Since the launch of the Adi Da Up Close site in February, 2007,
we have greatly expanded this site!
We have added roughly 150 new pages per year, on average,
and are constantly refining the pages already on our site.
As a result, the site currently contains
pages.
The number of visitors and the response to our
site has increased greatly with the increasing breadth and
depth of its contents. We have had comments on our web pages. And, for most new devotees of Adi Da, a period of immersion in the materials on the Adi Da Up Close site has been a key component of their process of becoming a devotee.
Visitors have been sharing the pages on this
site with their Facebook friends at a rate of about 5,300 shared pages
per year:
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This includes over
views/listens of more than
video and audio clips in our Audio/Video
Library — a rate of about 291,000 views/listens per year:
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The number of contributors from whom our site
content is drawn has increased to several
hundred people. It truly is an incarnation of Adi Da's "everybody-all-at-once"!
Leela site. If you were visiting this site in 2007,
you would have mainly found leelas: stories from devotees
about Who Adi Da is and His Work of liberating all beings. We have continued
to add new leelas to this site right up to the present, and the site remains
the most comprehensive online repository for Adi Da's Divine Leela (as seen through the eyes of His devotees).
Multimedia resource. In 2009, we added an Audio/Video Library,
which reflects the increasingly multimedia nature of the Web. While the Adi Da Up Close site contains
much more than the Audio/Video Library, most people's first visit to the site is likely to be for watching
a video — after which visitors discover more videos, and then more everything (leelas, Adidam events, articles, etc.).
The Adi Da Up Close Audio/Video Library is now the most comprehensive source of Adidam-related audios and
videos on the web, currently featuring over clips, and always growing. One unique feature of the Audio/Video Library is that it draws upon over 100 different sources for the video and audio clips: from
the YouTube AdiDaVideos channel, the Dawn Horse Press, and Da Plastique, to Adidam Europe, the Florence Dance Company, to the Mormon Transhumanist Association,
the Dutch television station Ratatouille TV, and the Istituto Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence.
More recently (since 2014), we have made use of all the good work the Adidam Translation Guild has been doing to introduce
non-English video channels to our Audio/Video Library (primarily videos with subtitles):
Adidam news resource. From around 2010 on, we expanded
the site to also make it the premier online "news resource" for Adidam
and what's happening in Adidam around the world. While you can
find fragments of what is happening on various other
sites (new DVDs, CDs, and books on the Dawn
Horse Press site; news about Adi Da's Image-Art on the DaPlastique
site; new retreats in Europe at the European
Danda site; new classes at the Laughing
Man Institute site; etc.), we have re-tasked Adi Da Up Close
to be the site where you can go and find out about everything
Adidam, all in one place, and up to date. This is especially true of the Adi Da
Up Close site home page, which we intend to function something
like the front page of a newspaper, or the home page of a news website.
2. Developments in
Site Content
Since the site's launch in February, 2007, there have been many additions in site
content, including:
•
An Audio/Video
Library that now includes over
video and audio clips (from
over 100 contributors) of Adi Da talking or giving Darshan,
devotees telling stories about Adi Da, videos of Adi Da's Image-Art,
videos on Adi Da's Not-Two Is Peace, and much
more.
In addition to our Regional Events page, a Special
Events section for events that may hold a broader-than-regional
interest: workshops, retreats, exhibits of Adi Da's Image-Art,
Celebrations at The Mountain Of Attention, etc.
•
A Celebrations
section, which lists the Adidam Celebrations and their dates
this calendar year, and provides a growing number of presentations
on the various celebrations.
•
A comprehensive Adidam History database, and a "Today
in Adidam History" section (on the home page and on
its own page), generated daily from the database.
A Contributors,
Sources, and Helpers page listing the hundreds of people
whose creations and efforts we have drawn upon in creating and
evolving this site (in addition to our primary Source, Adi Da
Himself). This is truly an "everybody-all-at-once"
site!
•
An ever-growing number of entries in our glossary,
and links to individual glossary entries throughout this site,
wherever specialized terminology is used. To get the most out
of our stories and articles, please make use of these, wherever
you see a double link that looks like this!
3. Developments in Site Technology
Since the site's launch in February, 2007,
there have been many technical improvements and enhancements, including:
The site is entirely iPad-compatible. Everything now "works"
on the iPad, including audios and videos.
Adi Da Up Close regional event pages that are automatically
"in synch" with the Adidam.org event pages. For example,
here
is the Adidam.org page for events in Los Angeles, California.
And here
is the Adi Da Up Close version of the same page (which is generated
in real time from the Adidam.org version).
Adi
Da Up Close is now a secure site!
Every page you look at on the site has a web address beginning
with https: rather than http: -- the "s" stands for
secure. You can see the different web address in the address bar
of your browser. Many browsers also display an icon to the left
end of the address bar that signifies "secure page"
-- for example, a lock icon.
The addition of many features for effective search of our Audio/Video
Library, including: listing of all clips from a particular year
or poster; listings of clips by various measures of popularity
(this
week, this
month, and all
time — look at the red text on these pages); quick retrieval
of clips of frequently requested types (Adi
Da's Talks; formal
Darshan occasions; etc.); tag cloud access; and the ability
to order results by title, date added, event year, or number of
views/listens.
The addition to our Audio/Video Library of extensive support
of multi-part videos, including: links that make it easy to watch
all the parts in sequence; and a feature that displays subtitles
for the parts, so one can jump to a particular part of interest.
(Click
here for an example of such a multi-part video.)
For those interested in watching these (perhaps you're a Netflix
binge watcher, and you'd like something a little more elevated
to binge-watch than a TV series), we added an
index of multi-part video series on our site.
The extension of our Audio/Video Library's technical capability
to be able to play an increasingly broad range of videos and audios
including: YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, SoundCloud, and more.
The most recently posted clips from our Audio/Video Library
now automatically appear on our
home page.
Pictures that enlarge "in place" (instead of having
to go to a different web page).
click picture for enlargement
Videos that play "in place" (instead of having to
go to a different web page).
The ability to "like" pages on Facebook, and share
pages on Facebook and a large number of social networks.
A Facebook
Group you can join, which will post Adi Da Up Close site updates
and other goodies. Click on the Facebook icon at the bottom of
any page to get to our Facebook group page.
A Twitter
feed you can follow, which will post Adi Da Up Close site
updates and other goodies. Click on the Twitter icon at the bottom
of any page to get to our Twitter feed.
The extension of our on-site search engine to include audio/video
library clips in the results.
A much improved, multi-level drop-down menu at the top of every
page.
A "coming
events" link that identifies (by event date) and returns
audio/video clips featuring upcoming events.
An MP3 download link associated with the majority of audio clips
in our Audio/Video Library, that enables visitors to download
MP3 files to their computer, transfer MP3 files to their MP3 player,
etc.
and many more less obvious technical improvements and enhancements.
4. Upcoming Site Developments
We have many ideas and plans for "growing" this site!
Here are just a few directions:
A mobile-friendly version of this site
A subscription service, "Adi Da Up Close Today", that
sends all subscribers a daily mailing that includes such features
as: Today in Adidam History, the daily quote, Today's featured
item, and more.