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By Jim Trageser
The San Diego North County Page is dedicated to covering the issues and communities of North County, San Diego's fastest-growing region.
It is focused on the inland part of North County, though, with pages featuring Poway, Ramona, Borrego Springs, Julian and Escondido.
The best part of the Escondido page is its link to Escondido's own home page, which is professional, polished and comprehensive, including parks, the California Center for the Arts, City Hall and library, and links to the school districts and Palomar College.
The Poway site includes what is supposed to be a digest of the weekly News Chieftain, but the as of the first week in January the only news was from Nov. 7. There is a link to the school district, to a listing of all churches in Poway, and the home page of the Poway Chamber of Commerce (which is worth a visit if you live or work in the city). Links to the city's official home page, to a Poway calendar of events, and to the parks and rec department were both bad, however, with no page on the other end.
The Ramona page is smaller – but then Ramona is significantly smaller than Poway, so there's less to feature. There is an active link to the Ramona schools, with a listing of all public and private schools and links to those that have their own Web pages. There's also a link to the Ramona Mall (fairly empty) and the Chamber of Commerce (a lot of info).
Julian's page contains more information than even Poway's. The calendar of events off the Chamber of Commerce page was pretty dated, though, with Christmas events the latest dates listed as of Jan. 5. But there is a listing of visitors' attractions (parks, theaters) and inns, with addresses and phone numbers, as well as a history of the area.
The North County page has some potential, but it needs more communities added – folks in Escondido are just as likely to have dinner in Cardiff as in their own city, and vice versa – as well as to fix the glitches, like missing links, unbuilt pages, etc.
NetPartners is a San Diego-based firm that sells a Web-blocking program called "WebSENSE."
"WebSENSE" screens Web sites based on various criteria – pornography to abortion, weapons to drugs. There are, to be sure, many materials on the Internet that are not appropriate for children. (Heck, there's stuff on the 'Net that makes me blush ...). And many companies are reportedly having problems keeping their employees focused on work and not visiting the NFL or NBA Web sites.
Anyway, NetPartners' Web site has descriptions of "WebSENSE," along with a price list (not cheap, but schools get a discount. And you can download the program for a free 30-day trial.
The number of BBSs in San Diego has plummeted over the past year as the Web has exploded. I'd like to hear from sysops who are still running BBSs: Have the software companies kept up with their products? Is there a large enough user base to keep going indefinitely? Is there a future for BBSs? E-mail me with your responses, and I'll share them with the readers in a future column. We'll also be visiting some BBSs in the months to come, to find out what's going on in that area of San Diego's cyberspace.