BoxCar Media launches iberkshires.com network of websites for each Berkshire community

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BoxCar Media, a website development and multi-media production company, announced Nov. 15 the launch of iBerkshires.com, a new website to serve Berkshire County. The iBerkshires.com network of community websites will offer each of the 32 cities and towns of the Berkshires their very own website. Each community Website will include up-to-date local news, events, business news, sports, and a comprehensive listing of local businesses, all categorized and searchable. The user can concentrate upon information on just one town in the Berkshires, and/or the whole county. Other features are aimed to help those interested in visiting the area. The Advocate has been providing news and other content for several months to the company’s Northadams.com and Williamstown.com websites and will provide this content for iBerkshires.com as well. BoxCar also will run press releases from local organizations and generate a number of its own informational features, as it has with the two original community websites. Through the use of a dynamically driven database that covers the entire Berkshires, each community site draws information relative to its specific geographic area. This insures that when you look at your town page you will find local news, events, and business links first. More articles and information for the entire county are available. The site will also contain a searchable archive to find past articles and press releases. The iBerkshires.com site is designed to be interactive and will encourage community input. Individuals can cast their votes in a variety of polls, make comments, submit press releases, forward stories to others, join class reunions, or sign up for the iBerkshires weekly e-mail newsletter. “The iBerkshires.com site is designed to be a part of the community, responding to and fulfilling the interests of Berkshire County residents,” said Ozzie Alvarez, president and CEO of BoxCar. For area businesses, the iBerkshires.com network offers marketing packages that include subject-specific targeted advertising, customizable mini web pages called StoreFronts, direct email, coupon offers, and more. Also offered is the Web Page Publishing Tool. When this tool is applied to iBerkshires StoreFront pages, it allows a business owner to make changes to his web page, such as announcing a sale, whenever he wants and instantly post it on the Internet. Other coming innovations are real estate and auto listings with 360-degree views, virtual tours of scenic locations and streaming media coverage of community events. In addition to providing a community site for residents, iBerkshires.com also intends to be a welcome center for visitors. The Visitors’ Center offers feature stories on art, music, theater, and recreational opportunities throughout the Berkshires. Each community will contain a growing directory of lodging, dining, recreation, arts, and events listings specific to that area. A visitor will first be offered information for the town where they are staying and can then search the surrounding communities or the entire Berkshires region for attractions or events that meet their interests. A work in progress “This is a work in progress,” Alvarez said while showing a reporter a preview of the site last week. “There are going to be a lot of changes to the site as we continue to grow.” Other features include the ability to personalize the site. For instance, you can adjust the site so that only one town will show up and you are only offered the features or links you are interested in. One can also add one’s own links to other websites outside of the Berkshire County area. “We’re trying to be a portal, which is a source for everyone within the community, for travel and tourism and tourists to come to, and to find everything that they need,” Alvarez said. “You can go off into the World Wide Web and find anything you want and use it in any way that you want.” Alvarez said that part of BoxCar Media is focused on what they call “Web video development.” On the site for each community there will be 360-degree video views of downtowns and other features. “You’re going to be able interactively take a look around your community,” Alvarez said. “This technology is going to allow us to bring everybody closer together.” Alvarez and the company’s director of web design, Ryan Maturski, showed a 360-video on the Website of MASS MoCA and downtown North Adams and another video of a more rural part of North Adams, seen from “Coca Cola Ledge” — high above Route 8. “Look at this. I mean, it just shows you the beauty of the Berkshires and the mountains, everything,” said Alvarez. “It’s incredible. “Instead of just hearing what people are telling you, you can go and see it, and actually get excited about coming here,” he said. “And that’s what we want to create, we want to take all of these technology tools that are available to us and really use them. “We don’t think that anybody has used a lot of the technology that we are going to be using with this site locally to really promote the companies here, to promote the communities that are here and, just as importantly, to promote tourism,” Alvarez said. A new venture Alvarez, who grew up in North Adams, cofounded Publications Resource Group (PRG) — now MindBranch — in 1992. This company is planning to move into the renovated former Roberts Co. building. In August, Alvarez stepped down as president and CEO of MindBranch to become chairman of that company’s board and to launch BoxCar Media, which is located at the Windsor Mill in North Adams. Alvarez had developed the Northadams.com and Williamstown.com websites while at PRG. “What I find exciting is working on start-up companies, building something from nothing,” he said. “It really excites me to be able to do this for Berkshire County and to create a whole new business from it.” BoxCar now has 15 employees, and some part-time free-lancers. He sees the company eventually employing 25 to 30 employees in the next year or two, with many free-lancers in addition, he said. What does he see as the mission of BoxCar Media? “I look at BoxCar as a think tank. BoxCar to me is taking what we know about technology now and trying to hit that cutting edge of technology continually, not being stagnant, using the things that everybody else uses,” he said. “I want to be able to take what we know about the Internet, the expertise that we gained in building MindBranch, add some creative aspects to it with the whole Web development portion, and see what we can come up with.” “I tell these guys in here, just keep trying different things. I don’t really care how many times we fail at something,” Alvarez said. “Eventually we’re going to hit upon something that’s incredible, that not only we can use here with iBerkshires, that we can possibly use nationally or internationally. “Not that that’s our goal, but I just have a feeling that if you have a lot of very good, creative people together in one company and you figure out a way to energize these people, to make them enthusiastic about what they’re doing, that something good is going to happen.”
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Jillian Tatro's Killer Guilty of First-Degree Murder

Staff Reports

Jillian Tatro
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A Berkshire County jury on Tuesday returned a verdict of guilty in the murder of Jillian Tatro four years ago. 
 
Luis Rosado, 53, was found guilty of murder in the first degree with extreme atrocity for stabbing his 38-year-old wife to death in an apartment they shared at 46 Charles St. on May 28, 2022.
 
He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
 
In a statement, Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said his thoughts were with Tatro's family and that her son "demonstrated tremendous poise and courage during his testimony in the trial."
 
"Ms. Tatro was a victim of domestic violence. The most dangerous time in a victim of domestic violence life is when they are prepared to leave," he said. "We know that Jillian was planning to leave on the Tuesday following her murder. Her death is a tragic example of lethal consequence of domestic violence and the lasting impact these crimes have on families and communities."
 
He and Tatro had been married five months and during that time, Tatro had sought a restraining order against her husband.
 
Rosado had been convicted of domestic violence on another individual in October 2020. At the time, he was charged with three counts of assault and battery on a household member, strangulation and larceny and was sentenced to a minimum of a year in the Berkshire County House of Corrections.
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