2006 was a pretty good year for Overheard in Pittsburgh: We posted nearly 500 entries, we graduated to a better site, several publications wrote about OIP, and Pittsburgh’s especially awesome bloggers extended their goodwill. I accepted an award awkwardly in a room full of people who were either cooler or much richer than me, and I stood out like a sore thumb at Blogfest 5, where people were very nice. Oh, and a Suicide Girl linked to Overheard in Pittsburgh in her blog, which makes me consider whether I am, in fact, a CoolDude™.
Readers e-mailed just to tell me they liked the site, and more than I might have expected wrote to share interesting things they saw or heard, even though they figured I couldn’t use it: stories from other cities, from when they were in college, just because they thought I’d appreciate it. A high school friend found me because of Overheard in Pittsburgh, and when she visited Pittsburgh for a recent football game, she paid special attention to the people around her so she could submit something. A few readers wrote to tell me that Overheard in Pittsburgh calmed their homesickness, and one Australian reader told me that she had spread her enjoyment of the site to her friends in Brisbane.
Oh, and regular contributors Tia and Sophie, who have both provided us with lots of great material, both graduated from Pitt in December. Congratulations to both.

It won’t be easy to beat 2006, but I’ve been hearing great things about 2007: Supposedly, every schoolchild will eat Lunchables™ when they want, everyone’s love will be returned, and a new theatrical Care Bears movie will premiere. Like the year before it, 2007 will have a summer, but this one is supposed to be even sexier — and not in that shallow E! Entertainment Television way.

When I created the new site, I set the comments to require a simple registration in the hope that commenters might be more of a fixture on the site, and I felt their signing their comments with whatever name they choose would be a step in that direction. Unfortunately, comments have been pretty thing since the new site’s inception, so I’m going to remove the requirement.

For the record, registation is only for this site; Wordpress is the software Overheard in Pittsburgh runs on. No one, not even me, sees your password. Although anyone can now post comments freely, I encourage frequent commenters to register so they can enjoy mild celebrity, plug their Web site, and engage in witty repartee with one another.

So, leave a comment: How else could Overhead in Pittsburgh improve? What would you like to stay the same?