BY KELLI SHEPPARD
Northernlife.ca was one of five local websites honoured Thursday night at the SmartWorx Conference and Web Awards.
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Northernlife.ca won the Organizational Site Award at the SmartWorx Conference and Web Awards Wednesday. Publisher Abbas Homayed (left) and internet manager Mike Zanier accepted the award from FedNor?s Carmen Demarco. |
Northernlife.ca took home the organizational site award, for sites developed to facilitate and create community connectedness and/or communication.
Mayor Jim Gordon honoured Northern Life president Michael Atkins by giving him credit for introducing the mayor to the idea of transforming Sudbury into a digital city.
Gordon said it was a chance meeting on the corner of Elgin and Durham Street. Atkins asked Gordon when Sudbury was going to start implementing broadband.
Gordon had no idea what Atkins was talking about, but decided to do some investigating into this ?broadband? thing.
After doing some digging, Gordon decided that was the direction that Sudbury would and should go to secure its future.
?We made this decision in 1995,? Gordon said. ?We now have 750 kilometres of broadband running through the city.?
It?s that broadband piping that powers the call centres in the city and it?s that broadband that attracts businesses such as Chilly Beach to be able to operate here in Sudbury.
Gordon said this was only the first step in bringing high-tech companies to the city.
?If we can accomplish as much as we have in the telecommunications field in the last five years, think about what we can accomplish in the next five years.?
Steve Dotto, host of Dotto?s Data Café and Dotto on Data, (CITY-TV) was the master of ceremonies at the awards dinner. He said he liked northernlife.ca and that it was one of the better sites he had seen since being in town.
?I?ll even be sure to visit it after I leave. I love to read news about what?s going on across Canada.?
He then went on to warn people of some dangerous computer viruses they should be aware of.
?For instance,? Dotto said. ?The Oprah Virus will expand your hard drive to 120 GB, but will then shrink it to 20 and then expand it again to 80 GB.?
?Another virus...is the NDP Virus. This one doesn?t actually do anything, but it thinks it does.?
Other winners were Collège Boréal for educational site, Digital Immersion Software Corporation?s Presenter3d.com for brochure site, MineSource.com for Commerce B2B, OntarioGhostTowns.com for personal site and Centis Tile & Terrazzo?s centistile.com for Commerce B2C.
Kelli Sheppard is one of the people responsible for the success of northernlife.ca.
