Some chanukah related updates to get in the Chanukah mood

It's the Chanukah season! You can see it around the site as some Chanukah banners were put up on the right side of the home page, on the left side of many pages, and in the center of the top toolbar site-wide.

So in case you haven't yet: Check out the Chanukah site!

Oh: and it won't hurt to send out your chanukah cards early this year. Chunukah E-cards, that is.

Lights... Latkes.... Action!

The latest entry in the Itche Kadoozy repertoire is a Chanukah Short, a two minute video featuring the Itche Kadoozy cast, Rabbi, Jono and G-fish, opining what their favorite part of chanukah is.

It's a very cute film and, aside for it's humor value, acts as a lead-in to Chanukah.org, Chabad.org's premiere Chanukah website.

You may have gotten this by email, or will get it soon. If you do, be sure to forward it to your friends!

New Chanukah for Kids Home Page

Click your way through to the new home page for the Chanukah section in the Kids site. It's got all the chanukah content Chabad.org has to offer to kids, organized in a fun layout.

Check back there for more updated content as we get closer to chanukah.

New! Shabbat and Holiday Times via SMS

Check this out! You can now get your local Shabbat and Holidays times sent as a text message to your cellphone, wireless-enabled PDA, Blackberry, email, and more!

Never again ask, "What time does Shabbat come in today?". At a predefined time, an alert will come to your mobile device with the upcoming candle-lighting time. Cool, eh? And best of all - it's FREE. Everyone loves that....

Just login to your MyChabad.org account and begin setting up your alerts!

New Video: Eli's Kosher Kitchen

A new video has been added the expanding Chanukah Videos collection: Eli's Kosher Kitchen - Chanukah Cooking: Donuts and Latkas.

Join Eli as he prepares some Chanukah favorites with his Bubby. Thanks to Tzivos Hashem for making this video available.

Itche Kadoozy is Back!

For those of you who thought the Parshah Report finale was the end of Itche Kadoozy - I have some great news! Itche Kadoozy is back with a new Chanukah mini-series!

This will be a two or three part series. The episodes are longer, and include many new characters.

Enjoy it right here!

Thanksgiving: The Jewish Perspective

So today is Thanksgiving. It's not a Jewish holiday per se, yet its theme is a Jewish theme: giving thanks to the One above.

What are some parallels to Jewish mitzvahs of thanksgiving? What can we learn from Judaism to help understand what the true expression of thankfulness really is?

Check it out in Thanksgiving: The Jewish Perspective.

Shluchim Convention in the Media

This past week's Shluchim Convention in Brooklyn generated lots of media attention, with reports from the AP, Reuters, JTA, Ynet and more.

There are photos from the group picture and small town papers reporting on their local rabbi.

Check it out at the Chabad-Lubavitch in the Media section.

Chanukah, here we come!

Next stop: Chanukah!

With Chanukah around the corner, all focus is on the Chanukah site now with its increased traffic.

An upgrade made this morning to tie the site closer together to the general Chabad.org site was to add the global top bar to the Chanukah site which includes the main system links, login information and search and subscribe fields.

By the way, did you know that you can access the Chanukah site via www.chanukah.org? :)

Live Broadcast

It' a been a bit busy with the current conference of Chabad Shluchim from all over the world, so there has not been much time to post.

Check out the live broadcast later today of the banquent, which is the climax of the convention as 3,300 people (shluchim and lay leaders) gather to be thankful of the past, make plans for the future, and just be proud of what they do.

Pictures of Chabad.org at the GA

Check out these pics of the Chabad.org booth at the GA in LA:

Upgrade to TheRebbe.org

A small but significant upgrade has been done to the TheRebbe.org. The site is now included in the general site layout like the rest of Chabad.org, retaiming the left navigation and headers so that you can continue to browse the rest of the Chabad.org sections.

This trend follows the integration of www.Passover.org, VirtualShavuot.org, and other sections.

You will also notice a lot more branding of Jewish Educational Media in TheRebbe.org, which reflects new content being added there from JEM.

By the way, check out one of the highlights of the site: The Timeline Biography...

New "Torah & Science" section

Check out a new section on our site called "Torah & Science", a collection of articles, some new and some from the archives, "exploring the interplay between faith and logic, religion and critical thinking, tradition and technology".

Glancing at the authors you can see rabbis, professors, laymen and scholars all giving their ideas...

So how old is the world again?

Exciting Changes to the Kids Site!

After less than a year since the initial launch of the Kids Zone on Chabad.org, the next phase of the Kids Zone has just been released that brings with it some major updates: New design, better organized, easier to highlight current features, and most of all better usability for kids by limiting navigational elements. Check out the main home page flash feature, it's quite cool!

Also updated here it a change to how video is displayed. Instead of a popup, the video now loads in the page itself. This prevents popup-blocker issues, and allows us to display more content on the page, like comments. The plan is to change video to play like this throughout the site...

You can also look forward to a lot of new content being added soon to the Chanukah section as the folks from Tzivos Hashem pool their resources into this area.

Do you like the new design and layout? Let us know.

Upcoming election lessons

With a major election happening tomorrow all over the US, Rabbi Rice brings us a piece on all the negative ads that lead up to the election. Why do we have to focus on the negative side of the opposing candidate? Can't we bring out the positive qualities of ourselves? Words can have a great impact, and we should use them wisely.

Read more in "Don't Vote For Him".

Start Itche Kadoozy from the Beginning

With the current Itche Kadoozy Show drought still in effect, I'd like to point out that this week being Parshat Vayeirah marks the anniversary of the first Itche Kadoozy Parshah Report.

Watch it here, or view the index here.

It's a noticably different style than the last shows, with the news ticker and all. They are still funny to watch all over again.

Chabad.org at the UJC General Assembly

For the first time ever, Chabad.org will be having a booth as an exibitor at the UJC General Assembly to be held next week in LA.

The booth will focus on highlighting Chabad.org's offerings in terms of Jewish online learning resources and wizards, and its Internet-based tools.

If you are going to the convention, please stop by!

MyChabad.org Login open again

So the site and the new database server seem to be performing much better after some maintainance last night. We opened up the MyChabad.org login system now you can take advantage of all the features it offers.

If performance degrades again we may move again to another server so if can be up and down. You will also find that some things may be a bit lagging, like the latest reader comments on popular articles...

We are monitoring this very closely, and are making sure the site is as fast as can be.

Oh, and thanks to that "anonomous" commen about the hanukkah not coming up as a suggestion. It has been added and should show up in the next keyword update.