A hard drive crash is never fun.

Even if you’ve been responsible and maintain a complete back up, it still means reinstalling the operating system, restoring the back ups, testing, fixing, and testing some more.

Hard drive calibration should only be performed by a trained technician.

Early Saturday morning the server that hosts Bradford-Online.com and our other web sites lost its hard drive. The new hard drive is installed and backups have been restored. Everything seems to be working, and we apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks to our host, Olean Web Hosting, for working non-stop to restore everything as quickly as possible.

Testing continues to ferret out any remaining bugs. If you find anything that doesn’t work correctly, please let us know. Contact Us.

Bradford-Online.com has updated our Local News page.

We now carry headlines from Anne Holliday’s 1490 News Blog, which is probably the best source on the web for local news. For local news, we have WESB.com, The Bradford Era, and Topix.

If that isn’t enough for one page, we also feature the latest posts from TalkAboutBradford.com, DotPenn (hilarious), PAWaterCooler, and Pennsyltucky Politics.

These headlines are automatically updated by the magic of RSS Feeds. Basically, an RSS feed is like a radio signal. Sites that put out RSS feeds are like radio stations. A receiver can be part of a web site, like our Local News page, or can be a Feed Reader, which allows you to set up a personal collection of your favorite feeds. Your web browser probably has a feed reader built in. This allows you to add feeds from any site that offers one.

What’s in all this for you? If you check your favorite sites to see what’s new, your feed reader will tell you. It checks the sites you like to see for what’s new and puts it all in one place. If you use the latest version of Internet Explorer, it will automatically detect when the site you are visiting has an RSS Feed.

To see the newest posts on Bradford-Online.com click on the large orange icon above.

The Bradford-Online.com Community Calendar Of Events has been updated.

If your organization would like to list their events you can, using our contact form.

Open government is a foundation of our democracy. In the spirit of open government, Bradford-Online.com has obtained the City’s monthly Revenues & Expenditures reports. The reports include departmental summaries of City departments and detailed budget, revenue, and expenditure information. We plan to publish each month’s report as they become available.

Click here to view the available reports.

The line item detail can be daunting at first glance when you open these reports. Keep in mind that these are the same reports the Mayor and City Council members receive. These reports are great tools for better understanding of how the City works.

If you have questions about the numbers, plan on attending a City Council meeting and asking questions. City Council holds regular meetings the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month at 7:30pm on the 3rd floor of City Hall on Kennedy Street.

I’m happy to introduce Bradford-Online.com’s newest feature, Local News Headlines.

Initially we’ll be using syndicated feeds for the local radio station, WESB, and local newspaper, the Bradford Era.

The news department for WESB/WBRR, headed by news director Anne Holliday, updates their news articles throughout the day with items of interest to the local area. Hence their motto, “You hear it here first”. The only way to get local news quicker is to tune into the the radio station.

The Bradford Era is the city’s only daily newspaper. Generally updated each morning, their articles tend to be more in-depth. Their “‘Round The Square” feature has been a printed-edition favorite for decades. The on-line edition also features the work of Francie Long, probably Bradford’s best known photographer.

You’ll also find local sports information from both feeds.

Now you can make Bradford-Online.com your first stop for local news. We’ll be adding more syndicated feeds as we discover sources worth adding. If you have a suggestion, please contact us.

Of course our discussion forum, TalkAboutBradford.com, is also a great source of news, although not guaranteed as reliable as the previously mentioned news outlets. Think of it more as a stop to the local general store to discuss the local “news”.

Talk About Bradford is back up and running.

For those of you that don’t know what “TAB” is, it is our virtual community, or discussion forum. It’s sort of like the old general store cracker-barrel. Hang around, listen to what’s going on, speak your piece if you have something to say. It’s also a good place to ask questions if you want to know about Bradford, PA.

Anyone can look to see what people are talking about. The sidebar on this page has an RSS feed listing the latest TAB posts. If you want to join the discussion, registration is free. It just helps us keep the discussion on track and prevents spammers from ruining things.

Our good friend Jason acted as administrator for a while while he upgraded and tuned the forum software. Thank-you Jason! TAB now has three moderators, Laura, Nic, and Spider. They run things on a day-to-day basis, and are tasked with enforcing the rules. Take a moment to check out Talk About Bradford.

Today there’s a strong interest on the web for pictures. I’m pleased to introduce the Bradford-Online.com PhotoGallery. The intent of the photogallery is two-fold. First, to keep visitors up-to-date on events and the changing face of Bradford, Pennsylvania. The other goal will be to give visitors a sense of what Bradford is.

Take a look around. You can even send an Ecard using any of the pictures. If you have pictures or video posted on a web site and you’d like to share it, please do! Send a link from our Contact Us page.

I’m sure everyone has noticed the big orange square at the top of the site. If you’ve wondered what it is, it’s a link to our RSS feed. Instead of checking here to see if Bradford-Online.com has been updated, wouldn’t it be great if we notified you of the update and then gave you a summary? Thanks to RSS now we can. There are over a billion web pages on the World wide web. Keeping up to date with the information can be difficult. RSS brings the information you want to you.

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. This means, you identify the content you like and have it delivered directly to your computer. It takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by showing you the very latest information that YOU are interested in.

Not all websites currently provide RSS, but it is growing rapidly in popularity. Many websites that add their own news items do provide it.

How do I start using RSS feeds?

The first thing you need is a “news/feed reader”. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are
down loadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you want.

Once you have chosen a news/feed reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want. For example, if you would like the latest CLC News stories, simply visit the Homepage and you will notice an orange RSS button in the middle of the page.

Where to Find the RSS icon

If you click on the button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the RSS feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader.

News Readers

Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, and Safari browsers all have feed readers built in. This is probably your simplest option because it’s already available to you. There are also several stand-alone feed readers you can download. Both options should allow you to download the updated content to read offline later.

An online feed reader cuts out the hassle of installing software and you can check it from any online computer. Google and Bloglines are free and easy to use. You can easily add feeds to your Google or Yahoo! home pages too.

Different news readers work on different operating systems, so you will need to take this into account when you make your choice.

Now you know how to get started with RSS. Once you have your feed reader setup you can click on our orange feed icon to be informed of changes on Bradford-Online.com, or you can copy and paste our feed url into your reader:

http://bradford-online.com/?feed=rss2

If you’re using RSS send us a comment and let us know.

Many of you will be wondering where Talk About Bradford has gone. After all, it was one of Bradford-Online.com’s most popular features. If you don’t know, it was our discussion forum. Membership was anonymous and people were free to say almost anything, with light moderation.

Over time Talk About Bradford has become its own neighborhood. The good news is, now it has it’s own zip code so to speak. TalkAboutBradford.com is up and running. Jason Wells, long time admin of TalkAboutOlean.com has also taken over as admin of TAB. Jason knows how to keep things running smoothly. You can also bet he’ll be adding the bells and whistles that make things fun.

As a neighborhood Talk About Bradford is full of personalities, some outspoken, some a little more laid back, but everyone has an opinion. Anyone who is interested in Bradford, PA is invited to join in the conversation. If you don’t feel like talking it’s always interesting to listen to what everyone else is saying.