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What's new Flag ? |
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What's new Flag ? |
What do you mean Flag? Well... here it is:
October 2001 - firstcontact.com domain name is sold and the site is closing...
Please take note that the domain name FIRSTCONTACT.COM was sold this month. We are now in the process of transferring the TRIBUTE TO GILLES portion of the site to the Gilles Villeneuve Museum web site. As the site was put on the back burner last year, the remaining of the site is not affected. We wish to thank all fans that visited this site since its opening in December of 1995 and we invite you to visit : www.villeneuve.com
September 10, 2000 - We are placing this site on the back burner...
We finally realized that it became impossible to continue maintain this site as we have so many other important sites that require daily maintenance. Our racers sites as Jacques Villeneuve OFFICIAL web site, Patrick Carpentier and Gilles Villeneuve Museum web site did not exist when we created firstcontact.com back in 1996. Now that we have added responsabilities, we must come to the decision to put this one on the back burner for good. We simply do not have any need or time to maintain it. We will leave it as a reference on the Flagworld server and we will try to find a new vocation for the firstcontact domain name early next year. We wish to thank all the visitors that have been coming here since the opening of this, our very first web site.
November 2 - We may just close this site at the end of this season...
Even if this site was the very first we put on the net back in december 1995 to salute our friend Gilles Villeneuve with a tribute, next month could very well be the end of it as we know it today. Traffic is down, we have many other sites that we have to maintain and time is so precious. We will possibly transfer the Tribute to Gilles into the Villeneuve Museum web site and use this domain name for other needs.
We have new ideas we are wotking on now and this domain name may just be the perfect name for that... We'll see...
September 1, 1999 - We apology for lateness to update this site...
Sometime we wish each day of each week would have 30 hours. In the past couple of months we've been so buzy launching our new Agence d'Informations Flagworld that we have neglected updates in this site. It is hard to do everything , specially during summer when our racing schedule is very buzy. We will try to do much better as of now...
May 8, 1999 - Time to talk "Grand Prix du Canada 1999"
Yes! We are proud to report that Flagworld Communications Inc. is once again going to have a special report on the 1999 edition of the Canadian Grand Prix for ACIND (Auto Club Ile Notre-Dame). We will bring you our daily report direct from the l'Ile Notre-Dame site at le Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. We invite you to see our 1998 report to have an idea of things to come.
We are also very proud to introduce our francophone visitors to our new challenge for 1999. A brand new Agence de Nouvelles that is known as : Agence d'Informations Flagworld.
The Agence brings you daily news on the racing world and much more...(In FRENCH only at this time).
January 3 1999
First let us wish you a great racing season for 1999. Jacques Villeneuve is joining his friend Craig Pollock with the new BAR Team along with young Ricardo Zonta. This should make for a great 1999 season as far as we are concerned with JV's web site. On America side, Patrick Carpentier has been confirmed for another season with Players. We still dont know at this time if our good friend Bertrand Godin will participate in the F-3000 championship, renamed F1-Junior Championship by FIA authorities, but we know that "Bert" is becoming a precious collaborator in some new projects we are working on for the new year.
As for Bruno St-Jacques, no news is good news with him. We invite you to connect to his web site for more info about his projects for 1999. Our younger friend Olivier Lambert whom we are very proud of his realisation in 1998, will pursue his training career in F-A next season and he is getting closer to his F-1600 dream every season he grabs every championship he participates in. His web site, that we maintain, has been totally revamped for 1999 and we are very proud of our working relationship with Raymond and Olivier Lambert. Thank you "DanFlag" for the work in Olivier's web site.
We will try in 1999 to be sharper with our updates in this section of FirstContact.com but our new projects are keeping us buzy at this time... Happy New Year to all our visitors and friends...
November 29 - Sorry for lack of updates!
It has been a very busy racing season for us at Flagworld with new sites to construct, maintain and host! We have neglected some sections of our older sites, like this one in particular. What we need is more collaborators or simply days that would have 30 hours in weeks of nine days! We obviously have to make hard choices next year on features we will keep and others we will have to drop. We take this opportunity to thank all our visitors in 1998 and we will inform you of our plans sometime in December about the new features for 1999. :-) Flag
March 21 1998 - The Villeneuve Guestbook reopens with success...
When we had to close the Villeneuve guestbook due to abuse from some visitors, we received hundreds of messages form TRUE fans asking -BEGGING- us to reconsider this decision. We did for the sake of true fans who missed the possibility to put their messages to Jacques and to meet friends to communicate with. We completely rewrote the programmation of the guestbook to add security to it and assure an easier maintenance for our staff...On the second day after reopeneing, 325 visitors read the guestbook and more than 50 new messges were posted. WE invite one and all to visit the new version!
March 6 1998 - Bertrand Godin has a new ride in sight and a new look for his web site...
One of our friend announced today in Montreal thet he will race in the European F-3000 series. Bertrand Godin's site is getting a facelift to mark the occasion, check it out...
February 4 1998 - A new tribute to Gilles by Roy Glikin...
We are very happy to report that following an exchange of communication with the "famous" Roy Glikin, well known on the NET for his Plums, Cookies and Raspberries, we have posted today a brand new tribute to the late Gilles Villeneuve called "This close to Gilles". We hope you will enjoy reading Roy as much as we did. We also recommend a visit to his web site to read his material, it is simply outstanding writing...
January 16 1998 - The Villeneuve Boutique is doing fine...
After two and half months of operation, the Internet Villeneuve Boutique is doing fine with sales of more than $5000.00 in more than 10 different countries. Some of the most popular articles are sold out at this time and replenishment is underway from suppliers in Europe and elsewhere. New items celebrating Jacques Villeneuve 1997 F-1 Championship are also in preparation and the boutique will have them as soon as available...We will keep you informed as they are in stock!
More than 22,000 visitors came to the Gilles Villeneuve Museum located in Berthierville in 1997. The best year ever for the Museum!
November 1 - The VILLENEUVE BOUTIQUE is now open and doing fine...
We are very happy to report that the Villeneuve Boutique has been opened for more than a week now and that we are very optimist about its success on the WEB. In the first week the orders for souvenirs from all over the world came in at a steady pace and the program was solid. The Museum who is sponsoring this idea is very happy with the way things are going...
The Banquet is sold out! More than 160 guests paid $100.00 for a ticket to assist to the Banquet at John Molson Room on november 11, 1997. It is very nice to see that Gilles Villeneuve Museum still has many friends who are willing to help by participating in our yearly event.
It is incredible what Jacques Villeneuve recent Championship is doing to our sites. The traffic in the past week is simply incredible, even causing us some sort of headache. The Guestbook could not take the heavy traffic last weekend and blew up. We are in the process of rewriting the script to make it safer and more solid...
October 5 - We are preparing the Banquet and already thinking golf for 1998...
It has been a very busy summer for Flagworld team. The golf tournement in June, a lot of travelling to the races and our special report of the Canadian Grand Prix the same week in June also, Toronto Molson Indy with Patrick Carpentier in July and much more. It is now time to work on the Gilles Villeneuve Museum Annual Banquet that will be held on November 11, 1997 at the John Molson Room at the Molson Brewery in Montreal. This year it was decided to salute the great season that our friends Bertrand Godin and Alexandre Tagliani had with Team Players-Forsythe by having them as Honorary Co-President of the Banquet. Complete details will be available soon and we will keep you informed in the Museum site at the special Banquet page.
Flagworld will repeat the experience of 1997 next June 2, 1998 with the organisation of the second annual golf tournement.
September 30 - VILLENEUVE Boutique is under construction...
We had been talking about it for months, trying to find the best approach to reach fans of the Villeneuve who are sending the Museum or Flagworld messages about where they can buy merchandise and souvenirs about Gilles, the Museum or Jacques Villeneuve. At the last C.A. of the Museum, it was proposed and accepted to give Flagworld the mandate to put together a Virtual Boutique (shopping cart). We asked our friend Louise Murray, a collaborator at Flagworld to look into the project and see the feasability. The young lady got back to us with an excellent proposal and a work schedule that was accepted.
We met with Alain Bellehumeur the dedicated general manager of the Museum to select the first group of items to place in the BOUTIQUE. WE took the pictures and are working hard on the code to bring you the Boutique in time for some XMAS gifts to Villeneuve fans and friends. Check for grand opening around mid-October....
Here is a "teaser" of some of the articles that will be part of the Villeneuve-Boutique....at opening time...New articles will be added regularly and we are planning to offer a monthly special every month starting in early 1998.
August 19 - A very early picture of Gilles Villeneuve in his first open wheel racing car...
Today, we are introducing a picture that was taken very early in Gilles Villeneuve's career. We had the pleasure to meet an old friend of Gilles last weekend in the person of Mr. Jean-Pierre St-Jacques builder of the F-1600 "Magnum" in which Gilles really started his career. Mr.St-Jacques will share some of his early experiences and anecdotes with Flagworld and FirstContact that we will post here for your pleasure in the next few weeks...Notice the lack of sponsor on the helmet...
Merci Jean-Pierre St-Jacques for sharing this souvenir...
August 4 - A couple of new sites to be part of flagworld "ever growing" family of racing related sites...SOON!
We never stop, we cant stop! It seems that the more we say we have enough on our plate, the more interesting contacts we make and at the moment they find out who we are and what we are doing for Jacques, Patrick, Bertrand and others, they are proposing us more work. Sometime it is easy to reply by a simple polite: No Thank You! But other times it is almost impossible to pass. We simply love what we are doing and it is like a formula car front wheel, once it has started to roll it is hard to stop! It needs the best brakes and we still cant afford the best brakes yet down here! We are working on three more new sites that should be live on the NET before the end of August or no later than early September. For now, check this one out:
Dario Franchitti@Flagworld.com
It is a non-official site for the benefit of Dario's fans on the Net. We will maintain this one starting now! Hope you will enjoy!
July 25 - Numerous double-headers in "open wheel" racing are keeping Flagworld Team very busy...
It seems that when you accept the mandate to follow the performances of one elite racer from Quebec in each of the three main series, F-1, CART and Atlantic, you are in for a lot of work. Some of the reports we have posted recently are proof of that. Our Grand Prix Players of Montreal special report was one of the most important of 1997, than it was Toronto Molson Indy to cover Bertrand and Patrick! This coming weekend is another double-header with Jacques Villeneuve racing in Germany and Patrick in Michigan. Ouf! We are dreaming of a white X-MAS when everything is quiet and racers are on break.It is a hot summer for us to this date...
June 9 - We are playing golf tomorrow and getting ready for "Le Grand Prix Player`s du Canada, this week-end."
You would not believe I am on vacation, if you could see all the work and maintenance of our suite of web sites. It is totally incredible...And the first annual Gilles Villeneuve Museum golf tournement tomorrow in Berthierville is almost a sell-out...More than 120 golfers and friends of Gilles will gather on the links of Berthier to salute our friend. We are also working very hard on our special race report of this year`s race in l'Ile Notre-Dame at Le Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. We also do daily maintenance on Patrick Carpentier web site as we do for our Villeneuve and Bertrand Godin sites. What more do you expect from Flagworld , we are only humans after all...Almost forgot! This one is also open by now...in french for now, soon available in english...there are 27 hours a day...9 days a week!
May 15 - A new site for Automobile Club Ile Notre-Dame soon linked here...
Flagworld Communications inc. is working with some of the officers of the Automobile Club Ile Notre Dame (ACIND) to bring you a brand new site about the Club. The french version of the site is only days away from being ready to open. It will be part of the Flagworld suite of race related sites. We are proud to have been selected by the Automobile Club for the construction and maintenance of their official site. Race fans will love the exclusive information the site will offer...We will get to work on the english version as soon as we are done with the french section...come back soon for more...
May 11 - The new JOURNAL is under construction:
We are in the process of reorganizing the NEWS section of our sites. At Flagworld the only thing that does not change is change itself. In the new version, firstcontact.com (What's new Flag?) will be part of the Journal. Check it out .It will open around June 1st.
May 9 - The spirit of the father by Sarah Dillon:
Last May 8, was a sad anniversary for Gilles Villeneuve fans everywhere on the planet. Sarah Dillon has put in words what many are thinking about our lost friend.
1st Anniversary Update
We did it! We now enjoy our new permanent logo. We had on our mind for a few months to revamp our FirstContact entrance page to reflect the vocation of the site with a more modern look. Here is is just in time for the first anniversary of the site on December 22. Yes, it has been a year already and it flew so fast with the addition of the Villeneuve master site who received your approval with more than 1,100,000 hits in its first 10 months. We did not have time to do everything we had set our mind to do here but everything we did is not bad after all! FirstContact received more than 116,000 visits in 1996.
Now what will we do to make this site even better in 1997 is still on the drawing board but the team at Flagworld has great new stuff in store for this site next year. We will be adding more information about Gilles career and most probably realize the translation of the tribute to Gilles in french for all his francophone fans.
There is so much to maintain also for the Gilles Villeneuve Museum site that we will have to work very hard on our priority list, specially next year, the 15th anniversary of our friend great lost.
There is also his now "famous son", the Rising Star of Formula One Jacques Villeneuve who has become another one of our sites during the past year that is taking a lot of our maintenance time. Well worth the effort with almost 400,000 visitors to date. Jacques will still race for Rothmans Williams Renault in 1997 and is a very serious candidate for the Championship.
We also introduced a site dedicated to all Villeneuve fans who wish to leave messages to the Museum or Jacques. The Villeneuve Guestbook enjoyed more than 840 visitors who left messages in the first 6 months of its operation.
1997 looks great for FirstContact with all our new projects. We hope that you will continue enjoying and coming back regularly and wish you the best for the upcoming Holiday Season! Please if you drink, dont drive please...
Have a very fine day!
Flag
- Past articles:
- Jacques Villeneuve, first Canadian winner of an Indy race!
- A lot of renewed enthousiasm about Villeneuve!
- Spring is just around the corner.
- Two Great New Places to "Go To"
- What a trip?
- How far will the NET take us, at what speed?
- Flag's cyberspace discovery
