Quick shoutout about some recent industry recognition for bakersfield.com:

Online News Association on Saturday announced its annual awards for digital journalism. Going into the awards, Bakersfield.com was a finalist for “Outstanding Use of Digital Media” among smaller sites for its months-long coverage of the Vincent Brothers murder trial. Alas, we did not win, but it’s always rewarding to make it to the finals in this global competition.

Our Brothers trial coverage also earned recognition from Associated Press Managing Editors, which named bakersfield.com and The Californian  a “finalist” (basically the runner-up) for its annual Online Convergence award for newspapers with 40,000-150,000 daily circulations.

Finally, J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, recognized bakersfield.com with a Notable Entry for our online mapping initiatives. J-Lab is the same outfit that gave our home-grown Bakomatic publishing software (which you're using right now) an “Award of Distinction award in 2006.

I'm posting this not to injure my shoulder patting ourselves on the back but to remind people inside and outside our company that there's some great work occurring throughout bakersfield.com. Sometimes we're so busy digging in the dirt in search of other treasure that we forget to make the time to smell the roses we've already planted.

Now, back to that digging.

We recognize that more and more of our readers are on the go and getting their news and info from mobile devices. So that’s why we’re excited to launch an expansion of our mobile content  on bakersfield.com.

Visit our new Mobile Alerts page to sign up for a variety of free text message (also known as SMS) alerts:
•    School Fog Delays, which can be personalized to your school district in metro Bakersfield. As soon as a fog delay is announced in your particular school district, we’ll send you a text message. It's much more convenient than waiting through long lists on TV and radio.
•    Breaking News alerts
•    Events & Entertainment, send on Thursdays to give you the Best Bets in weekend events around town.
•    Condors Scores, which are sent during every Bakersfield Condors game, whether at home or on the road. You can also sign up for these alerts by texting the word “Condors” to 47645 (that's bakersfield.com's SMS short code).
     We're also partnering with the Condors on a fun interactive voting feature during every Condors home game. If you're in the stands, you'll have the chance to text in your vote for Bakersfield.com’s Blue Collar Player of the Game feature. It's a fan vote only, so you'll want your voice to be heard (so the speak).
•    Classified Ad alerts, which are personalized to keywords of your choice. As soon as an ad is posted on bakersfield.com that fits your description, you’ll get an alert, giving you a buying advantage for popular items or rare deals that may sell fast if you don't act quickly.
•    Deals & Offers, which are occasional offers from local delivered to your phone. Deals we've offered in the past have included $2 off hamburgers and happy-hour specials.
•    Job Fair, where we remind you about our extremely popular job fairs.

If you're puzzled by anything, check out these Frequently Asked Questions.

In addition to those SMS text alerts, we’re still publishing our 6-year-old mobile version of bakersfield.com, where you can find summary headlines from bakersfield.com. If you have a web-enabled phone, this site is a good way to stay up on the top local news while you’re out of town or out and about. We’ll be working to improve that WAP site in the coming months, so check back often.

As always, everything we do at bakersfield.com is a work in progress. So, please share your ideas or constructive feedback.

Bakersfield.com inadvertently send out a test news alert via email and text message this morning.

This test, which contained some gibberish, shouldn't have gone out to our many thousands of News Alert subscribers -- but it did. And for that we apologize.

We've reviewed our procedures and are implementing steps to ensure this doesn't recur.

Thanks for your understanding.