We have added a new page for local photography workshops.

http://www.virtual-swanage.co.uk/thingstodo/page.aspx?p=photography

LAST CHANCE TO VOTE FOR DURLSTON CASTLE TO WIN NATIONAL LOTTERY AWARD

Voting for the nation’s favourite National Lottery funded projects closes on Sunday 28 October and Durlston Castle is making a last plea for local support. We have an inspirational film available for you to use on your website which looks at why Durlston Castle is so unique.

You can download it here - https://bruizer.sharefile.com/d/s61218027ec14ab79

Durlston Castle is competing in the Best Heritage Project category. Durlston Castle is key attraction on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site and a focal point for visitors to Durlston Country Park and National Nature Reserve. Its renovation has allowed for new and improved facilities which can now be accessed, in all-weathers, by a much wider range of visitors - generating jobs and stimulating the local economy.

Since the Castle reopened, public interest has been enormous with over 20,000 visits to the Castle in the Christmas period alone. Hamish Murray, Dorset County Council’s Ranger Service Manager, said: “We are proud of all that's been achieved at Durlston with the help of National Lottery funding. We’re really grateful to our friends and supporters who have taken the time to vote for us. It means so much to everyone involved in the project to get national recognition for our work.”

National Lottery players raise £30 million a week for Good Causes across the UK and The National Lottery Awards recognise the positive impact that Lottery-funded projects make to local communities using this money.

There are seven categories in the Awards that reflect the main areas of Lottery funding: arts, sport, heritage, health, environment, education and voluntary/charity. Each category has three finalists and people have until midnight on Sunday 28 October to vote for their favourite to win. The winner in each category will receive a £2,000 cash prize and will be celebrated at a star-studded awards ceremony on BBC One later in the year.

For more information and to vote go to www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/awards.

We would like to thank Durlston Country park for supplying over 70 new events for the online diary.

We have added a new video of the Red Arrows display from Swanage Carnival to the website http://www.virtual-swanage.co.uk/thingstodo/page.aspx?p=carnival and updated the fireworks video to a full HD version.

To view the HD versions of the videos, click play and then select the 720HD option from the quality menu (Cog icon)

2 of the town webcams have failed.

We didn’t want to have 2 broken images on the site as this generates on average 30+ complaints each week when the cameras are not updating.

We have had a number of complaints already about the missing or broken webcams but as they are owned and hosted by the business owners who have them in their shops we do not have any control over the cameras or when they will be replaced.

The IP cameras cost on average £200 each plus the cost of the business broadband line for them to upload their photos 24/7 and so it is an extra cost each business who chooses to host a webcam has to cover.

We will add the webcam images back to the site if the business owners replace their cameras.

The local business directory is getting several new submissions every day from companies who are not based in Swanage or the Isle of Purbeck.

We will not add your business if you are not based in this area so please dont waste your time and ours adding your details as they will only be deleted.

We are sure that there are not multinational businesses with huge warehouses located in Acton!

If anyone can translate this into the top Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali,Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya it would be helpful as the Indian submissions are the most numerous.

The lower high street webcams are now back online now the phone lines/broadband have been fixed. We have also updated the webcam page to make it load faster and allow you to view all 4 webcams on your screen without scrolling. The full size webcam images can be viewed by clicking on the smaller web cam images.

http://www.virtual-swanage.co.uk/gallery/webcam.aspx

We have added photos from the Olympic 2012 torch relay which came to Swanage today

http://www.virtual-swanage.co.uk/gallery/Events/6/area.aspx

We have added six new photos to the gallery of Durlston http://www.virtual-swanage.co.uk/gallery/default.aspx and updated the Durlston Country Park page http://www.virtual-swanage.co.uk/thingstodo/page.aspx?p=durlston

As part of our recent update we are sent an email notification if someone uses the search facility and it doesn’t provide any matches. This enables us to try to add the missing information into the website.

Today we had several searches for catering companies and we currently do not have any local catering businesses in the directory.

If you run a catering business (or any other type of business) it is free to advertise in the local directory so please add your business to the listings. http://www.virtual-swanage.co.uk/advertise/