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By Jim Trageser
Hmmm ... been awhile since we reviewed any Web sites ...
Run by a local computer consulting company, GoThere/San Diego/ is a nice bit of promotion for the Mid-City, Old Town and downtown areas of San Diego. Off the main menu, you can get to pages for Adams Avenue, the Gaslamp Quarter, Seaport Village, Horton Plaza, Old Town, the Convention Center and Coronado. (You could also, if you've a stronger stomach than I, visit local political parties' home pages.)
Once upon a career, I was editor of the now-defunct Adams Avenue Post, so the Adams Avenue page was of special interest – and it has the added benefit of being a really strong site, with a focus on the antique and book stores that are the main draws to Kensington and Normal Heights (and any site that has an ad for DiMille's Italian Deli is all right in my book).
The Gaslamp Quarter page is also well-designed and informative; the hallmark of these two pages is the online tour available for each neighborhood, where you can "scroll" the streets seeing which businesses are where and what they specialize in, with phone numbers and addresses for each establishment.
However, the Old Town and Seaport Village sites are a bit touristy to be of much interest to locals. And the Horton Plaza site is too self-serving to be believed. I fully realize it's an advertising vehicle, but still ... The Coronado and Convention Center sites seem not to be finished yet, and are up more to attract future advertisers than to offer any real info to visitors.
During our recent "tour" of local university and college web sites, some invariably slipped through my sieve of a mind. One of them was USIU (another was Western School of Law, and we'll stop by there eventually), which the school was quick to point out.
The main menu for USIU is sparse, and you have to go too many levels to get where you want to get. But once you're there, the course catalog is top-rate, the campus descriptions (San Diego, Irvine, Mexico City, Nairobi) useful. And with a little digging, potential students will find in-depth info on tuition, financial aid, the academic calendar and almost anything else they might need.
Unfortunately, as with most academic sites anymore, USIU's web pages are clogged with diversity statements and mission statements and all other kinds of claptrap that midlevel bureaucrats generate to justify their overpaid positions. It's not a fancy site, and there isn't much of interest to the general public, but it serves its purpose of informing the campus community.