By David F. Rooney
Remember that line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come?” Well, local freelance journalist Karilyn Kempton and her boyfriend Simon Wex are hoping there’s some truth to that as they launch The Stoke List, a free, you-post-it-style list of things for sale, rent or just plain free.
It’s not quite a classified advertising site; it’s more of a potpourri of items. There are listings for roommates, cars, an Inglis dryer, motorcycles, dogwalkers, even a stolen Kona Coiler mountain bike and free reptile terrariums. But it is free and it is easily accessed at http://thestoke.ca/list.
“When we came up with the idea in the winter, our roommate, John Brodie, wanted a new project and he used this as an opportunity to learn computer programming,” Kempton said in an interview.
Wex, who is chief technical officer with Zeep Mobile (http://www.zeepmobile.com), a start-up company in the United States, and Brodie worked together to build the Stoke List.
“It’s the most basic feature-set we could build,” he said. “And it’s up.”
Kempton said all the listings will be self-posted. There is a simple, handy online form you can use to put your offering up on the web. And, lest anyone worry about being spammed if they post their e-mail address, Wex said all the e-mail is filtered through Kempton’s server so nobody’s going to wake up in the morning and discover an e-mail inbox full of come-ons for Viagra, sexual prosthetics, porn or pirated software.
“It’s the same functionality you see on Craig’s List,” Wex said.
Kempton said she and Wex hope that not just Revelstokians will find the Stoke List useful.
“We’re hoping people in Golden, Salmon Arm and Vernon will use it, too,” she said. “There’s no CraigsList here. If you want it you have to go onto the CraigsList in Kelowna (if you’ve never been to a CraigsList site you can see the Kelowna one here: http://kelowna.en.craigslist.ca) or Kamloops.”
CraigsList is a free, online classified service that was started in the U.S. and has since gained phenomenal popularity across the planet. While Kempton and Wex don’t foresee that kind of fame, they do want have high hopes for the Stoke List.
“I get so many e-mails from people looking for places to stay or, say, in England, who want to move here to Revelstoke and don’t know where to look,” she said. “This will make it so easy.”
You can access the Stoke List at at http://thestoke.ca/list or via the button on the bottom right-hand side of this page.
