Today, rabble.ca welcomes you to Zak Meadow. This cartoon, created by Marc Ngui, will change daily. You can click to the latest instalment from our homepage.

Zak Meadow is a place that is about to be transformed by Avariz Inc., a company that wants the rich resources under the land and the development potential found on the surface of it. How will the residents of Zak Meadow react to Avariz’s plans? Dada meets The Peanuts with this lesson in globalization. We encourage you to discuss as the drama unfolds, in babble.

Speaking of lessons, when will Stockwell Day learn his? That’s the question that inspired techie Graeme Lennon to create rabble-rouser‘s latest interactive event. The Stockwell Day Pool encourages you to guess when the leader of the official opposition will finally take a leap.

Another technical breakthrough came in the form of our rabble news “comment” button. In days past, you might have noticed it at the end of one of our articles. You might have even tried it, only to find it definitely didn’t work. Well, now it definitely does. Click it and you go directly to our discussion threads in babble. If you’ve got something to say about a piece, this is a great place to express yourself.

rabble.ca has been around for a whole three months now. Only a month after our launch, Cyclops Press awarded rabble.ca the one eye award for best canadian news magazine.

Some readers are asking us what is next. Well, plenty. One good way to keep informed is by registering for a weekly update.

Finance
Believe it or not, rabble has a business plan. A good business plan. So far, we’re meeting our projections and all that other good business stuff. Right now, staffers are working hard to build our in cahoots section (please take a look at this if you’re part of an organization that might want a formal relationship with rabble). We’re also working on a job-listing service and discrete, tasteful but extremely effective ads that will be up on the site in the fall.

Content
Last week, babble received its one-thousandth rabble-rouser, in the name of Mike Harris. The name might be suspect, but there’s no denying that this section of our site is cooking.

The what’s up calendar continues to grow. If you have an event and you want to promote it, please feel free to add it here.

Big plans in the fall centre around the launch of our much anticipated weekly ideas section. Art, politics, culture, policy, movies, technology, television, music, sports: discussions, dissections, celebrations, criticisms of a broad range of things will be at home in ideas.

Also in the fall, we’ll be unveiling our search engine, allowing the rabble to snoop around our history.

There are a lot of folks interested in writing for rabble, which is great. Anyone with a story idea for our news section should take a peek at our Writer’s Guide and outline for sending a story proposal. Then send an e-mail to [email protected]. For ideas, e-mail [email protected]. Please be aware that the volume of submissions we’re already getting sometimes means you won’t hear back from us unless we want to use your work.

Did We Mention Finance?
Ever notice that cute little “Donate to rabble.ca” button found all over this site? We’d like as many people as possible to be inspired to use it. Personal donations are a big part of what will keep rabble going – and growing. You can contribute online or the old-fashioned way. Either way, it’s tax-deductible.

Now For Something Completely Different
Finally, here’s a sampling of some of the nice things folks have said about rabble.ca since we hung out the shingle (and we appreciate the encouragement):

“I think rabble is fab. I’ve been visiting you daily since you went online and find a lot to keep me coming back. auntie.com is fun, babble is engaging, and the articles are informative and worthwhile. I like the clean, uncluttered site design and appreciate having interesting stories from other publications collected on one site. In short, you rule.”

“I’ve never felt inspired to do something like this before, but I just wanted to thank each and all of you for your wonderful Website.”

“Lovin’ the site. No really … diggin’ it big time. Jeez, haven’t seen such a good-looking site since … since … well, since before corporate media folded its expansive wings over the Web.”

And to end, a confession: we have no schemes for auntie.com. She’s a dame who’s just full of opinions, and she’ll keep on giving them out as long as there are takers. Got a question that no one can answer? Ask auntie.