Channel 2 wichita Blog · Wichita related Web stuff… and, continuing coverage of the 2 wichita Bookmarks Project
Blog Home Bookmarks Home

We click on a lot of local links around here. We needed a page to hold all these links and organize them in an efficient manner. Our solution is the Web Map of Wichita.

So browse around, discover new sites, or just fave-it as a handy local link reference.

Future Enhancements: We are working on updates and new versions. Eventually, we will loose the image maps and go with a pure XML/SVG solution… possibly a flash version too. We are also working on a more accessible text-only version.

This is the first report from Wicsi, which ranks over 1000 sites in the Wichita-area Web orbit.

Don’t expect anything awe-inspiring on a list of the top ten Web sites in Wichita, Kansas. They are what they are, familiar, functional and fixed with deep roots in the traditional Internet.

Wichita’s Top 10

As compiled in the Wichita Web Site Index

1. Wichita Eagle
2. Wichita State University (dampened)
3. KAKE TV Channel 10
4. KWCH TV Channel 12
5. KSNW TV Channel 3
6. Sedgwick County
7. Warren Theaters
8. Wichita Public Library
9. Wichita Public Schools
10. City of Wichita

Two Behemoths

• WSU is by far the most visited site “in Wichita.” However, due to heavy national and international Web traffic and other user-patterns particular to university domains, we dampened their score to reflect “local interest.”
• No surprise to find Wichita’s big media outlets in the top five.  Old Media holds the high ground on the local Webscape. The Wichita Eagle site dominates the news/media genre with more daily visitors than the top three TV stations combined.

This short list ranks the top Web site genres found in Wicsi. We figure by adding the total average monthly unique visitors from all sites within its respective category. Where unique visitor data was not available we estimated by comparing similarly ranked sites.

1. News and Media
2. Education
3. Arts and Entertainment
4. Blogs
5. Restaurants and Bars

The News and Media genre has the fewest sites in our survey, but the strength of The Wichita Eagle easily pushes that category to the top of this list.

An argument can be made that blogs garner the most attention from Wichita Web surfers. While already a formidable local genre,  there are many newly-created blogs not in Wicsi yet. Not to mention the hundreds of smaller blogs we will never document. If you make the leap and put all user-generated content (MySpaces, Flickrs, Twitter pages etc.) in the blog category; they would grab the top spot on this list. For the purposes of our index, and this survey, we are sticking to a strict interpretation of blog.

2 wichita is all about local Web content. To that end, our bookmarks do a fine job collecting and organizing local content. However, it leaves us wondering, which sites are most popular to Wichitans? What blogs do people visit the most? Who is rising and falling in the local Webscape?

Our bookmarks won’t answer these questions. We need a whole new system to identify and track top content providers in the area.

Our solution is a local Web measurement/ranking system we call Wicsi, the Wichita Web Site Index.

(more…)

The Jayhawks are national champions!

KU YouTube Round up

Video and photos from last night’s celebration in Lawrence are making their way on to YouTube. People were streaming on to the streets right after the game to began the great march to Mass St. From the bars, to the rooftops, to the streets, it was en masse on Mass while the band plays on, and on… Chanting, high-fives and dancing all around.

There were classic reactions to Mario Chalmers 3 point shot to tie the game. On the Living room front, the Deacon family was typical… tension, fear, anticipation of the empty depression about to set in, and then…

It’s a miracle!
What the hell happened?
I don’t know!

This guy goes nuts, barks at the TV. This nervous fellow is relieved. Inside the bars it was even crazier.

Allen Fieldhouse would have been a nice place to be. (court stormed at 04:00)

What would a video round-up be without the obligatory kitty cat watching the game? I bet the kitty really got a real emotional kick out of One Shining Moment.

More… The jayhawks return to Lawrence.  Video of the ceremony at Memorial Stadium

Rock Chalk Jayhawk KU!

Jayhawker Photos from Around the Web

• Flickr Photos tagged “jayhawks” (3000+)
• KU: 2008 NCAA National Champions - Flickr group pool
• Just Jayhawks - Flickr group
• Lawrence KS - Flickr group
• College Hoops - Flickr group
• Slide show - New York Times
• Slide show - Lawrence Journal-World
• Slide show - Sports Illustrated

Media and Opinion

• Kansas donors willing to pay to keep Self - AP
• Plenty of Twists, One Final Turn - Washington Post
• The shot heard ’round the world - Sports Illustrated
• KU secures 2008 NCAA crown - Lawrence Journal-World
• KU beats Memphis in OT to win national title - KC Star
• That was some feeling when Chalmers hit the shot -  KC Star
• This championship game was one for the ages -  KC Star
• Kansas wins national championship - Wichita Eagle

Jayhawks Blog Coverage

• Many Shining Moments At The ‘08 Final Four - SbB
• Bill Self Suddenly a Kansas Icon - Busted Play
• Clutch Performance - Brockblog
• Those Memphis Blues Again - Hang Time
• What a Game! - The Huffington Post
• Once Again, What’s the Big Deal, Skip? - Armchair GM
• How the Jayhawks compare to the decade’s best - College Hotline
• Brandon Rush Leaving on a High Note - Larry Brown Sports
• CBS, Get Someone Other Than Billy Packer - Awful Announcing
• Rock Chalk it Up - Mike on Sports
• Roy Williams wearing a Jayhawk - Fanhouse
• Roy and the Kansas sticker - UNC Basketball Update
• Your NCAA Champion Kansas Jayhawks - Deadspin
• The Dream is Over - Tiger Sports Report
• The day after… - Rush the Court Basketblog

More Championship Game Odds and Ends

• Jesse Jackson Tries To Cheer Up Memphis Players - SbB
• Clinton compares herself to Jayhawks - CNN
• Sign a Congrats card for Bill Self and the team
• Turncoat bets on Memphis! - Orange County Register
• Engineers’ algorithm picks KU to win NCAA championship - EE Times
• Discussion: InsideHoops NCAA Championship game thread

This Jayhawks round-up will be updated regularly until the commotion tapers off.

Beta Update

Here’s a round-up of developments leading up to our beta release.

Bookmarks

Upgrades to bookmark pages are mostly complete. We’ll add new features asap.

Blog

The blog is still sloppy, we’ll code-it in to shape before we start posting regularly.

Labs

These experimental projects are the last piece of the 2 wichita puzzle to fall in place. Here’s what we’ve been working on:

• Labs: Custom Google Search Engines - So far we’ve completed three custom search engines for 2 wichita Labs…
  1. Wide Search of the most popular Wichita Web sites.
  2. Media Scope searches all local TV, radio and news sites.
  3. Aviation Blog Search is a local-interest search engine covering hundreds of blogs about the industry, flying and all things aviation.

     Coming Soon… We are finishing up a Local Blog Search that will cover over 100 of Wichita’s top blogs. Also in the works, a Local Sports Search and custom engines focusing on Wichita schools, government and other local interests.

• Labs: Web Map of Wichita - Another exciting Labs feature we hope to complete in the the next few days. Stay tuned.
  
• Labs: 2 wichita Site Index -This is our special database of over 1000 local sites, blogs, social networking profiles and other Wichita Web resources. We rank them based on public and private Web metrics (we’ll explain how it all works in the coming weeks). Based on these ranks, we will periodically publish lists of popular sites in various categories, identify new and upcoming sites and follow trends around Wichita’s Webscape. Our first publication will be The Top Twenty Blogs in Wichita, coming next week!

New Bookmark Contributors

As some have noted, there haven’t been any new contributors added for months. This was by design. We didn’t want to overburden “the system,” and we preferred to get our house in better order before we invited our most important guests. (Not to say you Alpha users aren’t important, you contributions have been priceless.)

Beginning next week, we will send out our first round of invites. So, expect some fresh meat, and links.

We also have a beta waiting list that anyone can join, we’ll periodically add new contributors from this list.

Wiki for Bookmark Contributors

We are working on a Wiki for bookmark contributors. This will be a place contributors can learn about bookmarking, check out rules, guidelines, tips and discuss 2 wichita topics with other contributors and admins.

Bugs and such

Please let us know about misspellings, misalignment and other site garbledness. We know they’re there. Thanks.

An old “Fordman” ad for Rusty Eck Ford (mid 1970’s?) exhibiting high production values, by modern standards, for a local TV ad.

It’s not great art or anything… but definitely a Wichita classic.

With the bookmarks beta nearly in place, we are going to upgrade the blog (long neglected) today.

Excuse the mess…

Very exciting time here at Channel 2 wichita. We are finally going to let this thing roll!

Over the next several days, we’ll be moving the 2 wichita beta app (Kanal) to the live server. Things will be messy, some things won’t work… it will be ugly. Please hold off bug reports for a few days. We should have everything moved by March 3, 2008. Stay tuned.

Thank you to everyone who has expressed interest in becoming a bookmark contributor. We’ll have the details soon!

Questions? Comments? Contact us

Update: March 3, 2008

Looks like we’ll need another day or two to clean up some the mess. We still have not moved the new headers and footers, and, the Labs projects are still in alpha state. The move has taking a bit longer then we’d hoped, but all and all, it’s been a pretty smooth process. More soon.

We are almost ready to go beta! After several design reboots, dizzying amounts of coffee and good help from 2 wichita alpha testers, the time is near.