http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eads_Bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhoods_of_St._Louis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_St_Louis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Bridge_(St._Louis) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eads_Bridge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Basilica_of_St._Louis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis,_Missouri http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Louis_Browns http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Clark_(explorer) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Berry
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General Information
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What is it?

It is an online desktop, city/municipal directory and forum specifically tailored for the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is a portal of sorts yet it doesn't include popups, tracking cookies or other annoying/creepy stuff usually associated with portals. It's design is intentionally simple and lightweight so that it is accessible to the widest variety of machines both old and new. For instance you will never see "You need to upgrade Adobe/Flash/Silverlight/Some-other-plugin to view this content" on the main parts of the site.

How is "The St. Louis Metropolitan Area" defined?

All cities of any county that is within 50 miles of St. Louis County are within the scope of the metropolitan area. So, whether it is Pickneyville or Carrollton Il, Potosi or Troy Mo, it doesn't matter... if it is located in a county that is within 50 miles of St. Louis County it is included. That is 25 counties and over 270 cities and townships! :o

Why would I use this site?

  • You may want to use the Front page as your home page! I do. It's a good replacement for the busy, frequently changing and sometimes annoying homepage supplied by my ISP (no need to mention names!). It also loads faster and scrolls better.

Note: There is no law that says that you have to use your I.S.P.'s supplied home page!

  •    Microsoft's instructions for changing the home page of Internet Explorer are at this link.
  •    Mozilla's instructions for changing the home page of Firefox are at this link.
  • You may want to use the Directory page to quickly locate a website, phone number or other contact information for a post office, city hall, police station, school, fire department or other such municipality.
   Caution: use of the Directory may lower your online stress levels dramatically.
  • For those who are a bit more adventurous or who are looking to get more involved you might want to use the Forum. There you can meet people, read what they have to say and discuss just about anything you can think of as long as it is not definable as abusive, intolerant, vulgar, slanderous, profane or that which includes any copyright infringements or stolen content.

What does it cost and what's the catch?

It costs you nothing to use and there is no "catch".

What about Cookies?

This site does not and never will use cookies that collect personal data. The only cookies at stldesktop are for:
  • The time & date feature at top of each page which sets a cookie to keep the time aligned between pages
  • The analytics script Piwik which is hosted here on this server and set to anonymize visitor IP addresses (read more here: Piwik Privacy)
  • The forum which sets a couple of cookies when you log in for forum usage only
No personal data is ever collected and the cookies only work within this site.

Note: On the forum IP address are recorded on posts for instances when an abuse leads to a post needing moderated. The logged record of these addresses is only a means of blocking spammers and those who attempt to post abusive comments to other users. In which case, as soon as I or any moderator is informed of such a machine and/or person, it/they will be dealt with faster than you can quote James Brown saying "Popcorn!".


If it's free then why are there sponsors links?

Doh! They're on to me! >.>

No, seriously, the site really is free to use (as stated above), there really are no tracking cookies and no one here wants any of your personal data. It does, however, cost me something to keep it up and running and the need(s) for sponsors can be summed up as follows:
  • paying for the site's hosting which does have costs associated with it such as general hardware and bandwidth as well as human resources like administration and maintenance which do require some time, skill, patience, coffee and the occasional phone calls between data centers at 3am to keep it up and running 99.9999% of the time
  • funding for any and all future additions and upgrades such as better maps and increased storage space for media uploads
  • gas and fees for trips and phone calls to area schools and municipalities in an ongoing effort to collect phone numbers and web links for the Directory page that are official, verified and up to date
  • the retaining of legal counsel in the case that any linkee should contact me and say "50,000 people came from stldesktop.com to our pages last week and it crashed our servers! We're suing you buddy!" ... note: jails and poor houses usually do not have the internet access which I would need in order to continue administrating for the site :)
  • oh, and ice cream! Cherry Garcia or Chunky Monkey. Also, pastries, pastries and more pastries and even some more pastries and then some good coffee and maybe a light, crispy Danish to top it off. Mmmm. You know.
*for more information please see About the sponsors below


Using the site
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Navigation:

usingnav
From anywhere on stldesktop clicking "Home" near the top left of the current page will take you to the front page (or refresh/reload the front page if that is the current page). Likewise, clicking on "Directory", "Forum" or "About" will take you to or refresh/reload the respective page.

Search:

usingsearch
Make a search using Yahoo!, Bing, DuckDuckGo, DogPile, Google, Wikipedia or WolframAlfa that opens in a new tab or window! You can even search for stock quotes via Yahoo! Quotes. Toward the top and right of every page you can find the search input, search engine selector and "Go" button. To make a search simply type your query into the input field and click on the "Go" button. To use a different search engine than the default Yahoo! engine click on the dropdown selector button (the one with the downward facing black triangle) and a menu will drop down listing the other search engines. Click on the engine that you wish to use and then click on the "Go" button. You search will be sent directly to the search engine you selected and open in a new tab or window (depending upon how you have set up your web browser... hint: see the section titled "Various browser tweaks" below).

Note: All searches are sent directly from your web browser on your machine to the selected engine. At no time will any of your search queries ever be sent to the stldesktop servers.



different search engines   In the picture to the left two unique search options, that you may not be familiar with, have been given gray backgrounds. They are DuckDuckGo and WolframAlfa.

  DuckDuckGo is for the truly paranoid user. All queries fetched by this engine are first retrieved over a secure connection via TLS at 256bits AES certified by Equifax, then obfuscated by the search engine and finally sent to your browser fully encrypted.

  WolframAlfa is ... well ... what I think it is ... is something that God most likely would have confounded our languages over about 5 or 6,000 years ago. Seriously O.o Or maybe he would have just unplugged every computer that didn't run Windows95. Who can say. What it looks like is a means of culminating all human knowledge into a very slick algorithm with a really neat interface. Try it out for yourself and let the rest of us know what you think in the Forum. If, however, after using it you suddenly begin to speak Hungarian and find that you have lost any foreknowledge of English... forget that I asked!

Time and date:

usingtimedate
Clicking on this area opens up a new tab (or window, depending upon your browser settings) with a lot of information about the current time, date and weather conditions around the St Louis area at timeanddate.com. Describing all of the features at that site is well beyond the scope of this page. However, I can say that I think it's a really good resource to become familiar with.

News and Weather:

usingnatnews
Just above here are the link icons for ABC, CBS and NBC national news website's. They are followed by links to Google News, NPR, RFT and Wiki News.


usinglocnews
Above are the link icons for local weather. At left are local stations KTVI (abc), KMOV (cbs) and KSDK (nbc) which link to the respective station's weather pages. In the center are links to an animated weather graphic, a NOAA forecast and NOAA current conditions. At the far right is a link for the current Ameren power outages map.

The Directory:

usingdirectoryindex
Clicking on the state name ("Missouri") moves the window down so that the Missouri section of the page is at the top of the screen. Similarly, clicking on the county name ("Crawford") moves the window to the Crawford County section. City links behave in this same fashion. In the City column County Seats are displayed in a deep red color so that they are easily discernible.

A little about using the Map links on the Directory...

gmapre
Searching for a new home or business location? Notice on the google map above, for the city of Riverview, "Real estate" has been selected on the drop down menu titled "More". Clicking on any of the red balloons that show up on the map gives more information about the property at that address. Also, clicking on the "more info" link on the white information balloon will open a web page associated with that property in your web browser. Functionality is the same for other options listed on the "More" drop down menu on all google maps... and don't forget... all cities on the Directory have both google and Mapquest map links!... \o/ yay!


gmapre
On the Mapquest map above I've chosen to look up some fine dining options in Clayton... as well as any near-by Pharmacies... just in case I decide to have Bob throw some peppers on that dog and someone (meaning I) ends up getting bit :) As you can see the Mapquest tools are pretty powerful... Movie Theaters, Pharmacies, Coffee shops, Restaurants and more show up on the map at the click of a mouse (or the touch of an iThing). My personal favorite at the moment for a Clayton map would have to be the "Traffic" button up by the "360 view" ... >.< !

Note: stldesktop.com has no control over either google or Mapquest maps as these are external links and the properties of google and Mapquest respectively. This site merely links to them, albeit, in a fashion that saves a lot of typing by strategically placing the links on the Directory relative to the associated location.


The Forum:

Page scaling and sizing in various browsers:

The default font size in most browsers is set to 16px. This site adheres to this standard. However, there may be circumstances where you will want or need to rescale the pages. Here are some browser specific methods of doing so:

Note: Clicking an icon below/left will open the official Help/Support page of the respective browser.



Internet Explorer   Internet Explorer (versions 7+):
  • From the "Page" dropdown menu select "Text size" and change between the options of: smallest, small, medium, larger and largest (medium should be default)
  • From the "Page" dropdown select "Zoom" and change the page size based upon a %
  • Clicking on the "Zoom" button (at the bottom of the browser window toward the right side, if available) should change the page size in increments of 25% (ie: 100% to 125% to 150% and back to 100%)
  • Press and hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard and then press either the + key (to increase page size) or the - key (to decrease page size). Pressing the * key (while holding Ctrl) will return the page size to 100%

Firefox   Firefox:
  • From the "View" dropdown mouse down to "Zoom" and make a page size selection from the options there (note that the option for "Zoom text only" may be useful if you have set a non-default text size in Tools > Options > Content > Fonts&Colors)
  • Press and hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard and then press either the + key (to increase page size) or the - key (to decrease page size). Pressing the 0 key (while holding Ctrl) will return the page size to 100%

Safari   Safari:
  • Generally the same as Firefox's functions except that the Zoom settings are in the main View menu instead of having their own flyout sub menu from it (keyboard Ctrl > + / - and 0 work the same as well)

Opera   Opera:
  • From the "View" dropdown mouse down to "Zoom" and make a page size selection from the options there (note that Opera, unlike other browsers, changes the page size in increments of 10% instead of 25%)
  • Simply pressing the + key or the - key increases or decreases the page size. Pressing the * key will return the page size to 100% (there is no need to hold the Ctrl key while pressing +, - or *. Also note that input boxes should not be selected or "have focus" while attempting to change page size with key commands)

Various browser tweaks:

Helpful hints for setting up your browser for best use with this site (and others!):

Setting Internet Explorer (versions 7+) to open a new tab upon clicking an external link instead of opening a new window:
  • From the "Tools" dropdown menu select "Internet Options". In the window that comes up move to the "Tabs" section and select "Settings". In this window, in the section titled "When a pop-up is encountered:", select "Always open pop-ups in a new tab". Then click "Ok" for both setting windows.


Note: The term "pop-up" is used by Internet Explorer to describe any link which directs the browser to switch focus from the current site's containing element... and NOT the more general meaning of the term "pop-up" which denotes an unwanted new element changing focus for unscrupulous purposes. This site uses target="_blank" on all external links to save you from having to use the "back" button excessively. Setting IE to open new tabs in this way is highly recommended as it averts the stacking of an unnecessary and confusing amount of windowed tabs on your task bar.



Why isn't  "   ?  "   linked to on the front page?

The links on the front page are supposed to be the default / de facto links of their kind. Yes, there are literally millions of sites that if one went crazy they might want included there but take a look at what your current homepage has and compare it to what is on stldesktop.com. Does the att/Yahoo!© page provide you with a link to YouTube©? No, because they would prefer you to use their own video options. Does AOL© provide a link to the Opera© or Firefox© or Safari© update pages? No. They've had historical issues going back as far as the Netscape browser which I believe just may have some baring upon that situation. Does the msn© page offer any links to other operating system's such as BSD or Linux? Umm... no, because it is not in their interest for you to use anything other than windows©. Considering these things I believe the links on the front page are pretty well spot on. However, if you disagree, feel free to mail: admin @ stldesktop.com and make a suggestion.

Why that choice for BSD and Linux distro's?

Because those are the one's that matter the most. Obscure offshoots such as FireflyBSD or ArchLinux may indeed survive through the next 10 years and reach at least 1% of the market share for their category... and then again... they may not.

Why that choice for browser's and doesn't Opera fall below "de facto" status?

Those are the heavyweights. Opera may indeed be more "de facto" than one might at first perceive. It has had a means for a long time of cloaking itself as either Mozilla (Firefox©) or Internet Explorer. So, even though the various "browser meters" may say that only 2% of web browser's being used are Opera... the real numbers could quite possibly be closer to 10% or more. Plus, it happens to be my personal favorite and I think it just looks good framing out the end of the list like that ;)

Shouldn't there be links for Konqueror or Epiphany?

If indeed you are using those browsers then you should already have good access to their support features and know how to go about using them. UNIX, Unix, Linux and other *nix's are boot camp baby. Man pages are our friends but sometimes it just doesn't feel like it. Yes, I know how it feels. I'll be putting something together in the forums soon for many *nix browsers, possibly even an entire *nix page. Hang in there.



About the sponsors
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Why use the word sponsor instead of advertiser?

Have you ever used a search engine to locate a pair of hiking boots only to notice that the "sponsored" links on several sites thereafter begin displaying other sports related products? I have. To me, that borders very closely upon being stalked. It's as if you just bought a hotdog from a vendor on 1st street and as you continue to walk from 2nd to 3rd to 4th street you are approached by other vendors hustling you to buy some popcorn, a soda, some pretzels and anything else they can think of because they just saw you buy the hotdog. That's the quick approach: find a hungry person and try to continue selling them food until they are stuffed... and then quickly jump to the next hungry person you can find. If those vendors were investors we could call them shorts. The greedy little buggers that don't care if they get in your face waving something you never asked for. Compare those images to all of the brick and mortar businesses that you passed on your walk. The family store on the corner, the bakery or the restaurant that has been in that same location since you were 2 years old sitting inside at one of their tables in a high chair. Those are establishments that wait for you to decide when you are ready for what they offer... those are the longs. They are always there, within reach, playing by a set of rules that dates back to our time as cavemen, never stalking you like some quick and easy "prey".

Caution: the remainder of this rant includes descriptions of persons and/or corporations which include Elmer Fudd and Buggs Bunny references. Reader discretion is advised!

I've chosen to use the word sponsors for stldesktop.com in an effort to differentiate those who support this site from mere advertisers that enjoy stalking us all around like Elmer Fudd does Buggs Bunny via cookies, search histories and other intrusive schemes such as google's AdSense. I would not call the majority of what is normally referred to as "sponsored listings" around the internet technically sponsoring. In fact, I would call most of it blatant advertising because the entity usually has absolutely no idea of what site their product and/or service will be placed on, what products or services they will be displayed along side of or who else they may become associated with due to the inherent blindness of the format.

A true sponsor knows both who it is and what it is that they are supporting.

Those that choose to have their names, sites and/or services listed anywhere on this site do exactly that... they choose to do so and do so here at stldesktop.com. They were not placed here by a program that tracks you from site to site or that displays their links without their knowledge based upon a floating-point calculation that is hinged upon their paying for a set amount of your "views" or that somehow mystically deciphers if you fit nicely into a box of preconceived "target-able" market demographics. Basically, they are individuals, groups and/or companies that a) dig what's going on here, b) believe in playing long ball and c) feel that intrusive and viral forms of online advertising not only negate the building of trust with patrons but also work to counter any efforts to strengthen their branding in the long run.

Sponsor Qualifications:
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How do I, my company or my group guarantee that we will never become sponsors of stldesktop.com or any of it's sister sites such as chidesktop.com, ladesktop.com or nycdesktop.com?

Good question! In fact, it is so good that there are several answers to it.

You can:
  • Put lead into children's toys
  • Oppress farmers in 3rd world countries by using political strong arm tactics to force upon them the use of crazily priced, patented, genetically modified seeds
  • Manufacture and/or distribute anything with BPA in it
  • Be involved in either the manufacture, sales or distribution of products that still include Asbestos and/or be actively involved in the blocking of litigation of the millions of current Asbestos related illness claims around the world
  • Screen adult rated content to the young children of desperate and/or impoverished parents year after year after year and then attempt to put on the "family friendly" media enterprise act
  • Manufacture, distribute, promote and/or market pornographic material of any kind
  • Include on your site(s) any type of pop-ups, redirects or other annoying and/or deceptive web practices that we had all hoped would have died back around circa 1998
  • Openly admit to Sweating to the Oldies
  • Honestly be able to say that the last one didn't make you laugh... at least a little :)

How do I / we become a sponsor?
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Becoming a sponsor of stldesktop.com:

Sponsoring stldesktop.com is a pretty easy thing to do. The process is as follows:
  • Read through the list above about how to guarantee yourself of never being allowed to become a sponsor and make sure that you a), b) and c) ... just don't do those things!
  • Send an email to: bryon @ stldesktop dot com that includes the following: a description of what it is that you do, where you do it and the address to your site
  • You should be contacted in a day or two. Meanwhile, please review the sponsorship level chart below and decide upon where you wish to be included on the site

Sponsor Levels:
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  Just Added Special Placement In The Wings! This new option opens up a lot of possibilities for those that qualify. On devices with a resolution over 880px click on any of the first few pictures on either side of a page (forums not yet included) to see how this works. Mail to bryon @ stldesktop dot com or contact Bryon in the forums or on Twitter for more information!

Duration / Commitment Front Page Forum Index Forum Posts
6 mo$40 mo / $1.33 day$35 mo / $1.17 day$30 mo / $1.00 day
1 Year$35 mo / $1.17 day$30 mo / $1.00 day$25 mo / $0.83 day
2 Years$30 mo / $1.00 day$25 mo / $0.83 day$20 mo / $0.67 day

  NOTE: The above numbers are not CPM. They are SIAFI. In a CPM scheme once you have reached 1,000 views your fee's basically roll over. For example with a $15 CPM: 10,000 views = $150. Our sponsor levels have no such glass ceiling or tricky calculations. The sponsor level that you decide upon is a static amount whether you get 1,000 or 1,000,000 views. You will not be "billed" extra for going over any pre-determined number of views. Once your sponsorship duration has expired you either chose to renew or you do not. It's just that simple.

  Also: See the Do The Math page for a little more information about why sponsoring stldesktop is a good idea and a great alternative to many others

  File Sizes, Limitations & Placement: In order to keep page load times quick and responsive for most users the allowable sizes for sponsor graphics are limited per section. Front page: 80kb max each. Forum Index page: 40kb max each. Forum Posts pages: 20kb max each. Also note that animated .gif files are limited to the Front and Forum Index pages respectively. Please have a .png or .gif available that is 250px wide x 50px high or that is capable of being resized to those dimensions such as 300w x 60h or 450w x 90h. If you are unable to do this we can make a graphic that will work with the site based upon your branding.




Content
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About the links and icons on the front page...

Links:

These are all links which are readily accessible from every major search engine. Proper attempts were made in order to ascertain whether or not each linkee had a restrictive linking policy before they were linked to. None which were found to have restrictive policies were included.

If you are a representative of a linkee included on the front page of stldesktop.com and would prefer for any reason that your link not to be there please email admin @ stldesktop dot com and request to be removed. If possible do include your reasoning and a link to a publicly accessible and timestamped notice on your site(s) predating it's inclusion on this site that states such a preference (if such does exist). Either way, your link will be promptly removed upon receipt of your request to do so.

Icons:

In most cases icons for linkee's on the front page were simply re-sized in order to better fit the layout and dimensions of the page and include any notices (no matter how small) of branding ownership which they are commonly displayed with. In a few cases, where there simply did not exist a reasonable icon that would size properly or give justice to the inherent artwork or that would not be recognizable when scaled, icons were altered just enough to retain their attributes and still look as good as possible (even when page size is greatly increased!).

If you are a representative of a linkee included on the front page of stldesktop.com and are ok with that but would prefer that your icon appear differently than it does currently please email admin @ stldesktop dot com and explain any changes that you would like to be made (or supply a working example). It should be noted that requests for alternative placement and/or size increases can not be granted due to keeping with the logic and structure of the page layout.


Concerning Copyright
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Who owns what?

The Copyright inherent in the icons that link to 2nd party destinations on the front page are owned by their respective Copyright holders. In some instances these rights may be held by a board of trustee's, a corporation, a group, an individual or they may be holdings with which the us government has been granted the right to administer for the us peoples.

In no way does stldesktop.com mean to imply any ownership of rights to 2nd party holdings nor do their presentation here imply any use other than those which fall under constructs of fair use (emphasis, see: relative case citations). Owners of, or any official representatives of, any 2nd party material displayed on stldesktop.com who wish that their content be removed need only to send an email to admin @ stldesktop dot com requesting that said material be removed and it will be, promptly.
Forum content and usage
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I didn't do it!  You can't prove it!

This is not McDonalds!  We don't serve coffee!

Still here?

My detail here at stldesktop is to administer the site, to make certain that the directory page is screened by only 1 person (me, moi and yours truly) and to field as much feedback and user input as possible. Of course I do other things around here like contacting area municipalities (many in person) to glean from them the most current and useful contact information and links. I also promote the site. From time to time, like any other area resident, I may use the forums. Of course I'll try my best to moderate it as fairly as possible and hopefully some members will step up and decide to help with that some. That being said... as a mod I can say that as soon as anything offensive, racist, hateful, illegal or that which is a copyright violation is spotted by and/or reported to me it will be removed. What more can be said with any integrity? I'm not super human, at least not at last check. Promising anything more would be like a police officer stating that while they were on duty no one would speed. Right, some might not speed "after" he gave them a ticket but his mere presence would never be enough to preemptively make everyone obey the posted speed limits.

Lastly, your content is your content. No one at stldesktop.com will ever administer for the rights to your work(s) nor do they wish to be involved in any publishing agreements, the receiving of your checks, the dealing with your attorneys or the stealing of your mojo in any way conceivable. If you are the owner of rights in a digital image, or file/medium of any kind, make sure that all notices concerning such and/or licenses you wish to be made known are displayed along with it at the initial time of your posting them. Stldesktop will take no responsibility for claims of infringement, misuse or theft concerning original content. Artists, photographers, musicians or other similar creative individuals and/or groups are to use all cautions in presenting their materials including the use of watermarks, posting of all pertinent license mechanisms, keeping backups of everything! (never posting a "one of a kind") and the referencing of pre-existing use of said work(s) (links to a pre-existing gallery of your work, band website etc).

By using this site to display any personal content or work(s) you agree to hold everyone at stldesktop.com harmless and agree that they are in no way liable for any content rights issues nor are they to be included in any legal dispute which could ever arise concerning your or other's use of your or other's intellectual rights as pertaining to any media or medium. The policy here is that if you find that someone else has abused your rights by posting a work of yours without your permission or in a manner that you, by rights, wish to be changed... simply contact admin @ stldesktop dot com or a moderator in the forum and explain the situation and all efforts will be made to correct the situation. That is as far as anyone at stldesktop should ever be expected to become involved in the management of other's original content ... ie: the policing of to the point of removal, the arresting of the issue and absolutely nothing more.