggregation system aggregates feeds from multiple sources, providing updated buy and sell listings from Craigslist, job postings from Randstad, news updates from the Burlington Post, Oakville Beaver and Milton Canadian Champion. The site’s format allows for quick and easy commentary and its small but active community is an encouraging one, eliciting viewpoints from both new and old members.

These aggregated listings provide the backbone for Halton’s largest and most visited free classifieds area. Categories include buy & sell listings, real estate, jobs, et al.

Restaurant reviews are provided by Menuism, making MyHalton the only source you need to find and recommend restaurants in Halton Region. Menus, restaurant guides, reviews and more are provided for Burlington, Oakville, Milton, Georgetown and Acton. You are also encouraged to post your own reviews, comments and criticisms.

The forum also provides an area for new or visiting residents. Whether you are considering Halton as a destination for your next vacation, to come as a tourist to one of the many Halton festivals, or are a visitor currently in the Halton area this forum is designed to provide a fun, user friendly way of discussing and discovering information!

Obama wins!

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Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States, the first African-American elected to the country’s highest office. He’s expected to take office as the forty-fourth President on January 20, 2009.

His message of hope has already been vindicated, let’s just hope he can deliver on his promise of change.

Indeed, Obama will have to start managing his electorate’s, and indeed the world’s expectations. The recession, the American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, global warming—none of these issues will respond to campaign rhetoric alone, beautiful as it is.

There is no doubt in my mind that, in order to take on the issues, Obama will need bi-partisan support. It was a sentiment underlined by John McCain’s eloquent concession speech, wherein McCain acknowledged the historic significance of Obama’s victory and urged Americans to put aside their differences in order to reach mutually beneficial goals. Obama shouldn’t hesitate to embrace any of McCain’s good ideas. For his part, McCain can help Obama bridge the partisan divide in Washington.

I am hopeful because this week, I am part of a generation of young people that is bringing a message of hope and change to the world and, while not American, I share in the joyful anticipation of the possibilities of an Obama administration and its implications for the entire world.

Ahadada Books

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Looking for Ahadada Books? Check us out here!

Today, I receieved a notice that our site for Ahadada Books (www.ahadadabooks.com) had violated Google’s quality guidelines. Here’s the note:

While we were indexing your webpages, we detected that some of your pages were using techniques that are outside our quality guidelines . . . this appears to be because your site has been modified by a third party. Typically, the offending party gains access to an insecure directory that has open permissions. Many times, they will upload files or modify existing ones, which then show up as spam in our index.

What had happened was that Google had discovered some hidden text appended to our site’s template—referring mostly to erectile dysfunction medication, et al.

In order to preserve the quality of Google’s search engine, pages from ahadadabooks.com were removed temporarily from its search results. I’ve now corrected the problem and have contacted Google to be reconsidered. Hopefully, we’ll be relisted soon.

Essentially, Google flexed its muscles and suspended Ahadada Books from its search engine because of a perceived attempt to artificially boost its popularity ranking.

Something similar happened to BMW Germany, following the German car manufacturer’s attempts to game the Google index. The major difference here was that the Ahadada Books site was a victim of foul play, whereas BMW Germany had made concerted efforts to game the system.

Regardless, the move illustrates the fact that one company has a lot of power over a website’s access to the public. While the methods used by BMW were a violation of the search engine’s guidelines, and not something that we at Ahadada Books endorse, we look forward to re-inclusion in Google; hopefully, very soon!

Despite the setback, traffic at Ahadada Books has stayed pretty consistent!