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Pittsylvania County to Gain More Internet Access

According to the Danville Register & Bee, Pittsylvania County and other areas in southside will receive two grants totaling $21 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce to expand broadband access in southside Virginia. A good portion of the funding will provide more fiber to connect 121 regular schools to an existing network. The Virginia Tobacco Commission also provided $4 million in matching funds, which will also bring approximately 75 jobs to the region.  Building additional infrastructure such as broadband helps to further educate the region's workforce and increases southside's competitiveness from an economic development perspective.  The expansion of broadband will also benefit homeowners with school-aged children given the primary focus of the initative is education-oriented.

 

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Posted on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 - 9:58am

New Study on Causation Between Cell Phone Use and Traffic Accidents

A recent study by the National Safety Council indicates that cell phone usage, including text messaging, accounts for nearly thirty percent of traffic accidents. Of the 1..4 million annually, approximately twenty percent was attributed to texting. This scope of the problem continues to grow, although advocates have created an organization similar to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) to advance an important public safety agenda.

 

For homeowners, the quality of roads is drectly related to the quality of life.  Whether it is the highways or a local street, those roads need to be safe for a home to be desirable.  Distracted drivers pose a danger to themselves and everyone around them.


Read the full story in the Washington Post...

Posted on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 - 2:03pm

MBC Announces Grants for Last-mile Broadband Projects in Southside

The Virginia Tobacco Commission awarded grants to the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Copperative (MBC) to help provide broadband access to rural areas in Southside Virginia, according to WPCVA.com.

This is a huge need in these rural markets. Broadband access allows these localities to be competitive for attracting businesses. It also brings great educational opportunities to the area. These features are valuable to protecting and increasing property values.

"The Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative (MBC), a successful open-access fiber optic backbone provider in rural markets, is pleased to announce that $1,514,143 was awarded to MBC Members as part of a last-mile matching grant program, funded by the Virginia Tobacco Commission.

These awards will enable deployment of broadband services for residential and business customers in unserved communities in Southern Virginia.

The 50/50 matching grants were awarded to:

CenturyLink, for an ADSL deployment in 14 digital loop carrier serving areas currently served by dial-up Internet access, located in Campbell, Prince Edward, Halifax, Pittsylvania, Henry and Patrick Counties;

DigitalBridge Communications, for expansion of its existing WiMAX deployment in Appomattox County;

Jet Broadband, for high-speed wireless deployment in two targeted areas in Charlotte County and Mecklenburg County; and

Telpage, for a broadband wireless deployment in Greensville County."

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Posted on Thursday, December 10, 2009 - 12:30am

BVU Lays Groundwork for Community Broadband in Bristol

Newly formed committees are working to identify how broadband Internet technology could improve the quality of business, education and health care in the Bristol area, according to the Bristol Herald.

This effort could have a drastic impact on making the area even more appealing to businesses, help institutions provide more services without raising costs and boost the local economy. It could result in great applications of technology to help improve the quality of life for all Bristol area residents.

"A new committee designed to advance regional broadband use took its initial steps Tuesday.

Established by Bristol Virginia Utilities, the community broadband integration group began laying the groundwork for a review of technology uses and applications in the region.

'This is a good start,” Chairperson Beth Rhinehart said after the hour-long meeting. “We’re gathering information and next time we’ll work to define our mission.'

BVU established the committee earlier this year after being named to the 2009 Intelligent Community Forum’s Smart 7 for its deployment and use of high-speed broadband technology. BVU CEO Wes Rosenbalm said the idea is to identify new ways that broadband Internet technology could improve the quality of commercial, educational, health care and other applications.

'You are already outside the box of what BVU is usually thinking about,' Rosenbalm told the group. 'We’re usually out here trying to sell something. It’s encouraging.'

On Tuesday, the group established three sub-groups to gather information about existing partnerships and technology initiatives and to review the programs of other communities named to the Intelligent Community Forum’s Smart 21 for 2010, which includes Bristol, Va.

The third subgroup is to gather existing needs assessment surveys conducted by area human services agencies and other data pertinent to Bristol and Southwest Virginia.

Lisa Meadows, CEO of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce and a member of the broadband committee, will oversee the needs assessment sub-group."

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Posted on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 6:32pm

Culpeper Residents Will Be Able to Pay Taxes Online

Paying taxes will soon be easier for Culpeper residents, according to The Free Lance-Star.

For a fee, residents will be able to pay taxes online. Officials hope that this function will go live for residents by the end of the year.

 

"The town of Culpeper will soon begin using a new software system designed to streamline a number of financial functions and let residents pay their taxes online.

The software, which is expected to go into daily use by December, will bring utility billing, budgeting, purchasing, human resources functions, payrolls and other financial operations under the same system.

'It will allow us to work more efficiently,' said town Treasurer Ron Mabry.

Officials hope the new system will be up and running for the real-estate and personal-property tax season to allow online payments for the first time.

A link on the town's Web site will direct taxpayers to the function.

'We want to make it easier for the citizens when they click that link,' said Mabry. 'You can do it in the middle of the night.'

Opting not to stand in long lines, however, will not be free, and an as-yet-undisclosed fee will be attached to online payments.

The new system will continue to allow for "direct debit" utility-bill payments, a feature town officials say few people have used since it was established."

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Posted on Monday, October 19, 2009 - 1:42pm

Leading iPhone Real Estate Apps Roundup

Want to find homes for sale? Or, want to find out the estimated value of your house?

There's an app for that.

NBC Washington recently published an article with a review of some free real estate Apple iPhone apps.

"Meandering through a neighborhood with a pad and pencil in hand and looking for “for sale” signs can be a nice way to spend an afternoon. Or you can pocket those archaic tools and do some serious high-tech research using your Apple iPhone or iTouch. After all, a piece of paper can’t show you the pricing history or pictures of a house, and it definitely won’t give you driving directions.

We’ve posted about individual iPhone apps before, but we thought it would be useful to put together a list of the leading five all in one post. Here they are – and they’re free at the iTunes store.

Zillow Real Estate 

Named the best real estate app by O’Reilly Media, Zillow Real Estate lets you see what homes are worth and what’s for sale at the tips of your fingers. It has the low-down on more than 90 million homes in the United States and uses GPS to figure out which ones are closest to your current location. You can also check Zestimate values — Zillow's estimated market value — property information, recently sold homes and Make Me Move homes, a Zillow feature that lets homeowners tell others what price they would be willing to sell their home for, without actually putting it on the market.

You can save searches and e-mail your finds to a friend. If you want to follow the status of a property, you can track it by signing up to get notifications when new results come in. When this app became available in April, it had 15,666 downloads in the first 24 hours, according to Zillow’s Web site. 

Redfin Real Estate

Just released on August 29th, this newbie app already has an average customer rating of four out of five stars. Like the others, Redfin lets you view details and photos of homes, but it also lets you save your own pictures and notes to your Redfin account to help you remember what you’ve seen. Available in limited areas, D.C. and Baltimore made the cut.

Real Estate Search - NearBuy

The winner of the 2009 Reynolds Journalism Institute iPhone app award, NearBuy ranks #2 in the real estate app category, according to its iTunes store page. The app lets users search for condos and houses by location using the iPhone’s existing LocateMe technology. It culls results from a variety of real estate classified databases and shows them on a map. It also displays nearby parks and schools.

Trulia Real Estate Search

Launched in August 2008, this app is the most popular real estate application on iTunes, according to its page. Its claim to fame is its focus on showing you what open houses are available today or during the upcoming weekend. Customize your search by zip code and property type and then get driving directions through Google Maps.

Coldwell Banker Real Estate Search

This app from the national brokerage not only lets you search for homes anywhere in the United States, but also for homes on the market in 25 other countries. Save your search efforts with My Coldwell Banker function, which lets you archive searches and properties in your profile.

All of the above apps work with the iPhone and iTouch and require iPhone OS 3.0 or later, although Trulia also works with OS 2.0."

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Posted on Thursday, September 17, 2009 - 4:04pm