Dear Mr. Charles Paparella, We were incredibly (understandably, predictably) displeased with your demeaning piece, Spam on the Beach in the Shore Journal. We were rather taken aback by the negative opinions you expressed. However, we here at the Resort Guide remain proud of our accomplishments; your bitter editorial serves only to fuel the fire that warms our continuing success. We would like to illuminate several bits of information that you may have not been aware of at the time, or perhaps intentionally overlooked in your article First and foremost, we wish to dispute the slanderous statement that the web pages upon our site were improperly marketed to promote "the menu magazine." In fact, these pages were constructed to aid, publicize, make evident, as well as benefit the beautiful resort town of Ocean City. We would assume that you, an Eastern Shore resident, would be impressed and delighted in the amazing amounts of time and effort that are involved in putting together a site of our size. However, in your article it seems as if you are attempting to say that we have selfishly seized the Internet in order to "aggressively" consume the advertising market. Also in your extremely negative editorial, you expressed the concern that the search engines brought up only our site. We at the office of Resort Guide find it unfortunate that the search engines such as Web Crawler are unable to locate information or pages provided by the Chamber of Commerce, but do locate a multitude of pages created by our staff. If the Chamber of Commerce is so "frantically" concerned about their poor exposure on the web, may we suggest employing a specialist in this field to ensure that their information is found. In addition, the Chambers' function is not to compete with its members for cyberspace exposure, but rather to assist in any way possible. The tone of Spam on the Beach insinuates that this organization is genuinely displeased with Ocean City's exposure on the internet, contrary to their own charter and purpose for existence! Regarding your nonsensical comment that the Resort Guide (not Menumag) consists only of an extraneous or extraordinary amount of menus, we would suggest that your misinterpretation is due to lack of research, interest or genuine concern regarding our vast display of other pages. Though we have incorporated a selection of menus, the menus displayed at this site are menus that restaurant owners have chosen to display to attract new customers to their place of business. If not to solicit customers, then please explain why any business owner would want to spend their valuable marketing dollars building a store front on the world wide web. Resort Guide, or as those of us who remain oblivious to fact refer to it, "menu mag" not only displays menus, but are the first to provide viewers with factual and helpful information dealing with Ocean City as a community as well as a vacation resort. We remain the only Ocean City web site to provide local information such as transportation, area churches, Ocean City's Calendar of Events, as well as a great many pages dealing with our Beach Patrol, Police Department, and Parks and Recreation. We also include pages for Eagles Landing Golf Course (and their environment al awards), Assateague Island, Green Turtle Lacrosse (benefiting the youth of our community) and others too numerous to note. The "lousy photograph" which you refer to in your article happens to be an exerpt from a slide show illustrating the splendor of Ocean City's boardwalk, a primary destination for vacationers. Instead of focusing your time and effort on bashing our production, and sitting idly waiting for us to eventually "blow up" perhaps you should consider commending our city's #1 web site for a job well done. Because you are not only a writer for the Shore Journal, but an employee of ICNet as well, we would assume that you would recognize the well-known fact that every customer of Resort Guide is a potential customer for your business as well. As for your conspicuous effort to demean one of our "uncivic-minded" customers (in common!), we would like to meet one business owner who would not be pleased with the amount of exposure our company provides. Our team is always considering ways to improve and to better serve our customers and visitors to our site on the World Wide Web. And "a pimple on anyone's butt" may not refer to the Resort Guide's view of Ocean City, but rather to the sort of aggravation that occurs after one has wrongfully been portrayed by a writer under the influence of a jealous temper tantrum! Mr. Caparella, a friendly suggestion: Slander can only result in troubles down the road, and embarrassment when light is shed on the truth of the matter. You are a wonderful journalist and writer. Save the hot headedness and scalding terminology for a cause that deserves the fury of your rage, and let's spare the customers, OK? "COME ON FELLAS..." Sincerely, The Staff and Management at Resort Guide