San Ramon Research Search Engine

Building a Better Mouse Trap

With all the talk of the community center or more properly said to be a downtown city center, we at the San Ramon Tribune felt it was important to provide people with the best research tools possible for analysis of the various projects going on in the San Ramon community.

To that matter, we have built a Google Custom Search Engine for the main websites in San Ramon, related to civic and business matters for the local community. There has been a collection of major data over the years from a number of websites that is of historical importance. Citizens, government officials, and even newspaper reporters can get the inside scoop using the San Ramon Search Engine as a research tool for all matters related to government and community.

With the launch of the San Ramon Tribune online newspaper a little over a week ago, we have given all the sites operated by the San Ramon Tribune editors a new and fresh look and feel. We think you will find the new sites quite versatile and user friendly. However, there are times where you might have remembered reading something in one of the postings on one of the websites but forgot where it was at. Well, with the Google Custom Search Engine we have substantially solved that problem for everyone.

While having a search specific to one site is great, an even better solution is to include a number of websites. Sure, we could have just included our own websites in the search results, but that would not have been as good a solution as including some of the other websites from around the San Ramon Valley.

We have included the City of San Ramon website found at www.ci.san-ramon.ca.us, in the search results. While the City of San Ramon has a search engine built into their own website, it is sometimes very difficult to find the pertinent information a person is looking for when using their built in search engine. With the San Ramon Tribune's Google Search algorithm, the results are much better in our estimation, and are displayed in a much more comprehensive manner, and is much easier to navigate between the results.

We have also included into the search results, from the website San Ramon Observer located online at www.sanramonobserver.org. The San Ramon Observer has for sometime collected a number of historical documents of significance and personal comments to justify inclusion.

Websites maintained and operated under the San Ramon Tribune include the following:

The San Ramon Tribune online newspaper about a wide variety of news topics found at www.SanRamonTribune.com

The Golf Course topic found at SanRamonTalk.blogspot.com. Archives of the history of the city council changing the zoning of the golf courses from parks, to commercial recreation (which allowed significantly higher FAR, Floor Area Ratios, and other commercial building), and finally into their own golf course zone.

The Eminent Domain topic found at SanRamonTalks.blogspot.com. Archives of what the city council has tried to do with Beta Court, and the implementation of eminent domain for private gain on the San Ramon books.

Privacy Talk topic found at SanRamonPrivacy.blogspot.com. Details of how many of our city officials take privacy too lightly on the Internet, and what people need to be careful of, and aware of, when communicating with the city through the city's website.

There is one other website that still can be found in the search results, but will soon diminish in the search engine results pages, and that is the San Ramon News, SanRamonNews.blogspot.com website. As you know, and are reading this online, you will notice that the SanRamonNews.blogspot.com became the San Ramon Tribune. Note: If anyone has a link to the old website, it will still function, including the links to a particular internal article will also work, but if you would like to update the link on your website, it might make better sense for your readers online. For the moment, the search results will have both the new and the old site included for awhile.

Additional San Ramon Websites Included in the Search Results

The San Ramon Chamber of Commerce found at www.sanramon.org. We felt it was good to include the business community into the fold.

San Ramon Historic Foundation located online at sanramonhistoricfoundation.org. The Historic Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of San Ramon's early farms and homesteads.

And, last but not least, is the San Ramon Arts Foundation located at sanramonarts.org. The San Ramon Arts Foundation (SRAF) was founded in 2000, and was established as a tax-exempt organization 501 (c)(3) to encourage, support and promote the arts that enhance the quality of life in San Ramon.

As the City of San Ramon grows, we expect to see other websites develop from business and community groups, individuals, and other organizations that will be welcome into the search fold. If you would like to submit a site for consideration into the San Ramon Search custom search engine results pages, send us an email with the website suggestion. We can not make any promises that a particular website will be included into the custom search engine but we will give consideration to everyone.

How Does The Search Engine Work?

Simply type in a search term above in the search bar, or on any of our websites and you will see the results pages specific to the sites listed above. If you wish to display only a certain segment of websites in the search results, simply refine your results using the refinement links, or click on the label at the right side of any of the results that has a label on it. This will then only display the various sites included by the refinements.

Currently the list of refinements are as follows:

City Website, Tribune, Observer, Eminent Domain,
Golf Courses, Privacy, Chamber of Commerce, Arts,
Historic Foundation,

Once again, use the San Ramon Tribune custom search for research, local government documents, policies, laws, rules, regulations, ordinances, building codes, zoning changes, eminent domain, golf courses, city council affairs, business concerns, traffic congestion, ridge line development, open space issues, brown act, property rights, redevelopment, entitlements, ABAG numbers, privacy, and even controlling rats in San Ramon.

Note: From time to time we will fine tune the search engine to possibly include all websites but give extra emphasis to the selected websites listed.

Please Read:
The San Ramon Tribune Welcome Message

New Newspaper: San Ramon Tribune

San Ramon, CA 8/9/07
The San Ramon Tribune has officially opened their doors today.

The San Ramon Tribune is an independent, online published newspaper, that tells the other side of the story. Many times, the traditional local newspapers and some of the other online news sources get a story that is spoon-feed to the reporters and writers which is seldom questioned with any type of critical thinking skills. While there is some degree of truth in presenting a spoon-feed story, it is seldom more than the party line.

Many of the reporters, and other local news sources, seemingly having some close ties with the Mayor and City Council members and even Sunset Development company, in which if reports are too biased against a certain issue, the editors in chief bow down to the political pressures, and only report the news from a very pro City Council and pro development perspective.

The San Ramon Tribune is not like these other newspapers. Our philosophy is to try and present news stories from a critical thinking perspective. Sure, this will ruffle more than a few feathers, but if the San Ramon Tribune articles prompt the reader to think of the other side of the story, then the reporters have done their jobs. The Tribune will include a variety of types of news stories online. In fact, the San Ramon Tribune is the Peoples Newspaper. No other local newspaper provides the type of direct feedback as does the Tribune.

The way the Tribune operates is through your editorial feedback in the form of comments on the various stories online. While other local online news outlets provide a similar way of comments on the various stories, they have a limited amount of time that they run the stories on the web. Take for example the San Ramon Times or the Contra Costa Times, in which a story is posted on the Internet, and then after a month or two can never be found again.

As newspapers have been gobbled up by big conglomerations, these organizations provide very little in the way of personal news reporting. Reporters for one newspaper actually cover the news for articles written for a wide collection of newspapers. See all the Media Newsgroup Newspapers owned by this company. The Alameda Times-Star, The Argus (Fremont), Contra Costa Times, San Ramon Times, Oakland Tribune, Pacifica Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, San Mateo County Times, Santa Cruz Sentinel, and even the Tri-Valley Herald (Pleasanton) are just a small segment of newspapers all owned and operated by the Media Newsgroup. Take a look online at some of these newspapers, and you will see many of the same articles, if not all the same, across a wide variety of websites, with the only difference the branding at the top. Are we really so naive to think, that we are going to get the news written in an unbiased fashion? What do you think would happen if a reporter were to start doing some in-depth investigative reporting into certain unethical happenings behind the scenes at some of the various local government proceedings? What is likely to happen would be a reprimand at best or a pink slip at worst. These reporters are fighting just to keep their jobs now, because of continual reporter and news personnel consolidations and layoffs. No reporter wants to make waves today. Even if a reporter is aggressive in their news gathering, they have to report to editors that have more than likely been instructed not to ruffle any feathers themselves.

So, this is your newspaper. You get to add comments no matter which side of the fence you are on. We have a couple of rules that are important to note. We respect your privacy, and we expect you to respect the privacy of others. Don't just throw personal names (private individuals) around, especially if you are not sure of the facts. Even if you are sure of the facts, consider the person's privacy before listing their name in an article commentary. Your comments can be made anonymously, with a pen name, or with a Blogger account. Keep your comments civil.

San Ramon Tribune reserves the right to remove comments from this website for any reason.

So, put on your critical thinking skills and try to stay calm, cool, and collected in your thoughts. Share it here at the San Ramon Tribune.

We encourage you to also submit your stories for posting. We can not promise that all stories will be published, but we will review them and consider a story for online publication. If you wish to remain anonymous as the author, simply let us know of your wishes, and we will not publish your name. Click the submit story link on this website to submit your stories and articles for consideration.

For those wondering about the name: San Ramon Tribune; here are a few thoughts.

A tribune was an officer of ancient Rome elected by the plebeians to protect their rights from arbitrary acts of the patrician magistrates.

A tribune is a protector or champion of the people.

Please read our introduction and welcome posting.

Sincerely,

Executive Editor
San Ramon Tribune