We've got the beta stage of the community area up, and you can login using your Facebook account if you'd rather not create a new user account.  You can use the community area to share photos & videos from around the region.

Once you're logged in (whether through Facebook or by creating a user account), a user toolbar will appear in the Community section; the toolbar includes links to your Profile, Applications, etc.

Unless we lose power tomorrow, we're going to launch the beta version of SoVaLife's community area this weekend so you can share photos and videos of the snow with other visitors; if the storm lives up to the forecast, it will probably be one of the biggest (if not the biggest) snowfalls that any of us have ever seen around here so we we decided to launch the community feature before we had planned to.  If we lose power, the launch will have to wait since we won't be able to work on the site; check back in tomorrow, and share your pix - but please be forgiving if there are any glitches since we haven't done much testing yet.

And by the way - you'll be able to login to the site using your Facebook id if you'd prefer, so you don't have to remember one more username/password combo!

If you get an "Operation Aborted" error when opening a website in Internet Explorer, it's due to the way IE incorrectly handles certain code (on this site, IE7 mishandles the code for the Facebook Fanbox); we're trying to find a workaround, but it may load correctly if you click your "Back" button or refresh your page.

You should also upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer, due to many security patches, etc.

Scotty Felton will be writing about topics like the origin of various locality names, county trivia, and real estate tips.  I'll bet most people are like me - grew up here but have no idea why some places are called what they are!  It'll be fun to find out how much we don't know about where we live.

If you're interested in blogging about life in Southern Virginia, we're interested in talking to you.  SoVaLife.com was started to provide a place for people to get more information about life in the area, things to do, places to go, etc.  and we'd like to have people from various backgrounds as contributors.

Whether your interests are  in sports, gardening, dining, the arts - pretty much anything! - and you have ideas for short articles you could contribute, just let us know.