A new community Web portal sweeps the Lakeshore providing real time weather, news, sports, marine conditions, and live coverage of Pere Marquette Beach in Muskegon via Web cam.

The Muskegon Web development firm, Masana, launched the portal, SurfMuskegon.com, this month after heightened success of the first model, SurfGrandHaven.com. Both sites are designed to be a community focused, user-driven portal to help promote the communities to the nation and the world as well as a tool for the local community.

The SurfGrandHaven.com site finished the month of April with over 40,000 visitors.

The site provides live video feeds of the Pere Marquette beach thanks to the generosity of the City of Muskegon. The camera, provided in partnership with Earthcam.com, has 180 degree views of the entire Pere Marquette beach to the north and south and will be focused in on specific events and festivals on the beach throughout the summer. Much of the international traffic the site is experiencing is due to the exposure that is provided from Earthcam.com.

The weather data is posted live on the website and is also used by local meteorologist Will Beaton to help provide more accurate forecasts. There is a marine and outdoorsmen forecast as well.

Visitors to the site will see the content expand as new sections are launched which will provide exciting new features such as classifieds, business listings, restaurant reviews, and more. Most of the site will be enabled for ordinary users to provide their own content and commentary.

“After the amazing success of our SurfGrandHaven.com site, Will Beaton and I are extremely excited about the overall potential of the new SurfMuskegon.com," said Mitch Dennison, founder and president of Masana.

On board with SurfMuskegon.com are the City of Muskegon, the Muskegon Area Chamber of Commerce and Muskegon Main Street, who all will be provided live weather feeds from the SurfMuskegon.com site for residents and visitors to view.

Masana was founded in 2006. A Muskegon native, Dennison possesses more than 20 years' technological and entrepreneurial experience encompassing the IT, publishing, telecommunications and supply chain industries. Their expertise is in open source development with applications meant to be used through the Internet, an intranet or extranet. Masana also creates custom and packaged software systems for medium to large businesses. In addition, Masana has started internship programs with the Careerline Tech Center and Baker College and employs students from both schools as well as Muskegon Community College.