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Last night was the 8th installment of the Shenandoah Valley Technology Council’s awards gala. The nominees were announced a few weeks ago and the winners were announced last night. There was an interesting mix of young tech entrepreneurs and larger area businesses of all kinds that have been in the valley for years. If you [...]

I’ve been aware of Twitter for a while now. Initially, I disregarded it as another waste of time — a place to type mind-numbingly boring narcissistic drivel — along the lines of “what I’m doing” updates on MySpace and Facebook. But something citizen journalism advocate, Jeff Jarvis, recently posted on his blog made me give [...]

WMRA/WEMC recently recently upgraded their website to include RSS and podcast feeds for their local and state news stories.
Last week, WHSV announced a newer “easier to navigate” website. In October 2006, The Breeze added feeds, but lost them shortly thereafter, and apparently never fixed it. The DNR added feeds sometime in 2005. Still waiting on [...]

I haven’t really noticed that TV3’s website is “easier to navigate” (Is it? If so, how?) but I did notice four new videos up on their site that appear to be little jabs at the DNR’s E-edition.

The top story from the county yesterday and today is that the BoS voted not to allow Shentel to erect a 150 foot cell tower in Massanetta Springs (as it would mar the view).
But a week ago, this cell tower on the corner of Chesapeake and Grace wasn’t there. It mysteriously appeared late last week. [...]

Last year, there were some setbacks in the city’s high tech plans other than the IPv6 flop. One Court Square, that empty building between TV3 and First Presbyterian Church downtown, was once touted as the new home for high tech businesses downtown.

Macworld, Apple’s annual conference and expo is currently underway in San Fransisco. I don’t know if it’s newsworthy, but I thought it was interesting that local Juan Alvarez, who owns Midnight Apps, a Mac shareware company, made it into two iPhone-related stories in the DNR, and he also appeared in a post in yesterday’s Wired’s [...]

There’s a pair of stories in today’s DNR about the five percent rate hike for Comcast customers, set to go into effect November 7.

This weekend, October 5 through 8, is the Energy Star Sales Tax Holiday in Virginia (DNR article, Press Release). Virginians are encouraged to purchase Energy Star products, and can save both state and local sales tax on qualified products that cost $2,500 or less. Eligible products include:

As reported on WSVA this morning, a poultry farm in Dayton has been selected as part of a $1 million, year-long experiment to turn chicken dung into biofuel.
Foster A. Agblevor, a prof at Virginia Tech plans to test his mobile guano reactor at a chicken farm in Dayton this fall.

I saw this advertisement today, “Harrisonburg attracts high-quality, high-paying employers.” [pdf] I am assuming that it was created by Harrisonburg Department of Economic Development for publishing in Virginia Business Magazine. I think that the ad is pretty neat. It describes some of the new technology-related companies that are either here or will be coming here shortly [...]

Here’s the update for anyone interested in the next step regarding the chance to apply for local FM bandwidth. It’s now or never.

It’s no secret that I have many issues with the way local news is frequently covered in this area. It amazes me how often key questions (where, who, what, when, how) are left unanswered. For example (as a commenter points out) WHSV’s “exclusive” story about the South Avenue shooting fails to mention that it took [...]

For one week in October, the FCC is opening up the registration process to community groups for free full power FM radio bandwidth. The idea is to give local citizen groups a chance to be heard using the same tools available to the big media (e.g. Clear channel). Big city markets don’t [...]