April 06 - Lacock repeats history!
Richard Searight - the new Fox-Talbot!
Unique window on the internet - The Microportal
A tiny village in Wiltshire, which is credited with being the birthplace of photography, is repeating history by introducing a new way of looking at the world wide web - The Microportal, or personal website!
More than 170 years ago William Henry Fox Talbot took the first photograph of a lattice window in his home at Lacock Abbey - now 2Day Microportals, headed up by Lacock-based Richard Searight, is offering communities another window, that to the World Wide Web.
The uniqueness of the system is that once users have introduced their postcode, everything they need is within three clicks of the mouse. Every day over 30,000 people use the 2Day Microportal to look something up.
The first 2Day microportal was www.lacock.2day.ws, which is now one of the most used community sites in the whole of the UK, with over 100,000 hits a year from a population of just 1,300 people.
Users can not only find contact details for everyday needs, such as the cinema, eating out, weather and local schools, but also use the site for instant access to things such as a route planner, directory inquiries and news headlines. There are also live links to train, road and airport information - all available within three clicks. People can even take their local site on holiday because it refocuses on any location in the UK.
Richard Searight says his aim is to provide every community in the UK with a personalised one-stop shop. Communities are empowered by being able to run the embedded local sections themselves and even post advertising to pay for the site!
Particularly interesting is the fact that churches have adopted the system as a means of getting themselves back into the centre of communities. 'So far we have over 200 church sites, including one in the Shetland Isles, which is receiving over 250 hits per day', says Richard.
'The vision is to create sites so complete that everyone has to make them their homepage. Once a whole community does that it starts to communicate and gel together as a social unit. The church understands this,' he said. Up until the advent of Microportals, achieving a totally comprehensive community website was completely impossible for the average local webmaster.
For further information: Richard Searight, 2Day Microportals 01822 860148 Or visit www.2day.uk