Posting links to a couple of sites I've not mentioned here before that are really useful.

First is BendHappyHour.com, featuring searchable listings of local bar and restaurant happy hours; they accept user submissions so if something you're looking for isn't on there, you can suggest it. My wife's been following this one (they have a Facebook page too), and made a good point about how the new OLCC happy hour rule should help this take off. (The OLCC now allows places to advertise both times for a happy hour and the cost of the drinks—but not at the same time.)

The other is EyeOnBend, a site listing a bunch of live Bend webcams. (Via Jake.) Okay, maybe not as useful as the first link, but fun nonetheless.

I was browsing the Bend page on Wikitravel (ever checked out Wikitravel? It's basically Wikipedia for travel guides) and though I was expecting something pretty sparse, there's actually more detail there that touches on some decent points.

(Though it could really use a good editorial hand going over it.)

But I will give credit to the fact that it revealed something that I don't think I already knew (or if I did, I didn't blog about it): Shoji's is closed. The Japanese flair restaurant that was over by Shopko closed last summer (confirmation from the Bulletin).

Odd place to get restaurant news; you'd think if something was closed it wouldn't still be on the wiki page.

Looks like there's been a very recent Streetview update for Bend in Google Maps—and I mean very recent, as in within the past week or two at most. Previously they only had the blue "Streetview routes" (in blue) on Highways 97 and 20. Take a look now:

And when you look at the Streetview pictures, it's obvious they were taken in the Fall—leaves on the trees are turned and the weather looks like, well, like it has been lately. And, you can view the schedule on the Tower Theatre's sign to see October events highlighted—notably BendFilm. So it's fairly obvious the Google Car has been through Bend and that Google does fast updates to their system.

Two questions: is the Google Car still driving around Bend, getting Streetview pictures? And, did anyone see it?

Update: Apparently I'm wrong and these images are from last year; the anonymous comment below and over on Jake's post point out the correct dates and better research. Still, it's nice to see more coverage coming to Central Oregon and hopefully there will be more updates soon.

The Bulletin has launched their first blog: Frequency, featuring music reviews and news from Bend and Central Oregon. It's written by Ben Salmon, the key player responsible for the Bulletin's Near/Far (the freely-downloadable music compilations), and the "mission statement", as it were, is:

Here at Frequency, I’ll aim to keep you up to date on all things music, period. If a big show is announced for Bend (or a surrounding town), I’ll let you know about it. If something sells out, you’ll read about it here. Did you hear that a concert was canceled? Check out Frequency for the up-to-date info.

You’d better believe, too, that I’ll be covering Central Oregon’s local artists from top to bottom. From new collaborations to break-ups, high-school garage bands to veteran folkies, DJs to jam-grass groups, Frequency will have regular updates about the region’s endlessly inventive musicians.

Along the way, I’ll sprinkle in national music news and give you my take on what’s going on and how it could affect the way you consume your favorite sounds.

A cursory glance at the site is revealing, with a Flickr photostream, a Flash plugin radio player, Twitter account and followers, and more.

All in all, looks really promising and if you're into the local music scene you should follow it. I already foresee good Hack Bend fodder from it...

That would be BendNights.com, the online restaurant and events guide. They've launched a series of blogs, which look interesting because they have the potential to get guest bloggers that are local business owners and such.

(Which is the case with their wine blog, which is written by the owner of Volcano Vineyards.)

Not much more to see here. I just like advocating for local blogs along these lines.

Jake discovers that Google Street View (the from-the-street photo perspective in Google Maps) has made it to Bend. Sort of—I checked it out and it looks like the Google Car only passed through Bend north-south on the Parkway and Third Street, and east out Greenwood and Highway 20.

It also extends north and west through Redmond and Sisters, and in fact looks like they followed the major highways through the area.

So we've only got a partial Street View, but that's still pretty cool. Now I wonder how long before they start getting more streets mapped?

While I was gone, Bend apparently appeared on MSNBC in an article under their "Budget Travel" category. Titled "Portland's quirky-chic cousin", it's actually not a bad article, by and by, but you just know I have to pick some of it apart.

The author starts her day with breakfast at The Victorian Café, which is naturally a good choice. (Best breakfast in Bend, I call it.) But then, talking about the "lunch-box houses" in the historic parts of Old Bend, she mentions that the Historical Society walking tour is of these "lunch-box" houses; in fact, many of the destinations on that tour are quite the opposite. (Unless you consider places like the Congress House or the School Administration Building lunch-box housing...)

And she doesn't quite place Deschutes Brewery on Wall Street rather than Bond, but that's the impression a casual reader will get. Plus, she visits the Brewery and only drinks Cascade Ale? This is microbrew country, what's up with that? A Black Butte Porter should have been on the tab at the very least.

Kudos on talking to John Flannery and the snarky comments about some of the awful roundabout art we have here, though.

Hmm, overall I'd say it's fairly well-balanced. I find it fairly telling, though, that Bend is being featured in a "Budget Travel" piece rather than a "Best Places to Live / Breathe / Overpay on a Home" article these days...

Here's an unusual one. The Bulletin is offering a "Deal of the Day" service to site visitors and mobile text messagers:

Bendbulletin.com is pleased to offer our site users a special Deal of the Day every day from Aug. 8 through Aug. 14. The deals and merchants change daily, so check back each day to get a new special offer from a Bend merchant.

Just text "deal" to 20123 and you'll receive a bar code on your cell phone. Present that bar code to the participating merchant to claim your special deal.

I'm not sure why the cell phone component is there, unless it's really exclusive to cell phones? Plus a bar code on the cell just seems so random.

I'll keep an eye on their site for the Deal of the Day, but does someone want to report back on the cell phone component when it goes live?

This is huge: Deschutes County is now posting restaurant inspection scores online and publicly available. Go here to see them.

Every restaurant in the County—even places that are not nominally restaurants, like hotels, or small food counters in other types of establishments—is online, it looks like. You can search by name, city, score, and address, and you can click through to the details for each restaurant, which include:

• The comments and details of each violation;
• Date of inspection(s) and subsequent follow-up re-inspection(s);
• Google Map of the establishment;
• Graphed view of the score(s);
• And, of course, the actual score.

Each restaurant is scored on a scale of 100—100 being the best possible score. Each violation reduces the total score, and restaurant scoring less than 70 get the dreaded "Failed to Comply" sticker.

So far, it's been very interesting to page through all the results... there have been some surprises.

However, the site comes with the following disclaimers:

[From the press release]
Posting restaurant inspection scores is not in any way meant to disparage or benefit any restaurant in Deschutes County. The scores are a reflection of the conditions observed by the health inspector on the day she or he made that inspection.

[From the site]
It must be noted that scores don’t always tell the full story of how a restaurant is performing with regard to safe food handling practices. The scoring system is not perfect and neither are health inspectors or restaurant operators. A low scoring restaurant may never make anyone sick or a high-scoring restaurant may have an outbreak tomorrow. Foodborne illness is an inexact science with MANY risk factors that influence how, when, where, and why an outbreak occurs.

The Bend Bulletin has rolled out their new and improved website today (announced the other day here). Overall it's a much, much better interface, with better use of space and design and flow. The default fonts—at least on Firefox—might be a bit large for my tastes; it's possible to be well-designed and yet use too much space (six screenfuls on the home page), but by and large the site now looks like a current news site.

They still have the E-edition problem, as Jake points out—the very fact it exists is, essentially, the "problem." Another problem is the comment system: the fact that they are willing to accept and post user comments online is great, but—you have to be a subscriber (either E-edition or print) to do so. Ouch.

Still, it's a step in the right direction. Hopefully not the last.

I just blogged about Gusto's Best Of survey the other day, and now Bend Living has their Best of Bend 2008 survey up! Now all we need is The Source or KTVZ or some other sort-of-official-sounding entity to run a third "Best Of" list and it'll be a perfect storm!

You think I'm kidding. But I'm not.

(Well, okay. Maybe a little.)

(Maybe I should run a Hack Bend Best of Bend survey. That would be too good.)

(Eh. Maybe later.)

I've been seeing ads for KTVZ "Mark It Place" online classifieds lately, and tonight finally took a look at what they're offering.

The problem, of course, with this or any other similar endeavor is the 800-pound gorilla in the room—namely, craigslist. There is simply no competing with them; not only do they offer completely free and anonymous classified ads on any topic you can imagine, but they make it dead simple to create a posting without even requiring a registration process—all you need is a valid email.

And while it's not winning any design contests, it's also not cluttered with all sorts of excess graphics and Flash cruft, so it's fast and readable. Add all of these factors together, and there's really no getting around it: Everybody uses it, and everybody will continue to use it.

So, back to KTVZ's site. First, it's not hosted on their actual site, instead it's outsourced to "adpay.com"—a site that offers online classified services. Second, it requires user registration to post ads. Third, while the graphics on the site aren't bad, they are big and there's a considerable amount of scrolling to take in all the various categories (craigslist manages to nearly fit them all on one screen).

Finally... there's just not that many postings, which can be a death knell for such a site. I know this seems like a nit-picky thing to point out, but it's the kind of thing that I would check out, see that there's not much activity, and very likely not return.

Two things I notice that differentiate a bit from craigslist: first, the ability to create "alerts" for searches, which I imagine sends you an email when new items appear. Second, the ability to bookmark listings into a Watchlist. Both require registration and/or login.

Really, I didn't start this post with the intention to hammer on KTVZ, I rather think that an online classifieds portion of their site is a natural progression for them. But there's nothing here that I see that really does anything new or different or better than craigslist.

(Plus, why "Mark It Place" rather than "Marketplace"? I don't get it.)

I was going to blog about the Bulletin's E-edition (online pay-to-read news) finally offering free access to paid dead-tree subscribers (which I reported as a rumor here), but there's really nothing I can say that will top Jake's post. So go read that instead. The headline alone is worth it.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the Badlands Brewery Crawl, an effort by the Oregon Natural Desert Association to raise awareness to get the Badlands east of Bend designated as a Wilderness Area. Now, ONDA is pushing April 1st as a "Day of Action" to further the process:

ONDA.org announces its April 1st Online Day of Action:

The Oregon Badlands can become a Wilderness NOW
If we show a huge upsurge in public support!

Join Hundreds of Oregonians TODAY as we coordinate a mass movement of voices in support of Badlands Wilderness.

Click here to take action.

Whats an online day of action?

• It's your chance to take 1 minute and have the impact of many thousands.
• It's your chance to make your voice heard with hundreds of others.
• & It's our chance to push this effort over the edge and make the Badlands a true Wilderness!

The Badlands will only become a Wilderness if we show Senator Wyden (our chief ally) that he HAS the support he needs to move this proposal forward.

Home to 1,000 year old Junipers, rare and unique wildlife, and ancient Native American pictographs, this pristine, high desert landscape is just 15 miles from downtown Bend an area that has tripled in size in the past decade. If we want to keep this precious wild place for the generations of Oregonians that will continue to move here, visit here, and prosper here we need to protect wilderness.

Take 1 minute and help to protect the Badlands forever!

That’s our opportunity today.

Tipster Stanislaw Funk today let drop that the Bulletin will soon be doing something new: offering free "E-Edition" access to subscribers of their dead-tree edition.

If true, it's a step in the right direction—when we had our Bulletin subscription I often wished I could also have online access to those "extras" I had already paid for—but it's not enough. They need to do away with paid access for the online stuff entirely, make it free for everyone. I don't know of anyone who pays for online news, and the Bulletin would benefit hugely from opening up the "extras" and the archives to everybody.

The other day when I blogged about finding Deschutes Brewery's The Abyss around town, I didn't foresee the beer showing up on eBay. At least, not so soon.

Seriously. Go to eBay and type in "abyss deschutes" in the search box. I did that just now, and there's one with six bids up to $26; one with four bids up to $21.50; and two marked as "Buy it now" for $49 each.

I half-joked when I bought a case for myself that I'd wait a couple of months and sell the bottles for $20 each (twice what I paid for them). I guess some people couldn't wait...

(You can blame Kina for first bringing this to my attention.)

Here's something cool that we just discovered: the City of Bend website hosts audio MP3 recordings of all City Council meetings, going back to 2005. That's rather progressive and tech-savvy.

No video yet, though. Which is a shame, since the meetings are recorded for COTV on channel 11. They wouldn't even have to host the videos themselves; just put them on YouTube.

Wow, there's spam blogs, and then there's just... wrong blogs.

When the Round About Bend "blog" first appeared on my radar, it almost looked like a spam blog... you know, the kind of blog that just posts canned (and often lifted from other sites without telling) content to get the search engine traffic, and plasters ads all over the page for the easy money. I'd actually exchanged an email with a person there because they were weirdly and incorrectly linking to Hack Bend for something else entirely... still are, sort of. But, they fixed the one I pointed out and generally I thought, no harm, no foul—it's another source of potentially interesting data about Bend, so I subscribed to it in my newsreader.

Today, though, there are two items which really bring "spam blog" right to the forefront: Bend's Hans Restaurant has award winning lunches and desserts and Typhoon in Bend celebrates first anniversary.

When you're wrong, you're wrong. I mean, we all know Hans has been closed for awhile now, right? And we know that Typhoon hasn't been open for even remotely a year, right? A mere two minutes of online research would have revealed both these facts.

I probably shouldn't even link and encourage it... but I find it so backwardly funny that I can't help it.

The Source is trying something new: they've created a Flickr group called "Light Meter" for use as a community photo album:

Welcome to Light Meter, the Source Weekly's interactive photo feature. Here's how to participate:

1. Join Flickr, if you haven't already.
2. Join the Light Meter Flickr Group.
3. Add photos to the group by clicking "Send to Group" on the page of the photo you'd like to add.
4. Done! Your picture will be added to the Light Meter group. We are going to publish our favorites in the Source Weekly.

I think the publish the favorites part is key. Not sure how they're going to handle copyright issues though—I assume they'll ask permission first—and I don't know (but wouldn't expect) financial reimbursement. But still, that's cool.

Especially when everyone else is doing it for me, and I'm going to point to them!

The Bulletin: Readers' choice top stories of 2007

The Bulletin: Most clicked articles online

Bend Restaurants: Best of 2007

That's what I see for now... more pop up, I'll point to 'em.

Happy New Year, everybody!

The Bulletin announced today that they are offering free music downloads on their site: an album's worth of music from local bands, and an album's worth from national bands (15 each). For anyone who's familiar with the usual online offerings/technical abilities of the Bulletin, this is a Big Deal—the web end of things is not their strong point (to put it nicely). However, I've been checking out the site a bit, and so far I'm impressed with what I see.

I had a heads-up that this was coming from the Bulletin's music writer, Ben Salmon; he had reached out to spread the word on this and (I think) was also a driving motivator in getting this launched. He writes:

Basically, we've collected 30 of the best songs of 2007 - 15 from Central Oregon artists and 15 from non-local artists - and offered them for free download (no subscription needed) at www.bendbulletin.com/nearfar. Folks can stream the songs, download individual MP3s, or download each collection in its own .zip file (complete with CD artwork and tracklisting). They're split into:

"Near" - featuring locals like Coyo, Person People, The Mostest, Shireen Amini, The Roe, The Erins, The Bond Brothers and more
"Far" - featuring non-locals like The Shins, Arcade Fire, Aesop Rock, Blue Scholars, Band of Horses, Blitzen Trapper and more

(Please note: Downloading the .zips takes a little while, so patience is needed.)

There are also short write-ups of the bands and/or their 2007 albums, links to band sites, MySpace profiles and record labels, and a YouTube video where we could find one, plus The Bulletin's coverage of the best albums and concerts of the year as well as the favorites of people connected to Central Oregon's music scene.

It's an impressive undertaking for the Bulletin, and like I said, so far I'm impressed with the site. Not only can you download each album (the zip files are 69 and 62 megabytes in size), but you can also listen to each song embedded in the page (or download it directly) via a Flash player—so you can sample the music before deciding to download it (as it should be).

Plus, the fact that the Bulletin is able to offer this music for download for free, in DRM-less MP3 format, is awesome—much more progressive than I would've expected from the Bulletin.

Of course, I'd like to see more of this—especially the local music, which is worth promoting. The Bulletin could move to become the online source for discovering local music by doing so; I don't know of any other site that can claim this (searching MySpace Music is one possibility, but it's not that great an option).

All said and done, I like this idea well enough that I'm going to install the banner graphic in the sidebar of this site for awhile in the adspace. (With the other buttons.) Check it out.

So I've been loosely following the "Real Winter" story/project that the Central Oregon Visitors Association has been promoting; it started with this story in Sunday's Bulletin, and there was a bit on KTVZ last night about it. The gist of it is, it's a new ad campaign promoting winter tourism for Central Oregon (obviously), and it's taken the form of two mock movie trailers (each 30 seconds long) that will be shown on TV spots throughout the Portland market.

I've watched both the trailers, and I have to say they're technically well-done: quality filmwork and editing, soundtrack and voice-over. They look like movie trailers, and even though they're a bit cheesy—and I was (privately) harsh on them at first—I think COVA has put the effort into producing a pretty good quality piece.

That having been said, however, I read this in the Bulletin (empahsis mine):

“It’s based upon contemporary movie trailers,” said Alana Audette, COVA’s president and CEO. “The challenge is how to convey the myriad of things that this region has to offer. The movie trailer is a stroke of brilliance because it allows us to tell the Central Oregon (winter) experience in a 30-second sound bite.”

...and the warning bells started sounding off.

In general, when the marketers start telling me how brilliant they are and fall over themselves trying to pat themselves on the back, I am immediately turned off, and start wondering just what's wrong with their campaign.

Maybe I'm just cynical. What do the rest of you think?

Let me be clear, though, in saying that the campaign on its own does look like a good one, it's eye-catching and better than a lot of local marketing efforts I've seen (I'm thinking in particular of the really bad faux-viral video failure of a year and a half ago). I think just beyond TV spots and newspaper ads and a single website, though, they need to upload this video to YouTube immediately, and look at MySpace TV, and all other such sites for viral marketing opportunities. Like blogs (heh).

After blogging about the Bulletin letter forum yesterday, I wondered about how many other online forums/bulletin boards there are out there dedicated to Bend. There's a few I know about, and others I've dug up via search; I don't know offhand how active any of these are (other than if they've obviously been updated recently), but I figured I'd list what I found.

(I'm not even counting blogs or other similar sites where people can simply leave comments; I'm just looking at sites that offer threaded conversations.)

• Bend Forums - General forums
• Bend Economy Bulletin Board - bulletin board with topics along the lines of the "bubble bloggers"
• BendBulletinBoard.net - which I covered yesterday
• Bend Weekly Community Forums - hosted by the Bend Weekly news(paper) site
• OregonLive.com Bend Forum - The Oregonian's website (they host quite a number of forums)
• Topix Bend Forum - forums/message boards hosted by news site Topix
• TripAdvisor Bend Forum - strangely enough, a forum hosted by the travel site
• craigslist forums - by default part of the entire craigslist forum portfolio, but you can filter by Bend only

Those are the ones I can definitively point to, though I'm sure there are more. But there's a whole other class of sites that are similar to forums but aren't quite: "Groups" from the portal/search sites like Google, Yahoo, MSN; social networking groups/directories on sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn; or "middle tier" sites (or private ones) that have forums embedded in them. Perhaps at some point I'll create a list of all those that I find.

Are there other forums for Bend that anyone wants to contribute?

Dean Harris writes:

I just wanted to alert you to an online community forum launched this month.  BendBulletinBoard.net is a community forum for Bulletin readers who need an alternative outlet to the newspaper's tiny letters to the editor section for interacting with their fellow readers.  I invite you to check out the forum.  If it's something you wish to join, please become a member and post away.

The site is just getting started, so there's not too much yet in the way of posts, yet it looks like it could potentially turn into a lively forum—with traffic. So far what's there now is mostly summaries of the "In my view" and Letters to the Editor from the Bulletin.

He also points out that he's not affiliated with the Bulletin. Which makes me wonder what the Bulletin's official response might be...

I received a phishing spam the other day that reminded me of the Bank of the Cascades scam that Jake first reported. The email claims to be from "Oregon Community Credit Union" and it says:

Oregon Community Credit Union temporarily suspended your account.
Reason: Billing failure.
We require you to complete an account update so we can unlock your account.
(etc.)

Granted, it's not as crazy as the night-time phone call "from" BOTC but I think it's a good opportunity to reiterate what BOTC says about fraudulent emails (and this applies in general to any suspicious-looking email):

We advise all customers to delete any emails that ask you for any personal financial information including card numbers, Internet Banking ID, PINS or to go to a link or web site. Only use phone numbers on your statement, our web site or as published in the phone book. These “phishing” scams are initiated by people from all over the world who have no access to our customer data.

Jake points out tonight that KOHD's new website has gone live. Much better than it was before. Jake didn't like the video auto-playing on the front page, but that didn't happen to me, so I guess they fixed it? Anywho, yet another source of local online news, which is always a good thing.

No RSS feeds yet, though. That'd be helpful. (Not that KTVZ's any better on that front... they keep breaking theirs and I have to go rediscover them again.)

This doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but I thought it was fun: on Google Maps, there's a plane captured in one of the aerial views of Bend. Check it out.

No, I can't claim credit for finding this... it's actually marked in the "Community" features in Google Earth. Apparently there are people who have the kind of time it takes to pore over these images with a fine-toothed comb and find just this sort of thing...

This was spotted a couple of days ago on craigslist: Bend blogger needed. Excerpt:

We are a media organization seeking partners for our localized blog roll out this Summer. We are targeting small-mid sized cities in the US.

What you do: This position would require 4 postings per week and editorial control over a blog on Bend and surrounding areas. We are open to specialized blogs or having our editors write their own mission statements, but the general theme is usually news, events, and commentary - pretty wide open.

What you don't have to do: We do not ask, but do allow, our editors to pay for site maintenance, spam control, search engine optimization, marketing the blog, managing ads, fixing bugs, managing site analytics, and other site administrative duties.

Huh. I'm all for more blogs about Bend, but this one sounds kind of weird. They "do not ask, but do allow" their bloggers to pay for spam control, maintenance, and stuff? Does that mean this "media organization" isn't going to do any of that themselves? Wouldn't that be just the same as a person starting their own blog and dealing with that stuff anyway?

So, they start a blog, but: you get all the hassles of running it, they get to keep half the ad revenue, and you get the option to buy it from them after 6 months.

There's such a low barrier to entry on blogging these days that this deal doesn't really seem worth it. I mean, think about it: a domain name will cost you about 9 bucks on GoDaddy.com, and you can start a Blogger site for free (with that domain you just bought), and plug in Google ads of which 100% of the revenue comes to you.

(I guess it's not that much of a mystery to me; a word for this particular deal does come to mind...)

Over on Diner Life (the Jake's Diner blog), Lyle has posted an offer to get a free cinnamon roll (the "Elvis"):

Here is my blog special. If you print off a copy of one of these pictures, bring it in to Jake's, and sign up for email specials; I will give the first 10 to sign up a free coupon for an "Elvis".

Of course, you have to go visit his blog and read the post! As for the Elvis, it's a cinnamon roll with peanut butter and bananas on it (peanut butter and banana sandwiches were Elvis' favorite). Won't be everyone's cup of tea, but that sure sounds good to me. Maybe I'll go get a free one...

Ah, the Central Oregon Web Professionals Usergroup (ie, COWPU)... every time I hear about the next meeting or think to look when it is, it's the day before and I already have plans. Well, I already have plans for tomorrow, but it sounds good to those who can make it. Jen writes:

I have gifts (including books from O'Reilly Publishing) that will be raffled following Ricardo's presentation. Everyone that attends will receive a raffle ticket. In addition, if you bring a friend and/or RSVP for the meeting (on upcoming.org or leave a comment) you will receive another raffle ticket.

Tomorrow's meeting (that's Wednesday, June 20th) will be held at the Deschutes Public Library. Here's the pertinent details from the Upcoming page:

The topic this month is Plone CMS presented by Ric Newbery.

Come check out Plone CMS, an open source content management system used by organizations as diverse as NASA, Marriott, Continental Airlines, Oxfam, eBay, Trolltech, Nokia, and Creative Commons. Supported by thousands of developers from around the world, Plone is one of the most sophisticated, popular, and easy to use Enterprise Content Management Systems on the market today.

After the presentation we will head down the street to O'Kanes Pub (at McMenamin's) for socializing around the outdoor fireplace!

Agenda:
6:00pm - Networking and discussion
6:30pm - Presentation by Ric
8:00pm - Social at McMenamin's - O'Kanes Pub

While looking for something else online yesterday, I came across the Deschutes County History Blog. It's a Blogger site run by the Deschutes County Historical Society and looks promising—or it would, if it were updated more frequently; the last of the very few postings are over two months old.

Unfortunately, when I tried filling out the Society's contact form to express this, I get a server error. I'll try from the blog instead.

I've been played with the new "My Maps" feature on Google Maps and it's pretty slick; you can add your own markers to the map, annotate them with text, links, images, etc., and pick one of the preset custom markers. To that end, I thought it would be cool to plot out items I've blogged about here.

Check it out: Hack Bend Locations on Google Maps.

Bend Living magazine has a "Best of Bend" survey up on their site for people to fill out. It's for their annual Best of Bend issue that comes out in the summer (I think), which is fluff but fun to read.

You have until May 7th to complete the survey, but why wait? Go on over and submit your entries on such things as Best Budget Breakfast, Best Place to Buy Bling, and Best 19th Hole (no, that's not a typo).

But what, no Best Blog? There's a Best Bend Craigslist Post, but not one for blogs. How can you not have a blog category? The shame, the shame.

I am often amazed at how much freely available information the City and County have put online—not that I think this is a bad thing, mind you. What's more amazing to me is the fact that more people don't know about all of this! In this article I'll show you how to find out information on any property in Bend—including aerial images. This is all publicly available data pulled from three sources: Deschutes County's DIAL data (property assessment information), the City of Bend's online GIS Internet Browser, and Google Earth.

The DIAL data contains all the pertinent ownership, sales, and tax information you could want on a property; the GIS system contains precise taxlot and property line information, as well as information about zoning and various geographic features; and Google Earth contains fairly recent aerial images of the area, as well as allowing access to mapping features and all sorts of user-generated information. Combining all three gives you a powerful tool for querying nearly any sort of property information you could want—and all of it is available for free.

Read the full article after the jump.

I just found out today that The Redmond Spokesman—Redmond's local weekly newspaper—has a blog, where they seem to be posting both bullet-point summaries of their news and longer articles. Good deal; they actually have a domain name but no site or other online presence out there—nice to see they've set up something.

And, their blog gives them a leg-up on the Bulletin, too—they have an RSS feed so their content can be syndicated and read in news aggregators. The Bulletin doesn't do that; I have a cobbled-together RSS feed for the Bulletin that slurps their free headlines, but that's just a workaround. Plus, most of the Bulletin's online content is behind a paywall anyway.

+1 Redmond Spokesman.

No, not a new blog by me (ha!), but I wanted to point to this new blog: best minimum wage job a middle aged guy ever had. For a couple of reasons. First, I know Duncan, he owns Pegasus Books and he's one of the few Bend long-timers left.

Second, because damn if this isn't going to be a really great read for Bend history and local economics. Required.

And while you're at it, check out the Bend Economy Blog. He's going through another reboot, which is kind of a shame since he had some really good posts up before. But more will come.

Jake has a post of local (to Bend) telephone prefixes. Good resource. And he says, "When I lived in Bend growing up, I knew if the phone number didn't start with 38-something (382, 385, 388, 389, and then 383 came along later) or 593, it was a long-distance call." I remember, too, when it was just 382, 388 and 389; people would regularly write phone numbers with only the third digit of the prefix (e.g., 9-0123).

Of course, only having to dial four digits is a little before my time; even though the "38" part was assumed, you still had to dial the full seven digits. And yes, calling Redmond (which was only 548, and later, 923), was long distance.

The results for monkeyinabox's Real Best of Bend 2006 are up! Classic... I'm thinking about making a link in the sidebar for this.

2. Best Roundabout To Drive In Circles:
Winner:the "SEX" roundabout
Runner Up: Chicken with the butt on fire.

Makes you proud to be a Bendite, with landmarks such as these.

8. Best Milkshake:
Winner: Dandy's / Goody's (tie)
Runner Up: KTVZ's Newsroom

Honestly, whoever voted for the runner up, please let me know. Does Bob Shaw have some extra talents we're not aware of?

12. Best Family Dinner For Under $20:
Winner: It Can't Be Done
Runner Up: Dumpster Diving

Why do you think I asked the question. Argh!

monkeyinabox has posted a funny-yet-oh-so-true voting form for the Real Best of Bend 2006. It's a rip on tribute to The Source's annual Best of Bend edition. But I like this version better. With categories such as "Best Skanky Bar" and "Best Z21 Anchor Not Named Bob Shaw" how could you go wrong?

Go vote. I assume he's tallying up all the responses for a future blog post... that should be the definitive guide, if so. :)

I don't quite know when they did this, but Google has updated their satellite views for their map of Bend, and it's pretty up-to-date—as in, recent sometime in the past year. To see it, search "Bend Oregon", then click on either the "Satellite" or "Hybrid" views and zoom in. Way in. That's some pretty detailed imagery! (Well, except for the cloud cover.)

Chalk this up to another Shannon find: The Source Weekly's website, in addition to finally being updated and looking like something 2002 2006 would offer, has blogs too! You can get to them here.

Honestly, though, they're a little confusing, even to a seasoned (ha) blogger like myself... the listing format is a bit weird, but they at least allow user comments on a per-post basis, and even a form for users to rate a post. You can print, email, or PDF-ize a post.

But there appears to be no RSS feeds anywhere (a big no-no these days). Without RSS to load into Bloglines, I won't remember to check it that often...

But, it's a good start.

There's a new Bend Oregon Restaurants blog (not to be confused with the original). So far it seems to have just started, but looks promising. And the writing is fun and just the right amount of snarky...

The best part of Bend, or Deschutes County for that matter, is that while restaurants offer the organic ingredients, their to go containers are (or can be) Styrofoam. Good thing you carry a nalgene to reduce waste but you look silly walking to your Hummer carrying your Toomies lunch meal deal in a Styrofoam box. Good going.

I hope he keeps the reviews coming... BrENDa's reviews (the original I linked to above) seem to have petered out since April...

Jake broke this news: Ticketmaster has a crazy promotion to see Fiona Apple and Damien Rice in concert at the Les Schwab Amphitheater for only $1! (The tickets are actually free, but Ticketmaster charges a "nominal" processing fee.)

For a limited time, Ticketmaster is offering complimentary tickets* to see Fiona Apple & Damien Rice at the Les Schwab Amphitheater on Saturday, July 1! Start your holiday weekend off right - this performance will definitely be one to remember!

Offers like this don't come along often, so don't let this one slip away. This offer is only valid until June 30 at 6PM and while supplies last. Get your complimentary tickets now!

*A nominal processing fee applies.

So, up until tomorrow (Friday) at 6pm. Looks like this only applies if you go through the Ticketmaster website—they give directions on the page there.

And just it case it isn't clear, the concert is this Saturday, July 1, at 6:30pm.

No sooner than Jake invoked it and I pointed to BendStuff, craigslist has come to Bend. Not a lot on there yet, but expect that to change.

Also, Dave and Shannon beat me to the punch.

Via Jake comes a pointer to this local classifieds site: BendStuff. I like the potential here, but I'm hoping this site just launched because there's only 4 listings at this time. I'll keep an eye on it.

Jake's comment amused me, though: "Be sure to check it out until Craig [craigslist] decides to open up shop here. If that ever happens and I were the guy running BendStuff, I'd just shut down then — you just can't compete with Craig." Harsh, but probably true...

The Old Mill District's website has a pretty good summertime calendar of events online (in PDF format). It covers the next three months, and includes non-Old Mill events—though Old Mill-specific ones are highlighted in orange text. Events are listed from June through August.

It reminded me that the Bend Farmer's Market starts next Wednesday... and that the Bend Brewfest is coming up the third weekend in August. Nice.

Disclaimer: I knew about this calendar because I helped set it up. :)

Simone suggests a good topic: a collection of wireless hotspots around town. Useful for the laptop set (or wardrivers). (She also suggested a rating system for them, but I'm not that far along.) Between us, we came up with a few:

• DiLusso's: You need to access their site first when going online.
  
• Balay
• Bellatazza (downtown and in Sunriver)
• The Columbia River Bank parking lot—they have an unsecured connection

I also did a quick sweep online for hotspot access maps; I've seen these around before. One site, JiWire, lists 19 spots, five of which are free:

• The Bend Visitor and Convention Bureau
• Bellatazza (again)
• The Phoenix Inn
• Kava Coffee on the westside
• The Crown Villa RV Resort

Interestingly, Google Maps will also show you Bend hotspots... just search for "bend oregon wifi hotspots". This of course gives you a handy map as well. Unfortunately, there's no indication as to which ones of these are free.

Anyone have others to list? We'll start compiling them here...

Bend has a lot of good places to eat, though the pace at which things are changing around here, it's tough to keep up with what's new, what's closed, what's good...

Trouble is, there's not a lot of good online resources for Bend dining. (One that would be obvious—BendRestaurants.com—is a parked domain.) So here's a start on a few decent online restaurant guides and links that I've compiled...

• Visitor & Convention Bureau's guide: organized by category and seems fairly complete.
• The Source's Dining Guide: not entirely comprehensive, but organized by name and contains detailed reviews of most the places listed. A good spot to get an overall sense of a place.
• Bend Oregon Restaurants blog: BrENDa's got great reviews of places here; I just wish she'd update it more often! (Hint, hint)
• BendNights.com guide: Pretty comprehensive as well. "More info" links are helpful.