A two-way View

The View from the Cube today isn't too much different for me than it's been for several months now, except for one detail; today I can see people looking in the window. Since last night, we've been sending the word out, via e-mails to subscribers and in today's column from Gazette editor Jim Foudy, that our new version of GazetteNET is open for your viewing. Fairly soon, it'll be the GazetteNET, but for now it's kind of like a new house where contractors are still working on some of the rooms. The front door is there and open, some rooms are nicely habitable and, yes, some still need work. Our geek terms for this would be "beta" or "soft launch"; in English, that means it's a "work in progress."

So, in the Cube, we're plugging away pretty much as we have been for some time now. Web developer Chip Kaye is next to me tooling some accounts for our reporters and bloggers and making some adjustments to our This Just In feed for breaking news, where I posted a piece about 20 minutes ago from our Amherst bureau on the town's search for new principals for the middle school. (The winner will be my son's principal next year as he moves to middle school; maybe I should check that out.) Behind me, New Media director Gerry LeBlanc is fielding phone calls from some of you out there who have already discovered the site, but maybe can't get here that easily. And I'm squeezing this blog in between checking for news, heading to our regular noon story meeting, noting down things we'll need to fix here -- a continual part of the process, that -- and prepping to talk to our Northampton reporters later about how to code their stories to make sure they show up correctly on the Web. If we're lucky, some of us may be able later to sneak under the headphones and listen to some tunes (this being one of the departments where we can occasionally do that), but in my case I have my doubts -- it's shaping up as a busy one here.

No question, there's a lot to do yet. Still, 7.0, as we call it here (since it's the seventh update of GazetteNET since its 1996 debut), is just ready enough to set loose on our little Valley world. Six months from now, it won't look like it does today -- in fact, some basics may well be considerably different. So keep that in mind as you tool around, let us know what you think, and stay tuned. There'll be plenty more to come.