Over at San Diego Bloggers there’s a “Blogs to Watch in 2007” nomination going on. Check out the categories and nominate your favorite local blogs.

Citing data from the California Department of Finance, Schuerman said only 900 people moved to San Diego County over the past two years, while more than 28,500 residents moved out.

It would seem that the number one business difficulty for 90% of businesses and 100% of employees is the cost of housing in San Diego. 

So, has the loss of roughly 2.3% of San Diego’s population had any noticeable impacts for any of you?

This four year in the making, 25 million dollar expansion is poised to contribute to the already impressive cultural tourism draw that San Diego possesses. Surely that will have a significant impact on the revenue of San Diego restaurants, hotels and accommodation providers, and purveyors of entertainment in San Diego.

With over 16,000 feet for exhibitions (10k of which is in the Santa Fe baggage building), and the additional educational facilities of the Copley Building the new campus is sure to provide a wealth of intake for art admirers and scholars.

Consider visiting the new Downtown San Diego contemporary art museum on Jan. 21^st or Thurs thru Tues, 11-5pm.

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
1001 Kettner Boulevard
San Diego, Ca 92101

www.mcasd.org - 619-234-1001

Check out other lisitngs of San Diego Entertainment and Arts at WebSanDiego.org’s San Diego yellow pages directory.

***We’ve been getting some visits for plastic surgery related terms. If you’re looking for a facelift in San Diego there are some links on that site. ***

First things first, we’re not done. There will be modifications the next 3-5 days, but hopefully the brunt of it is over with no downtime whatsoever.

So, let’s get to the good stuff. In my opinion, probably the coolest thing about our new design/theme (which we custom hacked together from a few other ideas) is that contributors have their own archive page now. They can also login to their account and update their “About yourself” area which will show up on your author’s (archive) page. You can also grab an RSS feed that will only show posts made by that particular author.

Now, aside from that, we obviously tightened things up a bit and went with a fixed layout. The old theme was a little hard to work with, and we had some ads and stuff sort of floating around aimlessly. There’s still a little clutter, which we’ll work to cleanup by arranging things better… but all-in-all I think it’s a solid improvement making the site more navigable.

Now, we’ve also incorporated a few banner spots. The hope with this is that if the site can pick up a handful of paid sponsors we can offer a stipend to a few motivated San Diego interns to pick up the flow of posts. It would be tremendous if we had at least 3-5 daily posts (quality); whereas now we’re at something like an average of one post every 3 or 4 days. Also, having some interns that are semi-compensated should help us to grow the number of “content-rich” posts we have, as opposed to some of the more “drive-by” style ones which are mostly a one-liner and a link drop (nothing wrong with that… but I’m sure everyone agrees that to grow we need those and more comprehensive discussion starters).

Oh, and on a user-friendliness note, we felt that drastically changing the layout of the actual post pages themselves would greatly enhance the readability. Now, there are no side-columns or really anything below the header to distract the reader from just reading the post. The comment area is large as well and trackbacks have been segregated into their own bordered area as well. We added a number of icons which bring a little life to the pages and help the eyes focus from place to place.

Since we wanted to do this at night, so as not to disturb our valued readers, it’s now 1:25am (and I was up until 5am last night trying to pull this off, which didn’t happen) so I’m going to cut this short and just say there are two more things that should make things interesting:

1. There is now a box of related links under the comments area of each post. It’s created dynamically but it’s really rather accurate. It’s a great way to find other posts of interest based on what you’ve obviously just completed reading.
2. Lastly, above the blog post comment submission button we’ve now added a checkbox “Check here to get emailed when others leave a comment” which if you decide to place a checkmark in, will email you when subsequent comments are made. (will test this thoroughly tomorrow)

I’m sure there are a few other little mentionables but it’s late and I’m exhausted. Hope all the readers and participants on San Diego Blog feel this is an improvement or at least that we broke even if you’re the cranky type!

We welcome constructive criticism and any reports of bugs would be great!

This young band of Colombian ex-pats plays a high-energy take on traditional Afro-Colombian sounds, and their debut CD, Marioneta, was named one of 10 “Picks of the Year” for 2006 World Music by the Financial Times.

Their live shows, bursting with musicianship, authenticity, and energy, have won them a large following in Colombia and in New York, and this show will be part of their first-ever trip to California. Dancing encouraged! Jan 11, 7:30pm, Acoustic Music San Diego, 4650 Mansfield Street, San Diego. 619-303-8176.

By way of email comes a story of a young California woman doing a fairly innovative project to support our troops:

My name is Gina Elise and I am a 24-year old UCLA grad–spent my first two years at UCSD. I have just completed producing the 2007 “Pin-Ups For Vets” calendar fundraiser which brings in funds for hospitalized Veterans’ programs and also provides a fun pin-up calendar to hosptialized Veterans. I am hand-delivering calendars from donors to the Veterans in the hospital—and I also am sending calendars ordered for deployed military in care packages to Iraq and Afghanistan. Each donor who purchases a calendar receives an acknowledgement from a VA Hospital staff member.

The calendar, inspired by the glamorous pin-ups of the 1940’s, has received wonderful feedback and has been covered in newspapers and on websites.

More information is available at www.PinUpsForVets.com; learn more about this fundraiser project for ill and injured Veterans on the behind the project page.

I’m faced with the girlfriend’s parents coming in from Florida and the tough option of whether to have them squeeze into my place or bunk at a nearby hotel. So while everybody knows the more hospitable thing to do there’s just not much room and overall I think everyone would keep the holiday spirit up a little more if they had room to breath J

Promotional Review:

So, I visited Hotel Reservations and was actually highly surprised to find a number of great deals on hotels in San Diego. The pricing was good, and while I’m sure there are other travel aggregators offering hotel reservations in San Diego at discounted prices, these seemed a good enough value that I probably wouldn’t spend too much time digging around. I could also see quickly which hotels definitely had rooms available; in some cases even the exact number.

While http://www.hotelreservations.com/ was a little light on the user-generated-content side (reviews, comments, user tips, etc) as far as I could see, it was straight and to the point. I’m off to book a room at Estancia La Jolla Hotel & Spa which surprisingly had very un-La Jolla-like prices on this site

Anyone else having family come in or anyone else heading out of San Diego? Do you use a site like this or just go directly to the hotel’s website?

According to the VoiceofSanDiego.org Foreclosure Counseling has become a new cottage industry to meet the needs of the growing number of (soon to be ex-) homeowners facing foreclosure.

I know we’ve got some informed San Diego realtors as regular readers here, maybe some seasoned RE investors as well. What are your thoughts on the San Diego real estate market? Can we expect that prices will level (have they already?) or decline in 2007?

I’m familiar with the Cedros Design District which has its fair share of awesome little shops and galleries, the upscale boutique shopping in La Jolla, and the standard malls such as UTC, Fashion Valley, and Horton Plaza.

What other options are you considering for getting a great deal, something special, and hopefully avoiding the otherwise endless lines and frantic crowds?

Here’s a shortlist of some shopping resources:

• San Diego Shopping Links
• San Diego Clothes Stores
• Rules about Gift Certificates