Today is a big day Decatur.  You’ve got a whole new look!

Don’t worry, no one replaced all the sidewalks with brick pavers and erected a bunch of “Olde Timey” streetlights…you’ve got a new website!

Gone is the cartoonish map welcome page and the poorly sorted wealth of information!  In addition to an updated look, the website is now better sorted and includes many new features like an online calendar, a host of RSS feeds, and a brand-new Decatur Tourism website: VisitDecaturGA.com.

From Linda Harris’ press release…

A highlight of the Tourism website is the “Go Local” section that features Six Word Story and Itinerary vides of various Decatur residents and business owners spotlighting where they take visitors and guests and describing Decatur in just six words.  The Tourism site also features Decatur’s newest blog – Visit Decatur GA.com with guest bloggers posting about events and happenings in and around the City of Decatur.

(Many of the “six word stories” created by DM readers are featured on the city’s new tourism website)

This is a long-time coming, so don’t waste another second.  Head on over and check it out!

DHS teacher Chris Billingsley writes in…

Attached are some pics of students using your blogs. …Students were suppose to post comments using my email address. All found interesting stories on all three blogsites. I hope to have all comments posted by Wednesday.

Many students replied to your recent comments on their trip to the Capitol.  You can read through them HERE and HERE.

Photo from the Cooking For Monkeys site

Dan lets us know that the excellent Decatur blog, “Cooking For Monkeys” – not to be confused with the much less tasteful site “Monkeys For Cooking” (I kid) – will make a video appearance on WebMD sometime in 2010!

Click over to the site to read all about Pam’s day of filming, which had her cooking in the kitchen AND in the classroom.

Congrats on the great exposure Pam!

If you haven’t done so already, make sure to checkout the new “Headlines” page in the toolbar above.

It’s a quick and clean summary of all the latest blog updates from the best news-gatherers in Decatur, DeKalb and Atlanta.  Think of it as your one-stop shop for viral, blog news in Atlanta! Do it! 

Let me know what you think.  Good addition?  Bad addition?

Jonathan Cribbs wrote a front page story about DeKalb’s three most prominent local, community blogs in this week’s issue to the Champion Newspaper.

John Heneghan, Dave and I, all give our thoughts on the rise and importance of our county’s community blogs. Good reading if you don’t already get enough of us on a daily basis.

BTW, I’ve decided to retire the term “hyper-local” from my lexicon.  From here on out I will be employing “community” in its stead.  Why?  Because I’ve come to realize that the “hyper-local” descriptor doesn’t go far enough in describing these types of blogs.  In my estimation the unifying aspect of blogs like those profiled in the article is not just that they are more local-centric than the city dailies, but that they actively support their communities.  Our tactics may be different, but our motive is universal.

Its a small, but I think, important semantic change if you care about such things.

This morning, the AJC has a nice profile of the local Decatur start-up blog aggregator, Regator.

Over on the Regator site, the top highest-rated posts on the site under Local Interest/United States currently are InDecatur and Next Stop references to the AJC profile.

Seems like Daily Candy has made a New Year’s resolution to feature more Decatur blogs in 2009.

After posting a New Year’s playlist by the AsianCajuns this past week, today they feature Decatur resident Pam Galenkamp’s blog “Cooking For Monkeys“, which documents the insanely creative school lunches Pam creates for her son (a.k.a “Monkey”) on a regular basis.

Check out all of her edible art here.

Thanks to her husband Dan for forwarding!