SoGlos Blog

SoGlos.com’s Melanie Jones to take part in Cheltenham Race for Life

We’re delighted to announce that SoGlos.com’s account director Melanie Jones will be joining the 10k Race for Life at Cheltenham Racecourse this Saturday 2 July 2011.

Mel has been training hard for the event (although we’ve discovered she can be lead astray by a lovely slice of cake in the office!), and will be helping to raise funds which are vital for Cancer Research UK’s life-saving work.

We would like to wish her the very best for the race, and you can sponsor her at raceforlifesponsorme.org/meljones2006.

SoGlos.com unveils Google Custom Site Search functionality

As the geekier followers of our behind-the-scenes blog will know, SoGlos.com isn’t based on a pre-made template or part of a national network of websites limited by a one-size-fits-all mentality.

Instead, it is a custom built and completely bespoke online magazine, devised with the sole purpose of covering arts, entertainment and leisure in Gloucestershire, which has continued to evolved since launching four years ago.

And after listening to feedback from readers, we are delighted to announce the latest new improvement to SoGlos.com is the addition of Google Custom Site Search functionality, released today.

The new service will provide readers with suggestions based on popular SoGlos.com searches, and harnesses the power of Google’s leading search technology to suggest search results based on the most important and relevant pages.

It will also search SoGlos.com’s 6,847 (and growing by the day!) pages, drawing upon results from event listings, venue listings, reviews, features and news articles.

We hope you’ll enjoy the enhanced functionality, and the eagle-eyed may also notice a healthy dose of additional, subtle improvements introduced to the award-winning SoGlos.com today too...

Top 10 summer events in Gloucestershire 2011 leaflet

Okay, so we may not be enjoying the summer weather we’d hoped for, but that doesn’t need to stop you taking advantage of 10 of Gloucestershire’s top events taking place this season.

Pick up your quarterly SoGlos.com leaflet from more than 100 venues across the county and you’ll find Beaufort Polo Club Country Fair, Fresh Air 2011 sculpture exhibition, Rose Week at Sudeley Castle, Royal International Air Tattoo and Cheltenham Open-Air Theatre Festival all listed.

The other top events to have made the cut are The Berkeley Skirmish at Berkeley Castle, Cheltenham Cricket Festival, Gloucestershire summer holidays, Gloucester Tall Ships Festival and the brand new Treefest at Westonbirt Arboretum.

Plus, if you see a member of the SoGlos.com team handing out leaflets at a local event, don’t be afraid to come and say hello!

SoGlos.com highly commended in South West Media Awards 2011

The SoGlos.com team had the honour of attending the prestigious EDF Energy South West Media Awards ceremony in Somerset yesterday, joining the cream of the region’s newspaper, radio, television and online media for the anticipated annual event held in association with holdthefrontpage.co.uk.

While SoGlos.com won the title of ‘Website of the Year’ in 2010, this year saw Gloucestershire’s independent online magazine scoop the accolade of ‘Highly Commended’ by the expert panel of judges – who described SoGlos.com as a ‘highly successful website which had focused on high quality editorial and doubled its turnover in the last year’.

This year, it was independent website Bristol 247 which came in first place, however, with the judges saying they were impressed by its incorporation of community blogging.

SoGlos.com Cheese Rolling video featured on BBC Newsnight

If you tuned into BBC programme Newsnight last night you might not have been surprised to see Jeremy Paxman and his team reporting on everything from FIFA corruption to China as a green superpower – but you’d be forgiven for doing a double-take when Gloucestershire’s very own cheese rolling action took over the small screen.

After seeing SoGlos.com’s Cheese Rolling 2011 video, the show’s producers contacted the team to use footage of the women’s race – and we were only too happy to help. And while Paxman described the annual event as ‘utterly pointless’, it was undoubtedly a perfectly light-hearted end to the hard hitting news show.

The last 48 hours have also seen SoGlos.com’s video of the unofficial event featured by a plethora of other leading media including Wired UK, Metro and press agency Small World News Service.