I’ve been living in San Mateo for some time now, and for a while I’ve been thinking that more of San Mateo needs to be on-line and easilly accessible. Don’t get me wrong, I love to go out for a stroll in San Mateo for some shopping and eating. However this idea of bringing more of the buisnesses and events in San Mateo to an easilly accessible on-line arena was driven home to me about a year and a half ago when my daughter was born.
As a new parent I didn’t always have the luxury of walking downtown to go find a bite to eat when hunger was striking. There were a lot of nights where any take out menu was my friend. I was lucky to have a selection from some favorite restaurants. But they were not as enjoyable after eating from them dozens of times. I tried on a number of occasions to find the menu’s and phone numbers for some other restaurants on the web, but always ended up not finding much. And lets just say the yellow pages are not all they are cracked up to be.
So I’ve had this thought cooking up in my head for a while now, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Start out small and build up from there. As a web developer I have quick access to webhosting, along with the software that is powering this page.
Initially I plan on just blogging what I can about San Mateo. I’d like to get out and meet as many buisness owners and managers as I can, and mention them here. Eventually I want to set up some simple pages for buisness. Nothing spectactular, just some simple information that the search engines can find. Also I thought that podcasts with merchants could be interesting. All for free.
Eventually, maybe setting up some pay for services that might include an on-line store, or a mini-site, or a whole slew of other things.
Why do this you might ask. First I think its a worth while idea. Second its a great chance to network. I’m currently working full time as a Flash programmer in San Francisco. However my roots are in contracting and teaching and I’d like to go back to that someday.