I was checking The Sandbar's Facebook page the other day, going through the friend requests, when one of them caught my eye. First, there were no "mutual friends," which I thought was odd, because usually the friend requests tend to come from someone who's already friends with eight of our friends.

The other odd thing was the name- it sounded more like a business than a person, and a business I'd never heard of. My first thought was that it was one of those entertainment/promotion companies that seem to have overtaken MySpace with their spammy bulletins. I hesitated to approve the friend request (sorry, Tim, if you're reading this!) because I didn't want to turn the Facebook page into a place for other companies to constantly try to promote another bar or event.

In the end, though, I approved the person. And now I'm glad I did- almost immediately, a link was posted on our page to The Sandbar's little space on Roundus, a cool little website that offers virtual tours of, well, everywhere.  Roundus is based in Lincoln, Nebraska, and they aim to build a virtual tour of the world by starting in the Midwest and eventually expanding across the globe.

You can go here to see 360-degree views of The Sandbar from six different vantage points, even outside. Although it's not near-real-time like our webcam, it's a very clear (and bright!) picture of everything you love about The Sandbar.

Dave was a little surprised when I asked him if he knew there was a virtual tour of the bar online, and not one we created.  Apparently the bartender on duty failed to inform Dave of the activity that was taking place. Fortunately, said bartender appears in the video so we can properly flog him later.