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Hello Slow Travelers message board members! What's new on SlowTalk? The Slow Talk message board (www.slowtalk.com) is busier than ever! If you haven't been there lately, drop in for a visit! We would love to hear from you. - Our traffic has been increasing steadily since we introduced the message board two years ago. We now have over 2000 members and 500 - 800 visitors per day, with an average of 8000+ page views per day. - There are four new moderators to help us run things: Dean from MD, Kim from NJ, Cristina from Italy, and Marta from WA. Three of our original moderators, David from NY, Liz from Vancouver, and Steve from NM, are taking a break from their moderating duties. The rest of the original moderators are still with us: Amy from MA, Maureen from MA, Chris from CA, Colleen from CA, and me (Pauline from NM). - We have a new forum, "Living in Italy - Moving to Italy", hosted by Cristina from Italy.
What's new on SlowTrav? The Slow Travelers web site (www.slowtrav.com) is growing too! We were selected for web site of the week in May by Australia's Sydney Morning Herald and the Albuquerque Journal had an article about us in January. Look for an article about us in the travel section of the St. Louis Post Dispatch this weekend and a mention in an upcoming travel column in the New York Times (August 17 - Practical Traveler). See our Scrapbook. - Our traffic is increasing steadily. We now have 3000+ visitors per day. - We have over 600 vacation rental reviews, 300 hotel reviews, and 500 restaurant reviews. Most reviews are for Italy, but have many reviews for other countries too. The review pages are our most popular pages. - We changed our review policy so that only registered members of the SlowTalk message board can submit reviews. This keeps out the junk reviews and ensures that we have a valid email address for the reviewer. - We did a reorganization of the information on the web site. Within each section, the new section "Instructions for Visitors" contains all the "how to" information for a country. The "Travel Notes" section contains my "things to do" pages and those contributed by others. - New material is added all the time. When new pages or sections are added, they are announced on the message board.
Contribute to SlowTrav/SlowTalk Because the web site and message board have grown so much this year, we are now asking for contributions to help pay our web hosting and other expenses. Click here for more information about contributing. - Contribute to become a member ($25, $50, $75). Receive two SlowTrav luggage tags for $50+ donations. - Contribute as a supporting business ($50, $100) and you are listed on our Supporting Businesses page. - Use our clickthrus. We have clickthrus for AutoEurope (car rental), Venere (hotel bookings), and Amazon. We recently joined the Google Ads program. Google displays ads relevant to our web site content and we are paid for each clickthru. The clickthrus do not generate enough revenue to keep us going. That is why we ask for membership donations. We do not want to take banner ads from vacation rental agencies because we feel this may cause us to be biased on the web site, or we may appear to be biased. If we are supported by the people who use our site, we can remain independent from the travel businesses that we discuss and review.
How can you participate? You can participate in SlowTrav/SlowTalk in many ways. - Our "regulars" on the message board do most of the work. They answer questions, post interesting articles they find, start interesting new topics. Jump in and start posting (if you aren't already)! - Send us your vacation rental / hotel / restaurant reviews. These are the focus of the web site and are the most popular pages. Click here to submit reviews. - Send us your trip reports. Currently these are posted on the Trip Reports forum on the message board, but we will be launching a new and better system soon. - Send me your Travel Notes. If you have some detailed notes on things to do, or lists of shops, or anything about travel, email them to me and I will publish them on the web site. We are always looking for interesting Travel Notes! - Come and meet us at a SlowTrav Get Together (GTG)! We have them in Italy and around the US and Canada. If you see people from your area on the message board, arrange a GTG! It is great meeting other Slow Travelers. We had a GTG in San Diego last weekend! - Write to your local newspaper and tell them to write an article about us! This is how we got the mention in the Sydney Morning Herald and the upcoming article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
NEW - Slow Trips - our Photo Gallery We have launched our Photo Gallery - Slow Trips - at www.slowtrips.com. This works like a message board, but for photos not words! Join the photo gallery and then you can upload photos straight from your computer. Instructions are on the home page of Slow Trips. Many people have been adding photos these past few months. You can post individual photos to the categories I have set up (e.g. photos of Tuscany towns) or you can create an individual photo album where you upload a series of photos for your trip report.
NEW - our Trip Calendar Members of the SlowTalk message board can now enter their trip dates and destinations in a trip calendar. Use the trip calendar to see who is traveling the same time as you and arrange for a meeting or a GTG. See the link on the header of the message board.
NEW - Shannon and Ruth have published Chow Venice!, a Venice restaurant guide Shannon from CA is a regular on our message board and Ruth is a regular on the AOL boards. Both of them have published their Venice restaurant lists on SlowTrav for the past two years. Now they have written a book! - Chow Venice! Savoring the Food and Wine of La Serenissima, by Shannon Essa and Ruth Edenbaum, Wine Appreciation Guild, 2003, www.chowbellabooks.com Click here to order through Amazon.
We are currently all addicted to the Sorrento Web Cam!! www.sorrentoinfo.com/webcam.asp In Sorrento, Italy, near the Amalfi coast, at the corner of Via San Cesareo and Via Tasso, is the most amazing web cam. Many of us watch it every day. We even grab snaps and post them on our Slow Trips photo gallery. Be careful: It is addictive! Sorrento Info run the web cam and when they found out what fans we are, they put a banner for SlowTrav on the web cam page! Anyone traveling to Sorrento - please pick a day and time and tell us and then stand in front of the web cam. We did this once, and it was great fun (Cynde from HI) and we are scheduled to do it again soon (Moon Shadow from Ontario!).
Upcoming changes to how we post Trip Reports Currently you can post your trip reports in the Trip Reports forum on SlowTalk, but Chris is programming a new system for collecting trip reports and displaying them on the web site. Kim and Chris will be running this part of the system. Look for this new system to be announced in August/September.
Keep your SlowTalk Profile current! Click My Space - Profile to access your profile. I made location, gender and interests required fields now - so we know more about our members. If you want a photo added to your profile, email it to me.
=========================================== Thanks for reading our newsletter! You can keep up-to-date with Slow Travelers by checking in regularly on the message board (look in the Everything Else forum for general news) and the What's New page on the web site (see link from the home page).
See you on SlowTalk! Pauline Kenny ===========================================
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