Isle of Wight News on Ventnor Blog

An article on the BBC News Website today claims that a beach in Devon is hoping to replenish its stocks by buying in sand from the Isle of Wight.

Not aware that we had large stocks to sell off, we contacted the council press office, who informed VB that they had not been contacted about the matter.

Be vigilant this summer
Will we need to keep our eyes open for sand smugglers this summer?

Will we see an influx of holiday makers from the Devon town of Dawlish with large buckets and spades?

Read the BBC article in full

Image: Lin Pernille under CC BY 2.0

You probably know that there are some pretty impressive video game developers on the Isle of Wight in the guise of Stainless Games.

Well, the Island now has another game developer that it can be proud of – Team Mango, which yesterday, released its game, Dysnomia.

They’re on a very different scale to Stainless, as there is but one in Team Mango – Gareth Williams.

Written on the Island
In an amazing feat of persistence and programming skills, Gareth has created a very slick looking video game, all coded by himself on the Island, from start to finish, in ten months.

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Hats off to Brigadier Alan Ross of Seagrove Bay, Seaview. He’s written a great letter in to the Telegraph about the Isle of Wight, the space within it and what use it could be put to.

Last week the paper ran a story that scientists were speculating that Dinosaurs were killed off by Isle of Wight-sized asteroid (Tweeted).

The Brigadier approaches the Island-as-measurement from a different angle.

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As we reported last week, once again, the Earl Mountbatten Hospice will be auctioning off registration numbers 1 and 2 for Walk the Wight.

The annual walk across the Island raises much needed cash for the Hospice, one of the worthiest causes on the Island.

The auction opened this morning but as of this afternoon, the highest bid so far is just 99p for ‘number 2′.

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Congrats to The Ellen MacArthur Trust Website who picked up two aeards at today’s HantsWeb Awards by winning ‘best charity’ and best ‘life changing’ site. The site was designed by Wez Maynard and built by @Goffik from the OC Group.

Also making their way to the podium today were the ladies from The Real Island Food Company who picked up ‘Best Business Innovation’ award. The site was designed by Matrix e-Business.

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Well, the PughTube video is now out in the open and on YouTube.

The situation around the video are probably well-known by now. That story was the fastest-commented story in VB’s 4.5 year history, with over 150 reader’s comments being added within a single day. It now sits at just under 250 comments.

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The number of reader comments that are on VB has continued to increase – something that we’re really happy about.

We’re really pleased that people feel that they’ve got a place to come and express themselves – nearly exclusively within the realms of decency and legality!

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Footprint Trust’s Ray Harrington-Vail is a pretty forward thinking chap – not surprising really given he’s been banging on about the importance of eco-friendly living for donkey’s years.

So, we weren’t in the least bit surprised when we heard that he has embraced the power of the Internet and is using YouTube to help spread the word to a younger audience.

Working with Ventnor-based Utility Films, the two minute short film, The Running Man, tells a romantic tale from the Isle of Wight featuring local comedian and actress Hannah George.

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A big thank you to everyone who visited VentnorBlog this month, you’ve made January a record month for us.

We had over 160,000 visits – yes, one hundred and sixty thousand – in January.

It’s an amazing buzz and one that we’re truly humbled by. Thank you all so much.

Island businesses can benefit
We’re now looking to help Island businesses turn all of those people looking at VentnorBlog into potential sales.

The advertising rates on VentnorBlog are incredibly reasonable, currently starting at under £1 per day. We know, it’s crazy isn’t it?

With a month like January, Island businesses would have their adverts seen over 345,000 times.

£0.00008 per ad viewing
That works out to an eight-thousandths of a penny (£0.00008) per viewing, any of which could turn into a sale.

That’s got to be the bargain to the year hasn’t it?

Get in touch (898 777) we’re keen to help build your business.

Regular readers will already be aware of the Wight Surf History exhibition that we’ve been plugging for the last couple of weeks.

The exhibition may well finish at Dimbola Lodge this Sunday but the project lives on …. in the virtual world.

An important part of the project, that will chart 50 years of surf history on the Island, is a dedicated Website.

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Hampshire County Council has been running the HantsWeb awards for quite a few years.

The idea behind it is to highlight Websites in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight that their judges select as worthwhile.

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Thanks to all of youz, VentnorBlog has just passed over 15,500 reader’s comments.

An amazing number of responses, but excludes all of the responses that we’d had on Facebook and Twitter – and all of the discussion and chatter that occurs on the VB Forum, which itself has over 30,000 posts on it.

Thanks to all of you for sharing your views with the Island … and beyond.

It’s with more than a little surprise that we received a press release from the Isle of Wight council a couple of days ago saying how well their iWight Website did during the ups and down of the snow disruption.

The common reaction we had heard was the exact opposite – that when people wanted to know what was going on with school or road closures, the iWight site couldn’t cope, and they were met with blank pages, rather than the information they needed to see.

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Errr … had you noticed that it’s been snowing?

One thing you’ll find when you’re walking through the snow is that accessing the Internet via your PC isn’t that easy – the power lead is never long enough is it?

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We’ve been banging on for ages about how talented young local photographer, Annie Leonard is.

Well, it seems that we’re not the only ones who think so.

We heard yesterday evening that the 16 year old ‘Annie Leibovitz in training’ from Ventnor was chosen to be featured on the Guardian Website in their coveted Camera Club section.

The Guardian picture editor said of Annie’s work “A very promising and stimulating portfolio, and we’re looking forward to seeing more.”

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Who would have thought it? Ventnor has made it to the dizzy heights of NewsBiscuit.

You’ll have seen that the Isle of Wight appears quite often on the satirical news site, until recently Ventnor hadn’t had the pleasure.

Today’s news covers the story of a Guardian Angel that had been found guilty of stalking and sexual harassment of a Mrs Maureen Grebe, of Ventnor, Isle of Wight.

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Hope you all had a good Christmas and are looking forward to a happy New Year.

VentnorBlog will be taking it slow this week, but we’ll continue to post stories every now and then – just not at the ten plus stories a day rate that you’re used to.

If we can get around to it, we’ll try and get out some of the yet unheard podcasts that we’ve done over the years, like the one with Tim Burgess, lead singer of The Charlatans, that we recorded shortly after he had curated the BigTop at the Isle of Wight Festival.

If you’re looking for something to do, such as New Year’s Eve events on the Isle of Wight, Events OnTheWight can help you out.

If you want to know about the Folk music scene on the Isle of Wight, the Folk ‘n’ Stuff Website is a great place to start – and it’s just had a makeover.

Becky Haydock has done a great job of gathering the details of all of the elements of the Folk world – the musicians, the Morris teams and the gigs that they play around the Island and Hampshire area.

Alongside all of that information, there’s a section dedicated to news about the Folk on the Island.

Folk ‘n’ Stuff

If you’re a fan of the social media network, Twitter, then you might be interested in watching, or for that matter, taking part in the hilarious TwitPanto being performed this afternoon.

If you’re scratching your head wondering what on earth a TwitPanto is, then read on.

A group of fun loving folk, who also happen to spend a great deal of their time on the social network, have got together to perform a panto through the power of Twitter.

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Road traffic accidents are, by their very nature, tragic, as it’s possible that they could have been avoided.

The BBC has gathered data from across the UK showing details of traffic accidents and have put them on an interactive map. It’s a project we’ve been thinking about for a while, so can cross it off our to do list now.

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Remember a little while back we told you how the Isle of Wight college was in the running for Best college Website in the UK?

Here’s the update – They’ve only gone and won it haven’t they!

The three members of the IW College marketing team made the journey to the Hilton Hotel in Coventry for the College Marketing Network’s FE First Awards last week, finding themselves heading back with the award that Rachel Smith, the Director of Marketing for The College Marketing Network, told us was very hard to judge as “the quality on entries were so high.”

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We’ve tried to make using Events.OnTheWight as easy to use as possible, but we know when you first hit a Web site, it can take a little while to get used to.

To give you a bit of a short cut, we’ve created an eight minute introductory guide to how you can find out what’s going on over the Island.

The video below is best viewed full screen, so to expand it, click the box with arrows pointing outwards, below the big play button in the middle of the screen.

Video after the jump
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Oh dear, looks like the Isle of Wight goes walkabout again.

Last week, a BBC Journalist, reporting on the threat of a cut to services due to plundering revenues was standing in front of a caption stating that she was reporting from the Isle of Wight.

The reporter, Judith Moritz was in fact standing on the Isle of Man, and the blunder reported by Isle of Man Today.

Little did they know that, yes, services are under threat on the Isle of Wight too.

More to come on that later.

You might be one of those who thinks that those protesting at the Vestas’ job losses are right, or you might’ve thought that it was wrong all along.

That doesn’t matter, because what we’ve got below is a postcard that someone’s created that not only shows Photoshop mastery, but a sense of humour.

Leon Kuhn, who created this postcard for the Vestas campaign postcards, with his Ed Miliband cartoon on the front.

Should give you a giggle on a Friday evening.

To see the larger version, click on the thumbnail below.
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We’re hearing rumours that there may be another Internet radio station launching soon on the Island.

You may be aware that an Internet radio station called WightFM launched with a lot of hoopla, which was further extended when Alex Dyke left Isle of Wight Radio to join it.

Well, all of the presenters (including the owner of the station, Martin Potter) appear to have left WightFM and it’s just automatically playing music these days (although a couple of weeks ago there was a promise to restart the station).

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