The Indiana Democratic Party went back to Marion County Circuit Court today in the effort to speed up its challenge to Secretary of State Charlie White’s election.

The Democrats want Judge Louis Rosenberg to take over hearing the challenge or, at the least,  set deadlines for the Indiana Recount Commission.  They also asked for an expedited ruling.

Man vs Ice - Round 1

Now that the storm has passed and two 12+ hours days of snow coverage, I came home to a driveway that more resembled a curling sheet than the entrance to my garage.   I’ve always had an obsession of clearing snow from my sidewalks and driveway ever since I was a kid.  I think it goes back to my childhood home which had a driveway with a short but steep hill, which dad always made me shovel.  I also walked to school and many of the houses didn’t shovel their walks.  (For the record it was downhill and about 500 yards.)

Now I don’t mind a good shoveling, it’s a good cardio workout for someone who doesn’t exercise nearly as much as he should.  But clearing 1 1/2 inches of ice was a different story.  I figured I’d share my experience — it may help some of you and I’m sure we’ll get a number of tips and tricks from all of you trying to dig out.

First, let me back up to Tuesday night.  When I got home from work, I shoveled the 2 1/2 inches of sleet from my driveway and sidewalk.   That alone turned out to be a good plan.  The freezing rain overnight ended up accumulating on the ice, not the sleet.

This morning, I tried salting the driveway – a waste of time.  If you can even find ice melt in the city; the ice is just way too thick to be effective.  I stopped at my neighborhood hardware store and they offered water softener salt, but with the stern warning that the salt will eat the concrete driveway.  I passed.

98% of the work was done with a 5″ ice pick/scraper.  I’ve had it for years, this was the first time I’ve used it in as many.   I found that I could easily get under the ice and break off big chunks.  I would expect this is similar to how Coast Guard ice breakers work.   I also tried the jackhammer method to break cracks into the ice.  It was good for the edges and near expansion gaps.  (I quickly learned that the ice freezes about 1/4 inch into those gaps.)

Once I had a few feet of ice cleared out, I used a shovel and my push broom to clear the ice.  Why the broom?  (This is where the earlier curling reference comes full circle.) The broom did an excellent job of pushing the broken chunks of ice over the ice that covered what was once my front yard.   I only used the shovel to scoop the remaining ice off the concrete.

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The datacenter that hosts WISHTV.com and several other sites across the country has had a massive power failure. We’ve redirected our page here to provide you the latest news/weather updated.  Just keep scrolling down the page for the latest news and weather posts.

Quick Links:  School Closings | Current Weather & Radar | Upload Your Snow Photos & Video

On Friday, WISHTV.com is rolling out some exciting new interactive weather products for our users, but we wanted to give our weather blog & Facebook readers a sneak peek.

Here’s a live preview of our new page.

7-Day Forecast Our new forecast page defaults to Indianapolis, but if you live outside the Circle City, you can generate a customized forecast for your hometown. Just click the magnifying glass and type in an address. The forecast will update for your location. You can also create a profile which will allow you to save several different locations; i.e. home, grandma’s house or your vacation home. Those “saved location” will also work with the other new map features below.

Temp Tracker The Temp Tracker shows you a hour-by-hour forecast for the next 48 hours. Use your mouse along the temp line to see specifics for that hour. You’ll also notice the the sky conditions will change to reflect the forecast. The Temp Tracker will also let you track the following: Feels Like Temperature, Dew Points, Humidity and Wind Speed. Just select the option you want from the drop down menu.

Enhanced Interactive Radar Our new interactive radar has a lot of options under the hood. You can track weather alerts, lightning, storm cells along with the current radar and cloud loops. You zoom down to any neighborhood and check out the current weather conditions. Remember, you can save several locations in your profile so you can pinpoint your favorite locations very fast.

Futurecast Models From our Interactive radar tab, you can also view Forecast 8′s Futurecast weather model. You can look ahead for the next 48 hours to see what weather you can expect in your neighboorhood. We’ll also have customized pages for winter and severe weather, including rain and snowfall estimates.

We hope you enjoy using these personalized weather products.  Let us know what you think in the comments below.

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
-Oscar Wilde

Sometimes things don’t always work the way you plan them to work.  Last week, WISHTV.com along with a few other of our sister station rolled out Facebook commenting widgets on our websites.  Our goal was to increase the conversation amongst our users by allowing them to do so with just their Facebook account credentials.   That part worked.  What we didn’t realize is that not everyone self-censors the way myself and others in our industry tend to do.  We worked off the assumption that if their name and  photo was attached they’d be more careful about what they say.

Then the shooting happened downtown.  I was the on-call web editor and can tell you checking comments were last thing from my mind Saturday night.  I was more concerned on writing the story and making sure that the facts were as accurate as possible in an ever changing breaking news situation.  What I failed to remember is how this story would be viewed by our users and that it was going to illicit some strong opinions.   That was until I got the call from my boss early Sunday morning about the inappropriate comments.  I saved every one before removing the commenting modules from the shooting related stories.

We learned that Facebook commenting modules do not provide any language filters and that if someone reported a comment, our team was not getting those notifications.  It would have been impossible to continuously monitor the comments and weed out every offensive comment.  In the process of removing all the comments, we did remove many fair and well-written comments as well.  Like the shooting, it took a few bad apples to ruin it for the rest of those who were participating in the conversation.

First thing this morning, our New Media team discussed our options and thoughts about our site comments and which direction we should move in.  After that meeting, we decided we would pull the Facebook commenting feature in favor of the comment modules that we were using on our site.   That way users can quickly flag content for our team to review and remove if needed.  We are keeping the Facebook “like” button so that users can continue to quickly share stories in their Facebook news feeds.

Our new goal will be to work on integrating Facebook’s Open API into our old commenting system, so users have the choice to log in via Facebook or a separate account if they choose.  That will still allow us to have moderation controls and filters in place.  The one thing we will not do is allow users to post content anonymously.  We have on several instances suspended or removed an account if they were repeat offenders.

Thanks to all those who’ve commented on my previous blog and emailed our helpdesk email over the past few days.  (I’ve still got a lot of email to answer today.)

Finally, my sincerest apologies to anyone who was offended by any of the user generated content that was posted on our site this weekend.  As with most news organizations, we want our users to be able to provide constructive comments on the stories they read, but also have some sense of decorum at the same time.

We know we’re far from perfect, but we do our best everyday to keep our viewers and readers informed and engaged in what’s going on in Central Indiana.

Based on feedback from our users, we’re making a change to our commenting system. We hope you find it more convenient to use.

Over the past two years we’ve had several commenting systems and we’ve tried everything from anonymous comments to requiring users to register and log-in to comment. At the same time, technology continues to evolve and the products continue to change.

Starting today we’re switching to a commenting system powered by Facebook Connect for story comments. The only way you can publicly post a comment on WISHTV.com story is by being signed into your personal Facebook page. You can then share your thoughts about the story directly on our website, and your thoughts can also be seen on your Facebook page.

By default, your Facebook icon and name only shows to other people under the following circumstances.

1. You leave a comment on a story.
2. You “like” a story and a Facebook friend of yours visits the same story.

You can adjust these settings by logging into Facebook and going to your Account > Privacy Settings and Account > Application Settings.

When you see your picture next to the comment box, other people do not see that picture. It only means you are logged into Facebook.

We know you won’t always want to share each nugget with your Facebook friends. That’s why we’ve made it easy to send an e-mail directly to the 24-Hour News 8 newsroom, where your thoughts and inside information will be private. Look below the Facebook comments box for the area to “Comment to 24-Hour News 8″.

Over the years, we have tried to find the best way for each of you to share your thoughts on our stories. It’s been a trial-and-error process, but we feel this is the best solution to date. As we move forward we will probably evolve again and continue to improve our commenting engine.

We always welcome your suggestions, so let us know — either by posting a comment below or by sending a private e-mail.

Late last month, WISHTV.com switched to a new SMS provider for our severe weather alerts.   During the summer months, we’ll be also moving our school closings database to the new system.  Our goal to to provide our subscribers with a higher level of service.

Unfortunately the process hasn’t been perfect.  We’ve determined a few counties in our southern part of our viewing area may not be currently receiving alerts.  I know our users in Bartholomew County have been affected along with a few others.

Our vendor said today they have been receiving multiple alerts from the NWS for some counties; which is tripping up the system.   Their developers are hard at work trying to resolve those issues.

I’ll post an update when I received an update from our developer.   If you haven’t signed up for our Text Alerts, you can do so here.

Besides severe weather alerts and school closing alerts, we now offer breaking news, lottery numbers and sport score alerts.  If you have signed up in the past, you can change/update  your settings by visiting here and signing in.  If you signed up before 5/1/2010, the password will be 111111.   Be sure to change it while you’re there.

If you have questions about our SMS alerts, feel free to send me and email and I do my best to troubleshoot your issue.

This week, we have begun the process to migrate our story commenting modules to a new system.  For the past nine months or so, we’ve been using IntenseDebate to power our story comments.  This system has worked well, but the biggest issue has been inappropriate comments left by a small percentage of users.  Our content team has spent a lot of time reading and deleting inappropriate comments each day; time that could have been spent writing more stories.

Our new comments system will require you to create an account before you can comment.  Your account is also tied into our Partici8te section, you can use it to upload photos, videos or start your own blog.  Our goal is to merge other areas of our site into this one site-wide login.  It will take us some time to get it all integrated, but that’s our goal.

Now we know the new system isn’t going to get rid of all the inappropriate comments, but it sure will help.  Our new system has better tools to allow us to suspend or block individual users.  Users will still have to report inappropriate material to be reviewed by a moderator.

Our goal is a better user experience for all our visitors to WISHTV.com.

WISHTV.com has partnered with Tributes.com to provide Obituaries and Death Notices for Indianapolis and Central Indiana.   You can find our obituaries page under News in our main navigation drop-down menu.

Listings are provided by area funeral homes or are collected through publicly available sources.  Friends and family can leave their condolences, share a memory or even “light a candle” as part of their tribute.  Users can also set up email alerts to be automatically notified for death notices by location, family name,  school and military service.

Funeral Homes that are interested in joining Tributes.com’s network can learn more and sign up for a 30 day trial.

Users can also search Tributes.com’s national database to find obituary notices for people nationwide.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been putting the final tweaks on our new main weather page layout.  This afternoon we made that page live.  Our goal of this new look is to provide you a simple weather snapshot of what going on now and what’s going to happen in the near future.   We’ve also lowered the amount of tabs on the main page to speed up page load time.

We haven’t taken any maps away, in fact we’ve added several new ones.  Click the “more” link below to see what maps are now available and where to find them.

We are also getting ready to unveil a new school/business closings page format that will make it much easier to find out if your school or business has been closed or delayed.  Look for that in the next few weeks.

If you have thoughts, feedback etc. about the new page format, leave a message in the comments section.  While we can’t accommodate every suggestion or request we do read them and use them in building a better WISHTV.com.

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