Square Pegs

We've been squawking about it long enough, and today is the day that PegNews gets to try on her sexy new duds. This is what folks in the restaurant biz call a soft launch. We wanted the lower-traffic weekend to work out the most egregious bugs, and you'll see tweaks, refinements and new goodies throughout the next couple weeks.

So consider this a really expansive preview, and pardon our dust as we tie up the loose ends. Let us know what you think, understanding that we're still at the stage where we're not sure exactly where that lamp should go. A few things that we know are wonky that I want to warn you about:

• Main site search still needs work. However, I think you'll already find event search and restaurant search dramatically improved.



• For our friends who don't keep up on the latest and greatest versions of browsers, some advance apologies. If you're on Internet Explorer 7, you may notice a few minor oddities. If you're on Internet Explorer 6, you're probably not reading this: Come join us in the future.



• We're still organizing our video library, so you may come across the odd really old video in a hubpage player. Enjoy the nostalgia-- it'll be fixed ASAP

Even though this is as close as I get to slapping a "beta" label on something, the main operation and design is pretty much here, and we have a lot of people to thank for that:

Stephen Anderson is the designer behind the look, feel and architecture of the new site. He's also largely responsible for finding ways to make our massive piles of data useful and navigable without neutering them. He did all of this in a fraction of the time any reasonable company would allow a designer tackling such a huge project.

Our team of developers has put in a heroic effort in taking Stephen's mocks and making them work inside the Matrix, working long hours and putting up with my constant feature creep.

And none of this would be possible if our parent company hadn't seen fit to invest the time and resource to give this little website the bespoke suit she's so long deserved.

I feel a little strange today -- I was actually absent for the launch of Pegasus News, away begging for capital in New York. So I don't exactly know what one does after we flip the switch. I imagine a toast will be in order. Followed by a quick sigh of relief that we didn't break the InterWebs. And then we'll start working on the next release...

This one's going to have to be a quickie: Bob Saget is bringing his stand-up show to House of Blues Saturday. If you only like him via his stint on Full House, you might be a bit shocked -- he's one of the funniest blue comedians I've seen. (Very blue.)

Thanks to our friends and advertisers at HOB, we've got three pair of tickets to give away. Go to the show page here on PegNews and click "Add to favorites" to enter. (Requires free / easy / painless registration and login.) We'll draw winners by noon tomorrow and you'll have to respond by 2:30 at the latest to get on the guestlist.

Surely you're going to be looking to do something more engaging than picking at turkey bones by Thanksgiving evening. We've got your hookup with a pair of free tickets to see local-acts-gone-national Forever the Sickest Kids and The Rocket Summer at House of Blues next Thursday night.

FTSK have just released (like yesterday) their new album The Weekend; Friday and are headlining "The Cheap Date Tour," which in addition to The Rocket Summer includes Sing It Loud / My Favorite Highway / Artist Vs. Poet.

So five bands to shake off the tryptophan lull? Free? All you need to do to enter is to go to the show page here on PegNews and click "Add to favorites" or the heart symbol (depending on whether we've launched our new design). That'll require free / easy / painless registration and login.

We'll draw a winner late Tuesday and you'll need to respond quickly with your real name so we can get you on the guestlist. Meantime, here's a preview:

One of the things I love about the InterWebs is that they allow you to be more nimble than you could be back in the 20th Century world of stone tablets, papyrus and sheep's blood. Here's a great case in point:

A couple weeks ago we announced that our redesigned site and the ensuing network would be called WiredLocal. As one would expect with such a change, reaction was mixed. Some folks brought up the issue of confusion with Wired magazine -- and while we hadn't heard from them on it, we knew that could just turn into a big fat hassle that wouldn't benefit anyone.

All that led us to reflect and re-examine why we were changing the name. We did a little formal and informal research and found that we'd gained some more brand equity with Pegasus News since we started working on our revamp nine months ago. So, while we probably won't use the name for our sites outside DFW, for the foreseeable future, Pegasus News will stay Pegasus News, just in a sexier suit. I've learned to never say never, but I will say that the name won't change until we find something that we know is better.

That said, what we're about to launch is a major enough change to call it a "new site." I know I haven't posted as much here as I meant to on the new look and features -- that's because we've been too busy finishing it off to write about it. The soft launch is coming soon. I won't say the day or the hour, as the PegNews 2.0 cometh like a thief in the night, but when you do wake up to find a new and improved site, it'll still be Pegasus News. Instead of a relaunch, let's call it an anniversary present, as it roughly coincides with the 3rd annivesrary of PegNews and our 4th anniversary as a company.

Since 8 out of 10 small businesses fail before the third anniversary -- and that number is higher for publishing ventures -- that's something for all of us to celebrate here at Pegasus News.

From a happy reader:

Hi! I just wanted to write and tell you how awesome your publication is! I have been a fan of Pegasus News since you arrived on the scene, and yesterday morning I sent you an email asking you to post a listing about a cat I found in Oak Cliff (my new neighborhood). You posted the listing unbelievably quickly, with a cute caption for the picture, and the owner of the cat just left my house with her pet, overjoyed to be reunited with her lost animal! The cat had been missing for almost a week, and if it hadn't been for Pegasus News, she wouldn't have found her.

Thank you SO much! You do such a great service to Dallas!

Thanks to our friends (and advertisers) at the Eisemann Center, we've got two pair of tickets to give away to any performance of Robert Dubac's Male Intellect: The 2nd Coming!.

What's it all about?:

This is the sequel to The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron? Robert Dubac’s Male Intellect: The 2nd Coming! is part theater and part stand-up as Dubac transforms himself into a cast of characters hell bent on crystallizing life's ironies. He picks up where he left off ― inside his head ― ransacking his brain trying to figure out what women want. The Miami Herald describes it as "the kind of indisputably riotous show that sets off regular explosions of laughter.”

You can get a good idea of what the show's like from these videos:

As always, go to the show page on our site and click "Add to favorites" to enter. (Requires free / easy / painless registration and login.)

We'll pick two winners on Monday and will correspond with you to get you guestlisted for the show of your choice.

This is a particularly cool contest, in that our friends (and advertisers) at Dallas Children's Theater were thoughtful enough to make each prize pack family sized, with tickets for four, accommodating a whole family. And, unlike many of our contests, you can pick the show you want to attend.

We've got two prize packs of four tickets each for two shows:

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is a well-known classic getting its first performance at the Rosewood Center: "It just isn’t Christmas without the Herdmans! They’re the worst kids in the history of the world, and they’re determined to be in the annual Christmas pageant. The congregation is horrified, but sometimes compassion and generosity come from the most unexpected places."

Santa’s Holiday for Strings is a performance from Kathy Burks Theatre of Puppetry Arts, featuring Santa, Frosty, dancing penguins, a singing armadillo, and more.

To enter, go to the show page for either (or both) shows here on PegNews (links above) and click "Add to Favorites" (requires free / easy / painless registration and login.) We'll draw winners on Monday, November 16 so you can have your pick of shows.

So the redesign (launching soon) has LOTS more slots for video. That's a good thing, because while we already post a lot of video on PegNews, it often gets buried in the masses of items posted every day.

Our video players are also going to allow you to post video that will almost instantly appear on the site.

We want to have lots of fresh, local video at launch, so we've gone ahead and posted the video submission form here. We'd love it if you'd help us seed the various topical video players -- we could particularly use help with comedy and dance -- two areas that have inexplicably gotten short shrift video-wise. That's something we'll remedy going forward.

This can be home-shot video or promotional video for upcoming shows for your performance group.

Submit your video here.

When April showed me the new-form Dallas County property tax statement we received this week, every one of my conspiracy-theory alarm bells went off. Instead of the usual envelope chock full of data and comparisons to prior years, it was a tiny postcard that told us what we owed; that the County had saved a precise $26,318 by going this route; and a myriad number of ways we could dig up the info that was in the old reports.

I was enraged -- obviously, this was an attempt to obscure the faux tax increase that Texas Counties love to pull by raising the estimated value of your property and not the rate of your taxes. I seethed as I went online, relishing my upcoming performance at the DCAD offices and mentally writing my award-winning expose on how Dallas County was trying to pull a fast one...

But then, as I pulled up the report from Dallas County -- a report that was less difficult to find than I would have imagined -- I discovered that they'd dropped our home value by 5% year-over-year and that our tax payment had actually decreased.

Apparently economic realities have caught up even with tax appraisers. So now I have to wonder, how will our cash-strapped schools and public works be impacted by the $152 less they're getting from me this year?

Every fall, I notice too late that the holly bush berries around Dallas have turned red right under my nose. Holly wreaths are a big Christmas-season item so it makes sense the berries would be red by then, but one likes to notice when-exactly things like the turning of berries from green to red occur.

After a super-vigilant watch in 2009, I can report the following:

1. The berries first started losing their kelly-green-ness on Wednesday October 14.

2. By the weekend of October 17, three days later, the green started taking acquiring a hint of yellow-orange.

3. By early November, few berries are still green. (See photo above.) Some are hinting at solid redness, some are warming up to red with a brick-rust tint, while others are a transitional yellow-ish.

Update on full red status TK!