Milt Capps checks in with an update on Bruce Dobie's efforts to build his Eviesays event listing service. Now helping that endeavor is Forrest Shoaf, a veteran of the local finance scene and most recently CFO at Cracker Barrel Old Country Store. Shoaf has invested in Eviesays parent Dobie Media, which will soon launch a formal funding round.

Dobie Media's eviesays event calendar platform has landed Cablevision's News 12 Networks as a client.

The agreement means that the News 12 Network stations, clustered in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, will adopt the eviesays calendar technology at their websites. The calendars, which will be privately branded to have the look and feel of the News 12 Network stations, will enable visitors to find, browse, and interact with the hundreds of thousands of event listings nationwide residing at the eviesays.com website.

Event listing company eviesays announced yesterday that it has landed a new contract in Virginia, where The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co. will use the local venture's search engine for event and entertainment listings and online event and entertainment calendars.

The eviesays platform will allow users to export their favorite listings to their personal calendar software, e-mail listings to friends, and get directions from Google Maps to events. Visitors to the site will also be able to submit their own listings via an on-line submissions form to the website.

“The executives at Free Lance-Star Publishing appreciate how important this calendar technology is to local audiences,” said Bruce Dobie, President and CEO of Dobie Media Inc., parent company of eviesays. “Everyone wants to know what’s going on around them. The eviesays calendar provides users with the who, what, when, and where of local events.”

The calendar also allows both the newspaper and website to sell premier sponsorship opportunities to local advertisers that will appear immediately beneath the calendar and on numerous search result pages.

Bruce Dobie's Eviesays calendar listing venture will next week launch Event of the Day, a service that promises to send out daily emails shining the light on Nashville events "ranging from the civilized and cultural to the off-beat and underpublicized." Other cities are likely to follow.

SEE ALSO: Our past Eviesays coverage