Dear beta testers,

I won’t try to describe how excited TheDigitel team is about the new site we’ve been working on for the last six months, sufficing to say, we think it will make just about every aspect of TheDigitel far better.

That said, we’re not so naive as to think what we’ve made thus far is without need for improvement, bug-fixes, and perhaps even some questionable choices.

And so we’re counting on our loyal users to put the site through all sorts of tests from plain old daily use, to seeing if you can do things that you shouldn’t be able to, and even calling us out on things that aren’t much better. We’ve looked to the core idea of TheDigitel as it started way back in 2007 and drawn inspiration from how the web has grown in the past six years.

Let us know what bugs you find with the form at http://dev.thedigitel.com/beta/comment or by emailing beta@thedigitel.com

(A quick heads up: We're still doing lots of work on the mobile site, out top contributors page, and things will still look a bit odd in older version of Internet Explorer.)

You’ll find below a copy of the beta announcement that talks about the new site in more general terms, and watch this space for changes and updates to the beta.

Ken Hawkins
Founder

Original beta announcement

The private beta launches next week and we're hoping our readers can help us test for bugs and ensure that we're only making changes for the better. We’d really appreciate your insight and thoughts.

As you know, TheDigitel is a local intelligence concierge, presenting folks with a customized palette of useful information across every local news section, and we're aiming to make things even better and more accessible. 

First the good news:

TheDigitel Version 2 will continue to offer the same simple, yet informative presentation of content by those finely tuned to the their cities.

Here’s the better news:

• More conversation driven than ever. We’ve restructured our posting system to be more flexible, ask questions of your own in addition to being able making hard (and soft) reporting contributions. Have a question? Pose it. Someone with a similar interest will respond.
• Posting will be easier and more straightforward. Share thoughts and questions without worrying about the publishing process.
• We'll connect you faster to interesting stories from around town.
• Quicker connections as articles not primarily written by TheDigitel contributors will link directly to other websites.
• Upvote what you like. Posts and questions can be up-voted by all users, gaining more visibility.
• Interact across cities. Pick your home town and see only local content, but when you travel just flip a switch and engange in conversation with the locals.
• Get a reputation. We’ve added a “Top Contributors” section to feature those users who are most active in posting, answering questions, and voting.