Reading Roars!

Looking at the latest Evening Post poll on their website, I see that 38% of respondents are not in favour of the Living Reading/Reading UK logo.  I don’t know how many have responded to the poll exactly, but 38% seems a substantial share.  What are your thoughts on the initiative?  I know this looks like a question posed by Marmite marketers, but do you love it or hate it?

I believe that the Reading brand is a step in the right direction (though I’m convinced also that the Reading FC badge has had a powerful effect overseas in drawing attention to the town).  I’ve added the Living Reading symbol to this blog (you can’t miss it!) and have just set up a new Facebook group featuring the new logo (cheeky?  You decide).  The Facebook group is here, by the way (don’t all rush at once): http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6018431886

Reading Roars! is now 2 years old.  I’ll probably have a pint this weekend to mark this unlikely anniversary.  Join me, if you like.

And now for a seemingly random and non-Reading related entry.  Are there any readers/bloggers here based in Vancouver, Canada?

An apology to those whose submitted comments have either appeared on the blog later than anticipated or not at all (I’m trudging through my inbox now).

I’m getting a tremendous amount of spam every day (mostly related to gambling, sexual enhancement drugs and mortgages - none of which I need), which is obscuring the messages that matter. I will look for a solution to deal with this problem. As a short-term measure, I will go through my inbox much more carefully.

Recently, I launched a Reading-themed portal (I’m not a Reading addict, honest). Preferring to keep things simple, I named the portal, ahem, ReadingPortal.

Now, before you all rush to Google this site, I must warn you that it really isn’t that good (not enough time in the day, you see). So, the reason I’m writing this now is because I’m looking for someone who would like to work on this projectette with me, in partnership (shared revenues). The objective is to make this a highly popular portal with Reading Netizens (and, of course, advertisers/commercial partners).

If you’re interested, please contact me with a brief proposal. You can visit the site now (please excuse me while I duck behind the sofa).

I was biting into a steak at an Italian restaurant (Bella Napoli) in central Swansea last night, when a bizarre thought entered my mind. I suddenly saw resemblances between the restaurant layout and the structure of this blog.

The restaurant bar was on my right, manned by a chirpy Rossoneri-supporting Italian with a penchant for The Sun’s Dear Deirdre. Bar… sidebar. Sitting atop the bar were the menus, and the bartender was ready to guide and answer any query I had (like the search box).

Similarly, ahead of me, running left to right, was the high street, like the header graphic on my blog. The kitchen behind me was like the blog footer and the important bit in between, the dining area, was like the column you are looking at right now, where the content is displayed.

Now and again, the restaurant received a visitor or two, but thankfully no spiders (yes, I’m a wuss: I don’t like arachnids).

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Or was my large San Jovese wine, quite simply, too large?

As you can see, I’ve made a few changes to this blog.

Gone is the old Oracle (shopping complex, not technology giant) header graphic: I have now introduced a brighter, more colourful banner showing Reading’s ornate facades. Similarly, I’ve left behind a tight, cramped template in favour of one that is broader and more spacious, hopefully making the blog easier to read and use.

Other changes include:

• A widget-friendly sidebar. A widget wha’? Of course, I don’t mean the plastic things you sometimes get inside beer cans, but cool interactive elements that can be added to a website. These might be, for example, a Flickr plug-in for showing images, or a tag cloud (something I intend to deploy soon), depicting the site’s categories in a different way.
• A horizonal nav bar, placed at the top of the blog.
• A two column theme. I’ve dropped the third column (or first, depending on your perspective), as Google AdSense simply wasn’t delivering (I was hoping for a little more than USD 5 in 12 months). It made no sense to keep AdSense.
• A different style. Links are red (contradicting, I guess, a basic law of usability). I may change this, but then red is the colour I’d most associate Reading with (for it’s name, it’s streets and it’s Victorian buildings).

It’s a start and there will be more changes to come. Please let me know if there is something that you feel I should include/exclude/change.