There's an App for That!

The Reston Association has a new website! We haven't been this excited since we bought a 300 baud modem back in 1985, and for good reason.

This redesign has been years in the making and replaces a temporary site that was built using everyone's favorite podcast sponsor and platform of choice for homemade candle vendors. Among other things, the RA added some nifty email lists, so you can be the first in your cluster to know the next time the nearest pool is closed due to "contamination." Which is great, but why stop there? With a modern website in place, our favorite homeowners' association is now poised for online domination! Once obsolete itself, just consider the other websites reston.org could now make obsolete:

eBay. People often go to desperate ends to find aging fixtures that meet their neighborhood's design standards, so providing a place where people can outbid each other for the last taupe incandescent outdoor light fixture manufactured in 1968 that hasn't been landfilled is a perfect fit.

NextDoor. All the RA has to do is add a "why is the chopper over my house" button to its site, and everyone's favorite website for cranks and busybodies will be out of business before the next flyover.

EHarmony/Tinder/Grindr, etc. It's hard to find that someone special, and especially so in a suburban plastic fantastic planned community, so why not add a personals section for people seeking companions whose favorite color is (harvest) brown, love pickleball and long walks around manmade lakes, and aren't afraid to cry when their assessment comes in the mail?

X/Twitter/Whatever: Bringing Elon on board could get us a wedge-shaped, stainless steel Nature Center whose front door only opens with an app.

America Online. Originally founded just down the road in Vienna, but like so many people in our area, AOL "graduated" to Loudoun County before becoming irrelevant. So why not use whatever's left in the IT budget to bring it back? Instead of the tinny "you've got mail" message, we could all open our laptops to hear "your carport's been cited!"

TikTok: We don't watch the RA meeting livestreams, but we definitely would if they were 45 seconds long and featured dancing board members.

Restonian.org. Big companies often buy similar-sounding domain names for big bucks. Not saying nothing, but our assessment's going to be due in about six months and we could use a little extra cash, the end.

This post was originally published in the Reston Letter.