You may have heard of Freecycle, but like us may not have known how to get involved locally. Portsmouth Freegle (Free Giving, Locally and Easily) is a local community recycling group - and is part of the UK based Freegle Network. You join if you have an item that you no longer want but that still has life left in it and which can be used by someone else. You send in your offer and other members of the group request it. After an exchange of emails you choose a recipient and they come and collect the item. All items have to be free and legal.
You can find your local group at www.ilovefreegle.org or go to the Portsmouth group at http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/Portsmouth_Freegle
 

And if you hadn't already noticed there's a new(ish) local radio station on the air. Welcome to ExpressFM on 93.7. Broadcasting from facilities provided by Portsmouth University and with a strong community feel to it's schedules it's no surprise to see a lengthy list of heavyweight partners backing ExpressFM to succeed. For a quick sample go to www.expressfm.com/ and listen in now.
 

For those of you not already aware, the InPortsmouth and InSouthsea websites are but the most prominent tip of a growing stable of sites produced by Community Internet Services. The company set out in 1998 to create a local Portsmouth community of sites on the net and has now reached the sum of 40 local sites. InPortsmouth remains as our flagship but, as ever, we are aware that it is continually going out of date. We apologise if this has caused any inconvenience. We review of our listings on a regular basis, but some sections may be a couple of years old. Its not too difficult to weed out the obsolete references but we still need to know of new businesses opening in their place.
 

In common with many of our fellow website designers we are certainly feeling the effects of the financial downturn. But no matter how bad it becomes we will not allow it to affect the services we bring to you via the InPortsmouth and InSouthsea websites. In fact we look on this as a time to build up the non-profit making websites we run, most notably our History in Portsmouth and Memorials in Portsmouth websites. In other areas we have recently revamped two sites for the City Council's Health Improvement & Development Services and are continuing to develop sites for Albert Road Traders and Portsmouth & Southsea Hoteliers.
 
One of the ongoing projects that has given us most satisfaction is our work with the various Mental Health organisations in Portsmouth which is expressed through the thinkingAHEAD website which has recently had a thorough makeover. Through building this site we have been able to watch the Mental Health Services at work and we're rather impressed by the support that is currently offered people with mental heath problems.