Many years ago, WRAL.com was one of the first sites to syndicate its content to other sites. We developed a news ticker and weather "sticker" for publishers. Drop some Javascript or HTML into a Web page, and you could have continuously updated headlines and weather forecasts from WRAL News.

With the re-launch of our Web site, we have updated our syndication tools . News headline displays are now Flash based, and our "weather stickers" or embeddables also have been updated. Simply cut and paste the code into your Web pages.

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The new site will be live in less than 24 hours, but that's plenty of time to share some more features of the new WRAL.com.

YouTube's popularity demonstrates the growing interest in user-generated video and video sharing. But the volume of clips on YouTube can be overwhelming, especially for new users. And it can be hard to find clips from people you know or who at least live in same area code.

That's one of the reasons we created a new video sharing area with WRAL.com's Entertainment section. Look for Share Video in the secondary navigation menu. We make it easy to upload, tag and share your videos. And keep an eye on the page for contests. We already have awarded an iPod to a visitor who shot, edited and uploaded high school football highlights to WRAL.com.The new site will be live in less than 24 hours, but that's plenty of time to share some more features of the new WRAL.com.

YouTube's popularity demonstrates...

The current Web site has caused some display issues for users with screen resolutions of 800x600 because it was designed to expand and contract based on the browser window. The new site has a fixed width design of about 1,000 pixels. This approach allows us to better control display of content on each page, and will eliminate the content and advertising overlap experienced by some users of the current site.

The fixed width also allows us to design pages knowing that it will look consistent in visitors' browsers regardless of their screen resolution or the size of the browser window being used to view pages.

It's now official. The launch date for the new WRAL.com will be Friday, Dec. 15. The transformation should begin in the wee hours of Friday morning as domain name servers across the Internet start pointing visitors to our new Web servers and the new design.

How did we pick Dec. 15? Friday is the 50th birthday of WRAL-TV. We thought it fitting to give a gift to the commuity that has been so kind to WRAL, WRAL.com and Capitol Broadcasting Company.