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The St Kitts and Nevis Beach Buzz, Easter 2013 Issue - How was Easter?... and a Special Announcment
April 03, 2013

The St. Kitts Nevis Beach Buzz - Easter 2013 Issue

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Photo of Amicia Mussenden, founder of the Discover St Kitts Nevis Beaches websiteThe St. Kitts and Nevis Beach Buzz is lovingly delivered to you by Amicia Mussenden, Founder/Publisher of Discover-StKitts-Nevis-Beaches.com

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Hello,

I can't believe that it's April already, and almost two months since I was last in touch with you. Oh how time flies, especially when you are having fun. I've been so immersed in changing over my website to the new look and feel and making the preparations for the mobile version of the site, that I didn't realize how quickly time had passed. Thanks for the warm reception to the resumption of publishing of the SKN Beach Buzz. As I get back into publishing regular issues, I wanted to alert you that you will also be hearing from me occasionally when I have something special to share outside of the regular publication schedule. This is one such occasion when I'm writing to you to share some exciting news.

Before I get to the announcements, on behalf of the Discover St Kitts Nevis Beaches family and on my own behalf, I hope that you and your family had a Blessed and Happy Easter. I trust that you had an enjoyable weekend worshipping at church, hunting for the Easter eggs and enjoying time with family and friends. As you may know, here in St. Kitts and Nevis, it is a long holiday weekend, with public holidays on Good Friday and Easter Monday, so there's usually lots of activities in the different communities. Traditionally, Good Friday is a time when lots of people fly kites, so if you are ever here on Good Friday, time take a moment to look up in the sky to see all the colorful kites flying high.

Another traditional event held around Easter is the Annual Basil Henderson Easter Monday Aquatic Sports Meet held on Easter Monday at the Ferry Terminal in downtown Basseterre. This year is the 55th year of hosting the meet. In addition to traditional swimming races including freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, distance, long distance and underwater dive, two major highlights of the event are the fetching of the ham from the horizontal greased pole that extends from the ferry pier over the sea and fetching the money from the vertical greased pole erected on the sand. A big shout out to Mr. Zack Nisbett "De Doctor of Culture" of International House Museum for continuing to coordinate the organisation this event. Although there were brief periods when rain fell, the Easter Monday Aquatic Sports event came off with a bang.

I mention the weather because after having a fine day on Friday, I was looking forward to going on a hike to the Mt. Liamuiga volcano on Saturday with some of my work colleagues. But I guess the hike was not to be. While I was getting ready, I got a telephone call to say that the hike had been called off because of non-stop rain down in the area of the volcano. Then a few minutes later it started raining here in Camps where I live. It was a good thing the hike was called off because it rained off and on for practically the whole day, with some really heavy downpours at times. If you follow me on Facebook you may have noted that I posted about the hike, telling you to stay tuned for photos and a write up about my experience that should have been published in the next full issue of the Buzz. I'll let you know when the hike is rescheduled for, and of course I'll share the pics and my review with you.

New Look on the Discover St Kitts Nevis Beaches Website

And now to the news. First off, I've finally completed the changeover to the new look and feel for my website. You'll also notice from this newsletter that I've also updated the look of the Buzz to blend in with the new look of the website. I've also included an intro section that puts a face to the name behind the Buzz and website (yes that's me in the photo).

If you haven't stopped by the website lately, I invite you to come on over to Discover-StKitts-Nevis-Beaches.com and check out the new look.

Discover St Kitts Nevis Beaches website screenshot

In the next ezine issue I will tell you about some of the new features of the site, but for now I just wanted to highlight two of them, namely, the PinIt buttons and the social sharing bar. You will notice some white and red PinIt buttons below some of the photos on my site. These buttons allow you to easily pin those photos to your boards on Pinterest. See a pic that you like? Click the button to pin it to one of your boards. Happy pinning! Notice the floating social sharing bar on the left side of the screen? This bar allows you to easily share our web pages with your friends via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and Stumble Upon.

And now for the big announcement...

Discover-StKitts-Nevis-Beaches.com is Going Mobile

In the last issue of the Buzz and in my introduction to this e-zine I mentioned that I've been hard at work making preparations for a mobile friendly version of the website. Well I am pleased to announce that the mobile version of Discover-StKitts-Nevis-Beaches.com is almost ready. I've attached two screenshots below to demonstrate the before mobile version and after mobile version screenshots of what the site looks like when viewed on a Google Galaxy Nexus phone. Definitely a massive improvement in terms of readability.

DSKNB website viewed on mobile phone before mobile site   DSKNB website viewed on mobile phone after mobile site

But don't just take my word for it. To see what the site looks like on your phone before it is officially unveiled, follow the steps below...

  1. Take out your phone and start the browser.
  2. Go to this URL... http://discover-stkitts-nevis-beaches.com/mobile
  3. Click on the "Sandbox Me" button. This puts you into Discover-StKitts-Nevis-Beaches.com "Mobile Sandbox." You will now be able to see the mobile version of Discover-StKitts-Nevis-Beaches.com on THAT phone (if you have a second type of phone, you would need to repeat this step).
  4. Follow the notes that ask you to test and see how it looks. This will help me troubleshoot any problems. If everything looks fine, please go the Contact Us (on your phone) and fill in the form there to let me know (along with what phone you use). If you have any problems or if something looks weird, PLEASE let me know.
  5. That's it. Please feel free to play with it and enjoy! This should work well on all iPhones, iPod Touch, Androids and Blackberrys (older ones may have some glitches).

I'm really excited to know that pretty soon, you will be able to comfortably use your mobile phone to view and use my website while on the go. I would really love to have your feedback about my mobile website, including hearing about any problems you encounter. If you do report a problem, please include the type of phone, operating system version and browser you are using (e.g., iPhone 5/iOS 6.1.3/Safari or Samsung Galaxy S3/Android 4.1.2/Firefox) and what the problem is. I don't expect the site to be perfect during this pre-launch period, so please provide your feedback to assist me in ironing out any problems you might encounter. Also, if you think of anything related to St. Kitts and Nevis that you would really like to have access to on the go please let me know.

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