Pemaquid Communications

Pemaquid has launched a redesigned Web site for the Southern Midcoast Maine Chamber, the chamber of commerce based in Topsham and which represents the towns from Brunswick to Wiscasset.

We loaded it up w/alot of goodies found on no other Chamber of Commerce site in Maine, including:

• An Interactive Regional Map that is a Google Maps Mashup. Want to know where the Sebasco Harbor Resort Golf Course or Popham Beach are located? Check the box and see the Google dart.
• the swfIR (pronounced “swif-fer”) for spiffing up (I guess that’s “swiffing up”) ordinary photos that Chamber staff upload through the site’s content management system. The swfIR adds borders, shading and other effects on the fly but still supports the site’s standards-based design concept. You can see the swfIR in action dressing up the photos on the left side of the home page.
• MyMidcoast - a handy, basic, trip planner that allows people who sign up for an account to collect a list of events, restaurants, lodging establishments and activities for their next visit to Midcoast Maine.
• Microformatting of listings in the Member Directory that allows you to save a business’ contact information as a vcard and import it into a desktop address book application like MS Outlook.

The site also has a custom version of the Pemaquid Content Manager, allowing every one of the Chamber’s 700+ members to log in at any time and update their member listings and post news and events, all moderated by Chamber staff. MidcoastMaine.com also boasts a simple ad server and e-commerce features.

If you spend enough time reading Web pages recently, you may have come across the term “mashup”. You were probably not even reading your favorite news site’s description of the latest rush hour mishap. Instead, it probably accompanied a description of the newest “Web 2.0″ site.

For the uninitiated, a mashup is when you take an app from one or more Web sites and “mash” it all up w/content on another, usually to create a uniquely interesting - and hopefully, useful - interactive feature. The most famously popular example of a mashup is probably the Google Map API, which all kinds of people have incorporated into all kinds of sites to provide geographic information in creative ways.

We’re excited to say that at Pemaquid we’re working on our own Google Map mashup for a Client in the tourism industry to provide an interactive mapping feature to show Maine points of interest to the folks from away. Can’t tell you too much more right now - it’s Top Secret - but we’ll be launching it soon. Stay tuned….