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Knowing that people in Bakersfield love to shop and can't pass up a great bargain, we've launched a new staff blog called Bargain Betty.

"Betty" lives to bring you the best deals in Bakersfield. As Betty's profile reads:

"Even though the name is "Bargain Betty," we're a team of savvy shoppers and employees at The Bakersfield Californian offering you tips on how to shop smart and save locally.

"We'll be highlighting unique products and good buys in our Classifieds as well as sales, deals and discounts we hear about around town.

"Please send us your tips!"

Blog posts so far have been varied, ranging from yard sales and muscle cars to purses and Bengal kittens.

The Bargain Betty blog will augment our other great consumer and shopping features, including the Cheapskate blog on bakersfield.com, and the BakoDeals and BakoBiz feeds on Twitter.

Please share your ideas, tips and great deals with us. The wider the conversation, the better the deals and shopping experiences.

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If you're an Amazon Kindle user, you might be interested in subscribing to our popular Breaking News feed, now available in the Kindle Store. It's only $1.99 per month, or little more than 1 cent per post.

Yeah, it's the same Breaking News blog feed that's available on bakersfield.com, but if you're a Kindle user, you know how easy and convenient it is to have every post automatically downloaded onto your device. Check out what satisfied customer Moreno Perez had to say in sharing his 4-star rating.

Think about it: The best local breaking news for about 1 penny per post, automatically downloaded to your device.

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Our partners at Yahoo! HotJobs have created a new feature that sends you alerts when jobs of interest are posted online. What's cool is is that you can narrow the parameters so you're getting alerts only for the jobs or locations you're interested in, not spam for all jobs, like many other online services. 

Here's how it works: 

1) Got to our HotJobs section and search for a job you're interested in. 

2) When the results for your search come up (for example, here's a search showing all 564 Bakersfield job ads we currently have), simply click on the "Twitter Alert" link and sign in with your Twitter user name.

That's it.

When jobs that fit your needs are posted, you'll get a "direct message" into your Twitter account with a link to that specific job listing. And because the message is sent to you directly, it's your secret -- you don't have to worry about your boss finding out that you're looking for jobs elsewhere. 

You can also have the job alerts sent to you via email. Either way, if you're looking for work, you know how important it can be to jump on the opportunity. Why not use the tools that can give you that advantage? 

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You may have noticed that we've just launched some changes to our search on bakersfield.com.

First, we're adding Yahoo! Web search to our search box for those folks who want to search the web from bakersfield.com. This feature is just one facet of a local sales/content/technology partnership we have with Yahoo.

We've added tabs to key sections like News, Jobs and Homes so you can narrow your searches to those categories directly from the search box. 

We've also made some dramatic improvements to our local search results and presentation, and allow you get get much more granular in searching the many areas of bakersfield.com.

These improvements are the first in a series of changes we'll be making to our local search. We know there's much yet to be improved, but we did want to roll out these changes asap. 

You may experiencing some caching issues as we roll the new search box across templates but a page refresh should solve most rendering issues. 

As always, we'd love to get constructive feedback so we can continue to improve the search experience. 

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The Bakersfield Californian recently asked Cal State Bakersfield art students to paint a newspaper racks. 

And now we're asking you to vote for your favorite. If you vote, your name will be submitted into a drawing for 2 tickets to the Brad Paisley concert at Rabobank Arena on Sept. 24. We'll also give the winning artist a separate prize. 

You can view a gallery or slideshow of the artistic racks or check out a map locating these special racks  if you want to actually stop by and check them out in person.

Voting runs through Friday, July 31st at 5 pm. The winner will be contacted via email prior to Friday, Aug. 7th.