Since the first “newspaper” made its appearance, perhaps in ancient Rome or China, the medium has been an important source of information. Today, newspapers do more than provide information; they serve as teaching tools.

Newspapers in Education forges [...]]]> “Daily access to a newspaper helps raise standardized test scores 10-30%.”
–Newspaper Association of America Foundation

Since the first “newspaper” made its appearance, perhaps in ancient Rome or China, the medium has been an important source of information. Today, newspapers do more than provide information; they serve as teaching tools.

Newspapers in Education forges an alliance between newspapers and schools to promote literacy. Over several decades, the effort has helped teach students to read and think critically and to appreciate how much power they have, as citizens, to determine their own and their society’s destiny.

As “living textbooks,” newspapers help translate the experience of the classroom into the brawling, sprawling hubbub of the world as it exists in all its chaos, and clashes of cultures.  Through it all, newspapers remain a resource for teachers, whether in print or electronic.

Newspapers make all the book learning real. They provide context for abstractions. Math becomes a journey through the stock market. Science applies to the tornado in the next county. An election becomes a lesson in political science with real consequences for the student.

Newspapers can and do change students’ lives. They provide a framework for compassion and a logic for tolerance. They place students squarely in the middle of their community and give them a distinct place in the world. They help establish meaning and show students they matter.

Newspapers are a source of power for today’s students, giving them the intellectual tools they need to build a better future for themselves and others.

NIE is a worldwide force for education, with more than 700 newspapers and many thousands of teachers participating. Is your newspaper taking part?

For more information on NIE Programs in your area, visit the Newspaper Association of America Foundation’s website.

To learn how your newspaper can begin participating, contact Tamara Tyree at tamara@rivercitystudio.com.

Why is it so awesome? Let’s put it this way: Being able to take down a bug from 400 yards with [...]]]> If you’ve read beyond this post’s headline and haven’t keeled over from geek terminology overload, good for you! It gives you a chance to find out why coding in Vim is so incredibly awesome.

Why is it so awesome? Let’s put it this way: Being able to take down a bug from 400 yards with a single shot is an impressive thing.

So what is Vim? Vim’s Source Forge download page describes it as “a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing.” Wikipedia describes it as being “based not on menus or icons but on commands.”

Now in nerd English: Take a text editor, like Notepad, and strip out all the buttons and icons. Then make a key command that switches from text editing to command mode. You’ve just made every key on your keyboard a shortcut through some complicated task.

To save a file, type “:w”; to delete an entire line, type “dd”; to go to a specific line,  say line 5842, type “:5842”; to do a find and replace John with Jane on line 5842, type “:5842s/John/Jane/”; to do a find and replace on the whole document but  only replace the first occurrence of John for each line and, if there are other Johns on the line, just leave them be, and, by the way, confirm each replacement, type “:%s/John/Jane/c” – try that in Microsoft Word!

Of course, if you’re writing a form letter, this jumping in and out of the document is not necessary. But writing code is another animal altogether. The code probably spans thousands of lines and maybe many separate files.

Vim is not an easy tool to pick up. There is a solid learning curve and no friendly icons or help menus. That Vim is a developer’s weapon of choice says a lot about his or her skill and determination.

In the last year, we have completely built out the following products for clients or for our software suite:

• Antibody Registry™ system
• ePulsar™ core library, CDN (content delivery network) and CMS (content management system)
• A custom CMS that can split administration across three separate domains/servers
• eBook publishing and sales site that kicks the Word file to a Linux application server that does the conversion on the fly – and the site picks up a confirmation when complete
• Our Newspapers In Education package – NIEHub™
• An intricate application and judging platform for angel investors
• Custom security layer, about which we are sworn to secrecy

Our ability to bend a site to our will sets us apart in the marketplace. We are not forced to churn out only sites using the basic WordPress, Drupal or Joomla platform and unable hold our own when the requested feature is more than the plugin or module can handle.

We love our rock star developers. We do our best to give them what they need then step out of the way and let them rock the house!

As budgets and staffs continue to shrink at schools in the U.S., digital tools such as NIE (Newspapers in Education) can help bridge the gap between time and resources.

NIE is an educational [...]]]> Feb. 1, 2012, marked the first Digital Learning Day, a “nationwide celebration of innovative teaching and learning through digital media and technology.”

As budgets and staffs continue to shrink at schools in the U.S., digital tools such as NIE (Newspapers in Education) can help bridge the gap between time and resources.

NIE is an educational partnership between newspapers and schools, allowing students access to a digital version of the daily newspaper. Along with the daily paper, NIE programs also offer additional educational materials teachers can use to supplement their textbooks – providing up-to-the-minute information on important news events and capturing history as it is being made.

Nurturing a better-informed society not only encourages students to think and be curious about the world around them but also helps them develop compassion and tolerance for different cultures. According to the newly released U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, more than 40 million foreign-born people lived in the U.S. in 2010.

We should be encouraging our students to learn about what is going on around them – all the great textures our American melting pot has to offer. As an added bonus, studies have shown that students who use newspapers score higher on reading comprehension tests and develop stronger critical thinking skills.

River City Studio is proud to work with a number of newspapers around the country, delivering NIE content to thousands of teachers and students. If you know any teachers – private, public, home-school – encourage them to enroll in their local NIE program. It’s free, and our children deserve it!

With print, you are dealing with ink on paper — very concrete. You can touch the papers, get exact-color ink swatches, print and test for an accurate example of your end result. On the [...]]]> First of all, I love paper and ink and will probably always be a print girl at heart.

With print, you are dealing with ink on paper — very concrete. You can touch the papers, get exact-color ink swatches, print and test for an accurate example of your end result. On the Web, you are dealing with multitudes of operating systems, browser variations, computer rendering capabilities, etc. Plus, web development is constantly changing. Web pages aren’t built today like they were even one year ago, and to be successful designing for the Web it is good to have an idea of how the page will be built.

In his helpful post, “This Way to the Web, Print Designers!,” (http://www.subtraction.com/2007/08/16/this-way-to-) Khoi Vin explains, “The ratio of constraints to possibilities is far less kind in digital media, and understanding those constraints — understanding how to finesse them and how to subvert them appropriately — requires an attention to detail that bores all but the most dedicated.”

All the designers I know consider themselves slaves to detail. Unfortunately, the details we sweat over are the ones that make the web challenging. The constraints of the Web lead to somewhat unpredictable translations of fonts, spacing and colors. I hear a consistent theme from all my designer friends as they move deeper into the digital world — how do I communicate my layouts with developers to get the end product I desire?

A good place to begin is to understand that developers truly do not think the same way designers do. They are like engineers — many of them are brilliant problem solvers, but they don’t have a creative bone in their bodies. This is, of course, my personal opinion based on experience. However, my point is they do not SEE things the way designers do. They do not see design details, only the overall structure of the page and how elements must be built to work together on the Web.

What I have found most helpful is not to limit interaction with the development team. Daily interaction with our in-house development team has helped me understand how they think and how best to communicate with them. For example, I don’t expect them to ask questions after they receive layouts. Most devs will just try to figure it out and make it work “as best they can,” regardless of what their decisions do to the design. I must point out the most important areas and ask them if my design is doable before they start to build it out.

There is also an important lesson here If you are a client seeking Web dev services. There are plenty of designers who can create basic code, and there are certainly also some developers who understand the basics of design, but rare is the person who excels at both. Look for an in-house team that combines design and development. You will get a beautiful website with a back-end structure built to meet your operational needs.

Now it’s true that the ordinary people were vetted. They sent in videos of themselves beforehand, and the participants were [...]]]>

Obama on a Google+ Hangout

Political preferences aside, you have to be impressed by President Barack Obama’s performance during a recent Google Hangout on YouTube.  It takes a certain amount of courage to take the questions of ordinary people live.

Now it’s true that the ordinary people were vetted. They sent in videos of themselves beforehand, and the participants were selected only after they had “auditioned.” But that preparation introduces only a modest level of structure to the event, leaving it pretty much uncontrolled. No one could predict with certainty what any questioner might ask.

So what would happen if people other than the President of the United States and celebrities were to develop their own Google Hangout channel? It could be a rather powerful marketing tool, if the target of the questioning were brave enough to operate within a structured but not controlled environment.

President Obama was impressive because he did not duck questions, and the questions appeared unmediated, which makes the event different from, say, a candidate debate or a TV interview and more like a kitchen-table conversation. He answered directly and never flinched.

The president also appeared to know his stuff, even though he didn’t have a prepared State of the Union address in front of him. He had the answers, but he wasn’t reading them off a teleprompter. In short, he looked informed, thoughtful, intelligent, honest and straightforward.

And isn’t that how we all want our customers to see us?

Image courtesy of Google Images

It also requires some time on the part of the other employees, not only to go to the review [...]]]> River City Studio just went through the annual employee review process. It takes some time, especially for the boss and the team leaders who have to sit through and participate in a number of these reviews.

It also requires some time on the part of the other employees, not only to go to the review meeting but also to fill out the paperwork – a fairly lengthy questionnaire for self- and company-evaluation. It’s probably fair to say no one actually enjoys this ritual. But it’s necessary, and it’s good for everyone, including the agency’s clients.

How so?

If the process is done right, employees and management benefit from an honest discussion of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The employee review is a chance to clear the air and start fresh so the new year will be better than the one just past. For clients, the good done is a bit less obvious.

However, just because the benefit isn’t immediately obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t pretty important. There’s nothing more important in an advertising and marketing agency than the ability to trust the team you work with. Further, everyone needs to know not what their limits are but that their efforts to break through limits are both encouraged and appreciated.

In advertising and marketing – as in many other endeavors – it’s striving to break through limits that results in the most imaginative, groundbreaking, innovative and exciting work for clients. At least at our place, that’s what the annual review is all about – not setting limits but expanding horizons for each and all of us as well as our client allies.

However, all the benefits in the world can’t get us to like it.

The River City team sat down [...]]]> Recently River City Studio completely redesigned and redeveloped a website for InvestMidwest Forum (www.investmidwestforum.com), a venture capital conference. The goal of the redesign and redevelopment was to freshen up the look and feel, simplify the entire process for all the different players and better manage event data.

The River City team sat down with the InvestMidwest staff and walked through the entire conference process. We identified problem areas, eliminated unnecessary items and made additions as needed. This exercise was the most important step to decipher the many facets of what the site does, understand how the current site is used and determine what the actual needs are. We were then able to rethink the processes for each of the site’s users.

With users filling out long applications, scoring applications, registering for events and managing the website, user-friendliness was a must. We aimed to create a simple, intuitive experience for each user. Without the discovery period with the client, design and development of the site would have been more problematical and, more importantly, would not have served each end user nearly as well.

Old site to new: River City Studio’s Web design and development team needed to overcome older coding and unnecessary subdomains, among other problems to create a user-friendly site for InvestMidwest Forum. Success required a close working alliance with InvestMidwest’s staff.

My first week as an intern with River City Studio I was immersed in the busy daily activities of the office. I was immediately thrown into the mix, given a variety of tasks, including copywriting, researching, brainstorming, developing marketing plans and making phone calls to CEOs of multi-million-dollar corporations.

A little [...]]]> By Travis M

My first week as an intern with River City Studio I was immersed in the busy daily activities of the office. I was immediately thrown into the mix, given a variety of tasks, including copywriting, researching, brainstorming, developing marketing plans and making phone calls to CEOs of multi-million-dollar corporations.

A little nerve-racking? I think so.

As a senior studying strategic communications (marketing and advertising) in the School of Journalism at the University of Kansas, I have a schedule for when this and that and this all need to be done – carefully outlined in every syllabus.  I’ve now realized that’s not how it works in the “real world.”

There’s no syllabus, no step-by-step directions and no sample projects for reference. There’s just you and the objective, and you have to find a way to accomplish it in the allotted time. Being a highly competitive person (or “overly-competitive,” as my brother would say), I couldn’t have been more excited to get underway.

I thrive when given new learning experiences and challenges, and I took full advantage of this opportunity, soaking up the information like a sponge. Throughout my internship, I’ve had the chance to experience real-world business and marketing strategies implemented into ongoing campaigns, see how a marketing firm operates and work with some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met.

These few weeks I’ve spent with River City Studio have been invaluable, and I am grateful to the River City Studio staff for incorporating me into the mix.

The custom approach gives you the power to do pretty much whatever current browser technology or any device (e.g., computers, tablets, smart phones, etc.) allow. Unlike [...]]]> For businesses with special needs, such as integrating point-of-sale (POS) systems or linking multiple sites to achieve a common goal, the Cadlillac of website architecture could be the answer.

The custom approach gives you the power to do pretty much whatever current browser technology or any device (e.g., computers, tablets, smart phones, etc.) allow. Unlike the open source websites, where the goal is to allow the site owner to manipulate content easily, the fully-custom approach focuses first on highly specific functionality and interaction with the end user. Secondarily, it addresses the need of the website owner to alter content. Both the end user and the website owner will get a rich experience, but site development requires twice as much code as an open source or static website.

As websites grow over time, the custom solution accommodates the growth of an organization. Custom websites, if done correctly, are tailored perfectly to their owners and managers and deliver rich experiences to the end user. They typically cross the line between website and software (or applications), and the surface seen by most people is only the tip of a very deep iceberg.

There are only a couple of downsides to a fully custom website: time and cost.

Unless the website’s purpose is highly specific, the custom solution is not usually needed for start-up companies or projects, and many websites will never need to get to this state. Imagine that the custom solution is every aspect of a product like WordPress but created and targeted solely for your organization. Usually a company would only need to push things to this level if cheaper alternatives were attempted and did not work, or they were implementing and reporting material that is outside the scope of an average website.

Overall ratings for fully custom websites:

Cost: Medium to very high. Depending on what is needed, completing the site could take hundreds of hours to complete and the actual number of hours would not be known until all parameters were laid out.

Design: High. Adding custom tools requires designing the tools, and some tools are equivalent to a full website.

Programming: Very high. However, although costs can be high, there are very few limitations to what can be done, or what software functionality can be implemented.

Management: Medium to high. The extent of management depends on the tools requested, but custom solutions usually come with several, along with reporting on how the website is being used.

-       Try a QR code – a great tool for marketing, business cards, education or advertising, Quick Response codes allow you to connect [...]]]> The New Year is a great time to consider how to expand and improve your digital presence. Here are the top 5 things you can do to stretch yourself in new directions:

-       Try a QR code – a great tool for marketing, business cards, education or advertising, Quick Response codes allow you to connect your audience with multiple levels of digital content. With the buzz around them growing, they have reached widespread use and will only continue to grow in popularity. Just be sure to follow these best practices: https://www.x.com/devzone/articles/10-best-practices-employing-qr-codes.

-       Jump into social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn: Social media’s position in our marketplace is strong and effective. If your business does not have a presence on one or all of these sites, you are missing an immediate and free way to reach your audience. And if you already have a social media presence, you know it is always changing. Sites like http://socialmediatoday.com/ are a great way to stay informed on how to make social media work for you.

-       Try an eblast – a great way to dip your toe in the interactive pool if you are just starting out. Companies such as Constant Contact and Mail Chimp are very user-friendly and can help you set up an eblast in just a few quick steps.

-       Establish or improve your analytics presence. Having a website is just the first step. Making sure it reaches your audience is just as important. Effective analytics can take a website from an “investment” to paying for itself. There are several layers of analytics you can install on your site. Google provides an excellent site to help get you get started (http://www.google.com/analytics/) and working with an experienced team, like River City Studio, can help to take the mystery out of the process.

-       Find a blog to follow. The best ideas today – the ones that will turn into the newest products and solutions tomorrow – are being brainstormed on the Web. Find a blog on a subject that interests you and make it a habit to check in frequently.  It will lead you to other areas of growth and new contacts.

Plan to make one, two or even all five of these business builders part of your weekly ritual. Your ROI could surprise you.