Hopefully you heardd the great news, that Dogster has been nominated for a prestegious South by Southwest Interactive Web award in the category of Community Website. All nominees are included in the People’s Choice Award which will be given to the single site getting the most user votes. So please go to the South by Southwest website and vote for us. You can legally vote once per email address per day for the next month! Please please please help give something back to us by voting early and voting often for us in this Paw-ples Choice Award.
VOTE NOW!
Of course we think that Catster should be nominated too, but if we submitted both it was likely the judges would have split their votes and maybe neither would have been nominated so since Dogster had seniority in this case we chose to submit it first. But let’s show them we have the best online pet community a boy could ever have!
It’s been a trying couple of days but our new server environment is now able to really produce at full strength. Turns out it was a hardware problem as some RAM memory that worked fine at normal usage would crash harder than kittens after a cat-nip party when serving at top capacity. So our sincere apologies for the wonky site behavior the last couple days. We thought we had tested it thoroughly.
But listen to that survery purr now. Pages are serving much more reliably and fast. Shoot even the dogs are cuddling up against it it making such a sweet sound! Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Hi everyone. We’re really sorry about the dog-gone website access problems. We’re now monitoring the site 24hrs a day, sleeping in it’s doggie bed with it and petting it really really nice. Whatever the elussive little buggy problem is we’re on it and will be back to normal before you can say W-A-L-K.
Thanks for bearing with us.
Can you tell we have moved to a much better server? You’re soaking in it! Let us know if you see anything unusual.
I’m watching the Puppy Bowl as I type. (Had to tape it as I was travelling.) So far it’s been 60 minutes of nothing but adorable puppies playing and I love ir! So far my MVP choice is Roxi but I’m not surprised Bandit got lots of votes. For those that don’t do the cable/satellite thing, but like watching puppies play and jump all over each other for hours on end is, then I’ll point out there ’s a DVD available. The shots from the water bowl and the instant replays would be worth it alone.
If you’re stuck at your computer, another fun thing is to do a Google search on ‘dog daycare cam’ and see doggies playing all over the world. Tooooo many doggies!
Do you have the best pet? Is there an animal character from a book that you love? The Reading Planet is hosting a kids’ writing contest from February 14 - March 31, 2005. If you’re between the ages 5-15, you can write a short story or poem about an animal for the chance to win great prizes!
Reading Planet is a Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) project and growing up I always liked reading and I always like the RIF commercials. They’re up there with School House Rock.
From the entries I see on the site, I know we got some junior Shakespeares in the house so think really deep about why your pet is so important and share it with the world. If you can, send us a copy of your submission, and the URL of your pet, and if it’s okay with Reading Planet we’ll repost them on the site!
We’re barking like mad around here because Dogster has been selected as a 2005 Web Awards Finalists by South by Southwest as an Outstanding Community Website! Wooooof!
This is especially meaningful as SxSW (as the digerati spell it) is the one interactive conference I make sure to attend every year. In fact my original motivation to do Dogster grew out of a session I attended in 2003 and in 2004 I got great advice on how to grow this young pup of Dogster into the site it is today. [Did you know Dogster and Catster are already the #1 pet community sites on the internet. We served 8.5 million pages to almost half a million visitors in December!]
Really, it’s just an honor being nominated as it means that people can see how special the passion and love on the site is. If we do end up winning the award the first people I’ll thank will be each and every one of you. Without all the great photos and bios you post and connections you make, the sites would be nothing but an unused set of web code. We really could have done none of this without you and we’re dog-gone grateful for it.
Belly rubs all around and an extra 30 minutes at the dog park!
Tell your friends about Catster and you will be entered in a drawing for Cat of the Week, Cat of the Day or a cool, soon-to-be-released Catster T-shirt! For each friend who joins, that is another entry. So tell all your buddies about your wonderful cat-community. Cats rule!
Details here
Look, I know it’s almost Valentine’s Day, but I can tell you how much I love you all. Before we even got the new Valentine’s Picture Stroll live, some of you managed to spot a premature link in the My Account page and there were 13 pets in the stroll in a matter of seconds! You are the best set of members a site could have!
So now, with no further ado, I present to you the formal launch of the Valentine’s Picture Stroll. Post a Valentine’s themed photo and join the fun.
Over 4,300 pets joined the Holiday Picture Party which is now over, but each attendee now has a permanent snowman icon on their page linking to their entry. We’ll do the same thing with a heart for everyone promenading in the Valentine’s Stroll.
