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We continue to build out our Inside Guide local business directory on bakersfield.com, and will end the year with more than 10,000 individual listings for local businesses big and small.

The newest categories include Arts & Entertainment, Education, Business & Professional Services, and Legal & Finance.

We’ll end the year with just about 4,000 individual reviews from more than 1,400 different bakersfield.com readers. Based on the sharp increase in traffic over the last 60 days, I expect that’ll grow quickly.

If you’re a business owner, you can claim your business listing for free and in just a few minutes. The benefits include increased exposure for your business, the ability to enhance your listing and the opportunity to interact with customers. Basically, you have your own page on bakersfield.com. To date, more than 750 local businesses have claimed their Inside Guide listings.

We'll be rolling out more categories in the coming weeks, and will continue to work to improve the experience for all. As always, we'd love to hear any constructive feedback. 

--Logan Molen
 

Winter is here and it’s actually chilly (OK, it’s cold for some of us flatlanders). With the holidays upon us, what better time to put the fireplace to use, right?

With that in mind, we’ve just launched a new SMS “burn alert” for those folks who have fireplaces and live within the San Joaquin Valley portion of Kern County. Each day during cold months, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District decides whether the air quality is good enough for people to burn wood the next day. If it’s a burn day, you’re cool to fire up. If it’s a no-burn day, you’re not supposed to light a fire and might be fined if you’re caught. Right or wrong, that’s the policy.

To start receiving our free Burn alerts, simply text BURN to 21321 and follow the instructions.

We also offer free local school-delay alerts and Air Quality forecasts. You can get details in this previous BdotCOM post.

Still looking for that perfect holiday gift? Check out our new Video Gift Guide, which highlights a variety of local businesses selling interesting items.

Gift ideas range from designer fashion and crafts to “green” products and cosmetic surgery. There’s even a spot for an AR-15 rifle.

Support your local businesses that help keep bakersfield.com free.

Our developers will be rolling a minor upgrade of our Bakomatic publishing platform overnight, and if you're one of our night owls, you may notice a few wrinkles for a few hours.

In particular, headline links will disappear from the Staff Blogs, Reader Blogs, Reader Reviews, Discussion Forums and YouReport elements on our homepage. That issue will be temporary, and shouldn't affect what you're doing elsewhere.

We don't anticipate any major issues with this software upgrade, but if you do notice anything out of the ordinary, by all means let us know.

--Logan Molen

Some of you have noticed we are removing our Associated Press feeds from bakersfield.com. Those feeds run the gamut from hard news to sports and features, but generally were lightly read when compared to the big audience our local news gets.

(The Californian continues to subscribe to The Associated Press and a variety of other news services for use in the newspaper. That print contract with Associated Press does allow us to publish some AP stories online on a case-by-case basis, so you may see them occasionally on bakersfield.com; we just can’t publish those stories in automated feeds).  

So why are we doing this? 

On bakersfield.com, local content – whether news, advertising, blogs or handy tools like Inside Guide -- is clearly what our audience wants, as our traffic logs consistently show. Given that wire service feeds can be expensive, we opted to cut those online feeds so we can continue to fund unparalleled local news coverage.

I know some of our customers won’t like this decision, but in this tough economy we’re having to make tough choices. 

It particularly pains me to have to drop State News, the one feed that did get decent traffic. But we did not have an opportunity to keep that feed ala carte. We’ll continue to explore opportunities there, though.

As always, we're open to your great ideas and constructive feedback.

--Logan Molen
 

For those of you who appreciate getting your news on the go, we’ve just launched some mobile alerts for local school fog delays and southern San Joquin Valley air-quality forecasts.

Fog-delay alerts

The fog alerts are free, and are sent as soon as a particular district issues a fog delay.

To sign up, text the appropriate keyword to 21321, then reply to the confirmation message.

• Arvin Elementary: Text ArvinE
• Arvin High School: Text ArvinH
• Bakersfield City School District: LocalE
• Beardsley School District: Text Beardsley
• Buttonwillow: Text Bwillow
• Delano Union School District: Text DelanoE
• Delano Joint Union High School District: Text DelanoH
• DiGiorgio School District: Text DiGiorgio
• Edison School District: Text Edison
• Fruitvale School District: Text Fruitvale
• General Shafter School District: Text ShafterE
• Greenfield Union School District: Text Greenfield
• Kern County Superintendent of Schools: Text SpecialEd
• Kern High School District: Text LocalHS
• Lakeside School District: Text Lakeside
• Lamont School District: Text Lamont
• Maple School District: Text Maple
• McFarland Unified School District: Text McFarland
• Norris School District: Text Norris
• Panama-Buena Vista Union School District: Text Panama
• Pond Union School District: Text Pond
• Richland School District: Text Richland
• Rio-Bravo Greeley Union School District: Text Rio
• Rosedale Union School District: Text Rosedale
• Semitropic School District: Text Semitropic
• Shafter High School:  ShafterH
• Standard School District: Text  Standard
• Vineland School District: Text Vineland
• Semitropic Elementary School District: Text WascoE
• Wasco Union High School District: Text WascoH 

 Air Quality alerts

The air quality forecasts are delivered every afternoon and are a good way to plan your outdoor activities or otherwise take precautions the next day. They’re free, and to sign up, all you need to do is text “AIR” to 21321, then reply to the confirmation message.

As always, let us know what you think!