City entrepreneur creates New Britain Web site

NEW BRITAIN — If necessity is the mother of invention, then tedium and a bad economy must be close sisters.

The bad economy and slow business climate left local entrepreneur Tom Matuszewski with some time on his hands but like many creative people, he quickly put his mind back to work and came up with an idea for city residents looking for information.< /p>

“The Best of New Britain Web site came about because I was looking for some local information and couldn’t find it,” Matuszewski said.

The owner of Trydella, a Web design company at 122 Main St., Matuszewski decided city residents needed a one-stop Web site where information was free and easy to find.

After nine months of work and state-of the-art programming, he is pretty sure he has found a solution.

“My goal was to make a Web portal that was easy enough for my mother, who is in her 70s, to use comfortably,” he said.

While many new Web sites are designed to give the most possible information in what is often the most confusing manner, Matuszewski’s site at www.bestofnewbritain.com, offers simple blocks with little in the way of graphics to confuse users.

Nine blocks highlight city interests in shopping, community, local news, dining, education, things to do and kids’ corner.

Matuszewski decided to add an area where children could find and download games because of a problem at home experienced by most parents.

“My daughter kept downloading games that were infecting my home computer with viruses,” he said. “As a solution, we searched the Internet for safe and appropriate games, and added them to the Kid’s Corner section.”

While he doesn’t consider it a capital producer for his company, he has other Web design contracts that do that, he thinks it could generate a profit in the future.

“Most of the personal ads and things are free,” he said. “We do sell banner ads but they are at ridiculously low prices.”

And while the Web site has been up for just over a month, it is already generating interest in the community and even has some advertisers.

“It’s really something for the community,” Matuszewski said. He hopes to stream informative videos of local people and officials in the near future.

“I think as word gets around people will enjoy using it,” he said.

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