So, I’m obviously a fan of the internet. What I am NOT a fan of is the internet resources available for local mamas-to-be and new moms. It’s CRAP. Our Parks&Rec website, instead of having a great page showcasing the really fab stuff in the area, like the amazing pool facility, the magic that is City Forest, the great playgrounds that abound, etc, has a text-only webpage, with all the links being PDFs and Word docs. I mean, SERIOUSLY. Pool hours & fees could so EASILY be a simple html page, with pictures! Of the awesomeness! But no.  The hospital website has a search engine from 1993, that pulls up ads (HELLO, you’re a HOSPITAL) and I have (seriously) yet to have it actually WORK for me.
(I’m not kidding. I knew I’d STUMBLED across a page with all their support groups listed on it, but this is the search result searching for ‘support groups’ –no quotes — I mean, really. It’s embarrassing. Especially when you look at all the occurrences of the words "support’ and ‘groups’ in the actual page.) Plus, the indexing sucks. CROSS REFERENCE, PEOPLE. Put the info about twins/postpartum/breastfeeding support groups SOMEWHERE near the LDR info. Seriously.

Anyway, in my frustration at tracking down all this info (the Laleche league publishes their meeting site in the paper, but not on the website, for instance) I decided to compile it once and for all. I’ve also used it as a chance to play more with WordPress.com, a free blog hosting service that is almost as good as Typepad. A quick rundown: it’s free, you can import Blogger or MT/TypePad blogs into it, and has no ads and okay templates. Over Blogger, it has categories (WHY, does google not implement categories, when their whole world is built on indexing and finding shit?) and a calendar archive. It has ‘previous entries’ (much like LiveJournal does) but not full on previous/next buttons for chronological reading, so TypePad wins there. Of course, this project isn’t about chronological reading, so it’s not a huge deal. The categories are, though.  The interface is super easy to use, rich-text editing, easy links (actually, I like the linking better than TypePad’s, because it allows you to add alt-tags and specify which window to open in) and FREE. No domain mapping yet.  Also, what’s free now will stay free forever.

SO! On that note, the BangorBaby blog can be found here:

http://bangorbaby.wordpress.com

So far I’ve added info about Y classes, EMMC offerings, Bangor Public info, and the consignment store… I plan on adding info on changing table availability (as soon as I start noticing them more), parks and playgrounds, and other mama/baby friendly stuff to do here. Not that I have many local readers, but remember, my fair city is on the way to one of the most visited national parks in the US, so if you’re passing through and need to know where to go to blow off steam or something, it might be helpful. I only wish I could get course credit for this pet project. 🙂

The other thing I’ve been playing around with is Google’s Pages Creator. It’s in beta, and makes your gmail address totally readable to bots, but since I set myself up with a bangorbaby gmail address, I thought I’d test drive Pages as well. It’s actually not bad (once you get past the bot thing, so you’d want to use your very much not-primary gmail account) for a basic web editor. They have templates as well, 100mb of storage, pretty step-by-step instructions, so it would be hard for a newbie to fail. It would be a great way for a non-techie to play around with web pages.  Mine is at http://bangorbaby.googlepages.com , and again, tooootallly just a sandbox right now. (If anyone wants a gmail invite to play around with it, let me know. The signup page says they aren’t opening new accounts, so get on the waitlist, and I was on the list for less than 24 hours, FWIW.)

Anyway. Yeah. Can I just do some independent study on blogging or something? What with my bangorbaby project, and my mainetech project, and just my REGULAR bloggy projects…. seriously, 3 credits would do. Sigh.