Here’s where I politely ask — nee genially implore — you to help us at Hawaiimagazine.com and other readers with some of the wonderful content you’ll find on our site.

Since keeping this site filled with good stuff all by our lonesome would be an exercise in futility (and personal chaos) without the help of our readers, we’re hoping you use the new Web site to keep us as currently informed as we hope to keep you.

Go ahead and comment on the entries we post — like this one, for instance. Chat with other readers about our stories on the comment boards. Send us stuff you’d like us to check out and comment on. Share your photos of Hawaii and the stories behind those photos with us and other readers. Send us links to YouTube videos of your Hawaii experiences. Ask us questions.

We want Hawaiimagazine.com and HAWAII Today to be as much a reflection of our visitors as it is of us.

You’ll probably still wish you were in Hawaii instead of wherever you are in the world right now. But with Hawaiimagazine.com we hope to instantly bring you just a little bit closer to the Islands.

Just make sure you take off your shoes before coming in. We like that here.

I’m Derek Paiva … the newest member of HAWAII Magazine’s full-time crack editorial and technical staff.

That’s me in the photo.

Hawaiimagazine.com’s HAWAII Today home page feed will be primarily edited by yours truly — on many occasions, I hope, sharing writing duties with HAWAII Magazine editor John Heckathorn, associate editor Sherie Char and contributing HAWAII writers.

My most recent gig was a seven-year stint as an entertainment writer for The Honolulu Advertiser — one of our city’s two major daily newspapers — where I wrote about all things music, nightlife and other features-ish subjects.

(Go ahead. Google my name. Yes, I really did interview Prince in the flesh. He was short, very well-dressed and singularly funky.)

My new job here marks a return to the offices of HAWAII publisher PacificBasin Communications — which gave me my first full-time post-college journalism gig as assistant editor of sister publication Hawaii Business Magazine from 1998 to 2000 — and a return to working with Heckathorn — who gave me my first real (and paid) journalism internship in 1997 with another PacificBasin sister pub, HONOLULU Magazine.

My plan is to keep posts and proceedings here at Hawaiimagazine.com fun, fresh, interesting, useful and pithy. Want a lengthy, deeply researched feature on the now quarter-century-old eruption at the Big Island’s Kilauea volcano? Check out HAWAII Magazine’s February print edition for a superb feature by contributing writer Donna O’Meara. The magazine provides depth.

But the web site will give you up-to-the-minute stuff.

Want to know if Kilauea started throwing out 1,000-plus foot lava fountains right this morning, or get a review of multi-million selling North Shore of Oahu resident/singer/songwriter Jack Johnson’s much-anticipated new album “Sleep Through the Static” the day it is released in February? Visit me here at hawaiimagazine.com.

I’ve lived here in Hawaii my entire life. I’m still infinitely fascinated by these islands. I’m still learning about them. This is going to be one fun job.

photo by Lina Jang

Or in English … Happy New Year and welcome to HAWAII Magazine’s brand new hawaiimagazine.com Web site!

We’re happy you’re here. We're happy we’re here for you.

HAWAII has always taken its responsibilities as a magazine for folks who love our Islands — but don’t necessarily live here — very seriously. Every produced-right-here-in-Hawaii issue delivers a vacation’s worth of colorful, well-written and informative slices of all the stuff that makes our collection of islands one of the most amazing places on the planet.

The scenic beauty. The music. The food. The culture. The people. The islands and towns we call home. Their stories are our stories. And we enjoy delivering them to your mailbox six times a year.

The new Hawaiimagazine.com and its regularly updated HAWAII Today home page feed aims to cook up a similar luau-style spread — delivered a bit quicker and in more bite-size portions.

Visit us regularly and you’ll get …

• Hawaii updates and commentary you won’t find in the magazine.

• The latest tips for Hawaii travelers.

• Hawaii fun facts and trivia.

• Hawaii music reviews and concert announcements.

• Gift, dining, retail and after-hours suggestions

• Best reader photos.

• Contests and giveaways.

• Stuff we haven’t thought up as ideal for the Web site just yet, but likely will 

Stay with us today and you’ll find out just enough about Hawaiimagazine.com’s new web editor — that would be me, Derek Paiva — to still keep the guy a semi-fascinating enigma. Still later, we’ll let you know how you can help us make the Web site and HAWAII Today as much a reflection of your Hawaii as ours.