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	<title>Technically Philly &#187; redesign</title>
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	<link>http://technicallyphilly.com</link>
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		<title>Phila.gov/business launches phase two, featuring &#8216;Business Assistant&#8217; wizard</title>
		<link>http://technicallyphilly.com/2011/11/11/phila-govbusiness-launches-phase-two-featuring-business-assistant-wizard</link>
		<comments>http://technicallyphilly.com/2011/11/11/phila-govbusiness-launches-phase-two-featuring-business-assistant-wizard#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:00:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Christopher Wink</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[city government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Phila.gov]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Redesign]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://technicallyphilly.com/?p=14066</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Mayor Nutter officially unveiled Thursday phase two of an effort to overhaul the business services portal on Phila.gov. If you&#8217;re surprised by the continued development of Phila.gov/business ahead of an on-going site-wide redesign effort, then you might also marvel at the fact that the project landed on time from an internal deadline Technically Philly reported [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_14071" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 430px"><a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-Shot-2011-11-11-at-9.19.12-AM.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-14071" title="Screen Shot 2011-11-11 at 9.19.12 AM" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Screen-Shot-2011-11-11-at-9.19.12-AM-420x400.png" alt="" width="420" height="400" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Mayor Nutter unveils the next rollout of Phila.gov/business Thursday at the Community College of Philadelphia. Photo courtesy of Kait Privitera.</p></div>
<p>Mayor Nutter officially unveiled Thursday phase two of an effort to overhaul the business services portal on <a href="http://www.phila.gov/">Phila.gov</a>.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re surprised by the continued development of <a href="http://www.phila.gov/business">Phila.gov/business</a> ahead of an on-going site-wide redesign effort, then you might also marvel at the fact that <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/2011/06/15/phila-gov-business-services-portal-to-add-75-of-licenses-and-permit-applications-online-by-2012-interactivity">the project landed on time from an internal deadline Technically Philly reported on in June</a>, despite the start and stop of the overall Phila.gov refresh.</p>
<p>Visit the new business portal <a href="http://www.phila.gov/business">here: Phila.gov/business</a>.</p>
<p>The city is trumpeting the &#8216;Business Assistant&#8217; wizard, which is meant to walk new businesses through the online process of meeting city license and compliance requirements. Additional web access to permits and applications was another big goal for the project. In September, the wizard soft launched and, since then, some 720 users have registered and half have sought information on business, <a href="http://cityofphiladelphia.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/mayor-nutter-launches-phase-two-of-business-services-center/">a press release said</a>.</p>
<p>How widely used the portal will be will test the effort&#8217;s success. This multi-agency effort lands as other portions of Phila.gov are being recast. Internal deadlines for that project have varied.</p>
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		<title>Phila.gov business services portal to add 75% of licenses and permit applications online by 2012, interactivity</title>
		<link>http://technicallyphilly.com/2011/06/15/phila-gov-business-services-portal-to-add-75-of-licenses-and-permit-applications-online-by-2012-interactivity</link>
		<comments>http://technicallyphilly.com/2011/06/15/phila-gov-business-services-portal-to-add-75-of-licenses-and-permit-applications-online-by-2012-interactivity#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:00:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Christopher Wink</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Phila.gov]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[websites]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://technicallyphilly.com/?p=12801</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Before its second birthday in November, the City of Philadelphia&#8217;s Business Services Center website will add more interactivity and have the majority of licenses and permits available, officials tell Technically Philly. &#8220;The portal was the first step in the overhaul of Phila.gov, collecting and sharing all business-related information for business users, rather than asking them [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://business.phila.gov/Pages/Home.aspx"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-12804" title="philly-business services" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/philly-business-services-420x326.png" alt="" width="420" height="326" /></a></p>
<p>Before its second birthday in November, <a href="http://www.phila.gov/business">the City of Philadelphia&#8217;s Business Services Center</a> website will add more interactivity and have the majority of licenses and permits available, officials tell Technically Philly.</p>
<p>&#8220;The portal was the first step in the overhaul of Phila.gov, collecting  and sharing all business-related information for business users, rather  than asking them to hunt through multiple departmental sites to get what  they need,&#8221; said Sara Merriman, the director of policy initiatives for the city&#8217;s Department of Commerce.</p>
<p>The next release of the portal, internally scheduled for late summer, will include three major &#8216;interactive&#8217; features: (1) a wizard tool to help  direct businesses to the licenses they may need, (2) a wizard output into a  dashboard that users can save and return to as they work through their  tasks and (3) a business registration feature that will in future releases  be used as the basis for further interactivity like online permit  delivery and payment tracking, Merriman said.</p>
<p>In addition to the added interactivity, by the end of 2011, the  portal is planned to house most city license and permit applications.</p>
<p><span id="more-12801"></span></p>
<p>&#8220;We are targeting to have 75 percent of [license and permit  applications] by volume up by end of year, getting contractors,  developers and homeowners out of line at the Municipal Services Building  and online,&#8221; said Daniel Heitzer, the deputy DOT chief information officer for business improvement services.</p>
<p>The rebuilding of Phila.gov was <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/2011/01/28/tommy-jones-interim-city-of-philadelphia-cto-top-three-priorities-for-2011">one of three top priorities outlined in January by interim CTO Tommy Jones</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;If  you’re trying to get a business license, why do you care what  department  handles it? You care, &#8216;Can I get through this process?&#8221; Jones said then. &#8220;I love my residents, but I don&#8217;t want to see them in my office. Everything they need to interface with the city should be available online, and we&#8217;re working that way.&#8221;</p>
<p>The new business portal, which first launched in November 2009, now averages 17,000 unique visitors a month, said Jeff Friedman, the former Division of Technology chief of staff and currently manager of civic innovation and participation in the mayor&#8217;s office. &#8220;The city is [making] it as easy as possible for businesses and ultimately all citizens to transact with and obtain needed information through the same type of online experience we are all used to in other parts of our lives.&#8221;</p>
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		<title>TicketLeap and Social Media, a match made in heaven</title>
		<link>http://technicallyphilly.com/2010/07/09/ticketleap-and-social-media-a-match-made-in-heaven</link>
		<comments>http://technicallyphilly.com/2010/07/09/ticketleap-and-social-media-a-match-made-in-heaven#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:00:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mary Mazzoni</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Features]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christopher Stanchak]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TicketLeap]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://technicallyphilly.com/?p=10453</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the highly competitive world of online ticketing, it’s often the little things that set a company apart. This is no news to Chris Stanchak, CEO of the rapidly growing Philly-based ticketer TicketLeap. When he founded TicketLeap in 2003 as a student project, Stanchak had a vision of providing professional-grade ticketing for events too small to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-10462" title="dashboard" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/dashboard-420x335.png" alt="" width="420" height="335" /></p>
<p>In the highly competitive world of online ticketing, it’s often the little things that set a company apart.</p>
<p>This is no news to Chris Stanchak, CEO of the rapidly growing Philly-based ticketer <a href="http://www.ticketleap.com/">TicketLeap</a>.</p>
<p>When he founded <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/tag/ticketleap">TicketLeap</a> in 2003 as a student project, Stanchak had a vision of providing professional-grade ticketing for events too small to attract the attention of ticketing giants such as Ticketmaster.</p>
<p>Since then, the company has <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/2009/05/14/ticketleap-launches-anywhere-saves-competitive-biking">saved bicycling in Philadelphia</a>, <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/2010/03/02/ticketleap-stealthily-raised-2-5-million-in-additional-funding-last-year">raised capital</a> and has completed a drastic redesign of the company’s homepage and changed its business philosophy.</p>
<p>“Before [the redesign] we were focused on being a destination site for people trying to find tickets to events near them,” says Stanchak. “But with everything happening in social media, the idea of a destination event website is kind of going away.”</p>
<p><span id="more-10453"></span></p>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-10454" title="Screen-shot-2010-03-02-at-9.17.16-AM" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Screen-shot-2010-03-02-at-9.17.16-AM.png" alt="" width="200" height="75" />The homepage was previously designed with a Geolocation-based search engine to help buyers find events close to home, but with TicketLeap ranked as the No. 2 Google result for the term: “sell tickets online,” Stanchak decided it was time to change gears.</p>
<p>“The homepage was really designed at the time for people trying to buy tickets, so it was kind of mismatched,” Stanchak says. “We decided to make the homepage more focused on the event organizer, with event searches for the buyer on another part of the site.”</p>
<p>The TicketLeap homepage now features a “Quick Setup in 5 minutes” for event organizers with tickets to sell.</p>
<p>And the tech is going far, with the redesign including added features for ticket buyers, such as “like” buttons (a la Facebook) that allow buyers to share TicketLeap events with friends.</p>
<p>This recent redesign is a small change, Stanchak says, compared to what’s to come. The staff at TicketLeap is currently working on a completely new platform called TicketLeap Express, which Stanchak promises “will change the whole industry.”</p>
<p>Included in the new design is a gray box sporting one of the company’s favorite sayings: “get real support from real people.” The link on the company&#8217;s homepage places the new <a href="http://info.ticketleap.com/company/ticketleap-team/">TicketLeap Team</a> page &#8211; which includes a headshot and bio of every employee &#8211; front and center.</p>
<p>“If someone works with TicketLeap, they get a call from an account representative that will help them plan their event,” says Stanchak. “Now you can pull up the TicketLeap team page and actually see who it is that you’re talking to.”</p>
<p>“It makes the experience a lot more personal, and that is something that we’re going to continue to maintain no matter where we go with our tech.”</p>
<p>The new site isn’t set to launch until later this summer, but Stanchak gave Technically Philly a sneak peak.</p>
<p>After purchasing a ticket from TicketLeap Express, buyers can communicate and post messages to an event wall. Wall posts are then directly posted to Facebook and Twitter.</p>
<p>“The best way for people to find out about events is when their friends tell them,” Stanchak says. “So what we want to do is help make it easier for people to share our events.”</p>
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		<title>Mason and Megan Wendell: from indie record execs to husband-wife branding and design Drupal team</title>
		<link>http://technicallyphilly.com/2010/03/12/mason-and-megan-wendell-from-indie-record-execs-to-husband-wife-branding-and-design-drupal-team</link>
		<comments>http://technicallyphilly.com/2010/03/12/mason-and-megan-wendell-from-indie-record-execs-to-husband-wife-branding-and-design-drupal-team#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:30:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Christopher Wink</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Friday Q and A]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[departments]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Drupal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DrupalCon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Drupaldelphia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Interviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[redesign]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://technicallyphilly.com/?p=9523</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Seems like ditching the record label for the branding and design firm was the right way to go. Mason and Megan Wendell, the husband-wife team behind Mount Airy-based Canary Promotion + Design, met at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. &#8220;We started our own record label (Solarmanite Records) to release our own music and [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.canarypromo.com"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-9528" title="canary" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/canary-420x176.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="176" /></a></p>
<p>Seems like ditching the record label for the branding and design firm was the right way to go.</p>
<p><a href="http://twitter.com/canarymason">Mason</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/canarymegan">Megan Wendell</a>, the husband-wife team behind Mount Airy-based <a href="http://www.canarypromo.com/">Canary Promotion + Design</a>, met at the <a href="http://www.berklee.edu/">Berklee College of Music</a> in Boston.</p>
<p>&#8220;We started our own record label (<a href="http://www.canarypromo.com/publicity-detail.php?cl_id=130">Solarmanite Records</a>) to release our own music and some other artists, and more and more bands started coming to us for advice on everything from how to publicize a release to how to get a barcode,&#8221; says Megan, 35, who handles the marketing side of the firm.</p>
<p>So they started a business doing just that outside of <a href="http://the67thward.com">New York City</a>, where she was working for a dotcom and Mason was handling Web work on Wall Street. By early 2002, the duo moved to Philadelphia and found a niche in the region&#8217;s arts and culture community.</p>
<p>Now they have a heavy hand in the look and feel of the Philly arts scene and open source content management system <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupal">Drupal</a> is their tool of choice.</p>
<p><span id="more-9523"></span></p>
<p>&#8220;Between our work in PR and marketing and Web design and development for cultural institutions and artists in the Philadelphia area, I feel that we have had an impact on the community and how several organizations tell their stories,&#8221; Megan says. Though they both still consider themselves musicians, their business, branding and two-year-old daughter Lyra has managed to take hold.</p>
<p>In addition to the Web work, the couple lists branding development for groups like <a href="http://www.girlsrockphilly.org/">Girls Rock Philly</a> and <a href="http://www.canarypromo.com/mauckingbird">Mauckingbird Theatre Company</a>. The team is currently working with the Temple University Theater Department on their new summer repertory theater.</p>
<div id="attachment_9524" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 210px"><a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/mason.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-9524 " title="mason" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/mason.jpg" alt="" width="200" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Mason Wendell loves Drupal</p></div>
<p>But beyond the marketing, it all comes down to Drupal, and that&#8217;s where Megan&#8217;s husband Mason, with a specialty in Drupal theming, takes hold. Mason oversees another full-time designer and the team works with freelancers &#8212; &#8220;we&#8217;re on the lookout for some good freelance Web designers and Drupal site builders and themers right now,&#8221; Megan says.</p>
<p>In recent months, the team has launched major redesigns for the <a href="http://www.rosenbach.org/">Rosenbach Museum &amp; Library</a>, <a href="http://futureofmusic.org/">the Future of Music Coalition</a>, <a href="http://www.arsnovaworkshop.org/">Ars Nova Workshop</a>, <a href="http://www.nicholecanusodance.com/">Nichole Canuso Dance Company</a> and Drupal development for <a href="http://www.wilmatheater.org/">The Wilma Theater�s new site</a>. They&#8217;ve also launched a new site for <a href="http://www.r5productions.com">R5 Productions</a> and a refresh on the site they created for <a href="http://www.johnnybrendas.com">Johnny Brenda�s</a>.</p>
<p>Below, Mason, who is helping to organize <a href="http://www.drupaldelphia.com/">Drupaldelphia</a> in May and is heading out next month to <a href="http://sf2010.drupal.org/">DrupalCon</a> in San Francisco to spread the good word.</p>
<p>But before all of that, below, we corner Mason and get him to show off and share the geeky details of three of those bigger projects.</p>
<h2>ROSENBACH MUSEUM AND LIBRARY</h2>
<div id="attachment_9525" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 430px"><a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/rosenblach.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-9525" title="rosenblach" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/rosenblach-420x255.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="255" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Mason&#39;s Design nerd notes: &quot;Features a custom Javascript menu, lots of tiny examples of progressive enhancement, including css3 shadows and gradients&quot;</p></div>
<p><strong>Talk to us about <a href="http://www.rosenbach.org/">the Rosenbach redesign</a> and specific challenges.</strong></p>
<p>We created a full redesign from the ground up for the Rosenbach Museum and Library site&#8230; We wanted the design look to acknowledge the museum�s history and collections while presenting it in a fresh way.</p>
<p>The Rosenbach does a lot of different things with their collections, including exhibitions, various types of tours and special programs and events.� It would be too easy to try to showcase it all at once and confuse visitors. Because of their many different events, we had to make a very complex and busy event schedule understandable on one page, while showing the differences between normal events, their annual signature events, and an active series of themed tours.</p>
<p>We decided to make the home page very simple and highlight one major item at a time but drive visitors to delve further into the site. Once you�re into interior pages of the site, we used Drupal to find connections between what you came to visit and other related content, encouraging people to follow the rabbit down the hole.</p>
<p>We built upon Drupal�s taxonomy system to allow site administrators to easily categorize anything they create on the site and use those categories to automatically draw connections between content across the site.</p>
<p>This allows the site to flesh out pages with related content from other sections of the site, which helps visitors find more on the site that interests them. This in turn increases the time visitors spend on the site and increases their level of engagement with the Rosenbach.</p>
<p>The result is a site with content that is much more up to date, because museum staff can now easily update it with the latest news and events, and greatly increased SEO, with traffic up more than 480 percent on average, to-date.</p>
<h2>NICHOLE CANUSO DANCE COMPANY</h2>
<div id="attachment_9526" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 430px"><a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/nichole.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-9526" title="nichole" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/nichole-420x242.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="242" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Mason&#39;s design nerd notes: &quot;The swirls and assymetrical crop on the home page image are done automatically within Drupal. NCDC just needs to upload a standard jpg. No photoshop required.&quot;</p></div>
<p><strong>You must have had different needs and objectives for <a href="http://www.nicholecanusodance.com/">the Canuso Dance Company</a>.</strong></p>
<p>&#8230; We created a website for Nichole&#8217;s company with subtle design elements that give a nod to her unique whimsical and dark artistic style, while keeping the images of her dance pieces and the latest news front and center.</p>
<p>Nichole came to us with a site that was hard for her to update and that didn&#8217;t fully represent her aesthetic. This project needed to come together with a fairly small budget while still having a good amount of customization.</p>
<p>NCDC has an active performance schedule and typically produces one new original work per year. We&#8217;re using a very large feature image on the home page to help showcase what&#8217;s next, or the most important thing coming up in the future.</p>
<p>This is handled nearly entirely automatically through a system that will� feature the next upcoming event or production, while also letting the site administrators override that feature when they want to.� We try whenever possible to create simple workflows that only require site owners to create content once and let Drupal do the hard work.</p>
<h2>THE WILMA THEATER</h2>
<div id="attachment_9527" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 430px"><a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/wilma.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-9527" title="wilma" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/wilma-420x256.jpg" alt="" width="420" height="256" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Mason&#39;s design nerd notes: &quot;We needed to integrate with their existing ticketing service provider, so we had to restyle their entire checkout process in an effort to maintain a seemless experience when purchasing tickets.&quot;</p></div>
<p><strong>Maybe the highest profile of your new sites is for <a href="http://www.wilmatheater.org/">Avenue of the Arts mainstay Wilma Theater</a>. Tell us about the new redesign.<br />
</strong></p>
<p>We&#8217;ve been working with The Wilma Theater as a PR client for five seasons, so we were excited to develop a new site for them, in collaboration with the theater&#8217;s graphic designer.</p>
<p>Canary handled the functionality of the site and created the content management system, which allows staff to make updates quickly and easily � from adding new production videos, to promoting special events, to posting the latest play reviews.</p>
<p>The major attention-grabber is the custom animated image feature on the home page. We used a lot of custom Drupal functionality and javascript to build this section, which allows each slot in that rotator to feature an image, text, or a video. This all comes together to create a highly flexible and useful tool for the Wilma to promote the next show or season, or anything at all.</p>
<p>In the few months that this site has been live it&#8217;s already been used in a number of creative configurations, including one where multiple striped images were tiled together to create a continuous banner.</p>
<p>There is also a lot of Drupal customization on the backend to help tie together the volume and breadth of their content. That required a good amount of Administrative UI customization so their staff could easily use the site with very little training. We take a lot of pride in making complex operations simple for both site users and administrators.</p>
<p><em>Every Friday, Technically Philly brings you an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia�s technology community. See others�<a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/category/friday-q-and-a">here</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Shop Talk: Obama Girl&#8217;s Leah Kauffman on Phrequency.com redesign</title>
		<link>http://technicallyphilly.com/2009/06/10/shop-talk-obama-girls-leah-kauffman-on-phrequencycom-redesign</link>
		<comments>http://technicallyphilly.com/2009/06/10/shop-talk-obama-girls-leah-kauffman-on-phrequencycom-redesign#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:22:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Brian James Kirk</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Shop Talk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Late Night Wall Flower]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Leah Kauffman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[McJawn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mikey McFly]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama Girl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philly.com]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Phrequency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Temple University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vanache]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://technicallyphilly.com/?p=3767</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Updated: 5:33 p.m. 6/10/09 with additional attribution This is part of an irregular series of our Shop Talk department, called The Redesign. On a Friday afternoon in early May, Leah Kauffman dons a t-shirt to show off her gang affiliation. A pair of hands screenprinted on the bright red tee are positioned similarly to the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-3769" title="phreq_redesign" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/phreq_redesign.jpg" alt="phreq_redesign" width="420" height="280" /></p>
<p><em>Updated: 5:33 p.m. 6/10/09 with additional attribution</em></p>
<p><em>This is part of an irregular series of our <a href="http://www.technicallyphilly.com/category/shop-talk">Shop Talk</a> department, called <a href="http://www.technicallyphilly.com/tag/the-redesign">The Redesign</a>.</em></p>
<p>On a Friday afternoon in early May, Leah Kauffman dons a t-shirt to show off her gang affiliation.</p>
<p>A pair of hands screenprinted on the bright red tee are positioned similarly to the Bloods street gang hand signal. Fingers on the right hand are contorted into the shape of the letters &#8216;b,&#8217; &#8216;l&#8217; and &#8216;o.&#8217; The left hand is flipped upside-down, and the index finger curled, creating a hanging &#8220;g.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8216;Blog,&#8217; <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/11/tshirt-of-blog-gang-.html">it reads</a>.</p>
<p>At first glance, it&#8217;s easy to miss. But it makes sense. Kauffman runs Philly.com&#8217;s <a href="http://www.phrequency.com">Phrequency</a>, a news portal that covers the movers, shakers and rattlers of Philly&#8217;s music community.</p>
<p>In April, Phrequency was redesigned with a more streamlined, blog-esque interface; dropping the clunky, genre focus that forced users to choose hip-hop or punk, R&amp;B or jazz, for a content-oriented design that doesn&#8217;t split hairs on artists who span all of those.</p>
<p>It was a move that Kauffman had wanted to make for months.<span id="more-3767"></span></p>
<div id="attachment_3770" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 260px"><img class="size-full wp-image-3770" title="phreq_genres" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/phreq_genres.jpg" alt="Phrequency.com dropped genres to streamline the process and better associate with new acts that are hard to classify." width="250" height="170" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Phrequency.com dropped genres to streamline the process and better associate with new acts that are hard to classify.</p></div>
<p>&#8220;The reality is that people are not searching for music by genre. People are not classifying themselves [and they're saying] &#8216;I&#8217;m not just hip hop or punk.&#8217; From a management standpoint, it&#8217;s insanely difficult to program eight pages of genres,&#8221; she says, seated in a conference room on the 35th floor of Five Penn Center in Center city.</p>
<p>Since launching in November, Phrequency has been quietly drumming up an audience of music aficionados and bringing together a community that didn&#8217;t have a local online portal before the site came along, she says.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have one of the biggest talent pools in America, some of the best studio musicians. We&#8217;re totally underserved by local media. There was a real void to fill.&#8221;</p>
<p>Kauffman, a Temple University graduate, made headlines last year with her viral video project &#8220;<a href="http://obamagirl.com/">Obama Girl</a>,&#8221; a set of tongue-in-cheek videos made in support of Barack Obama&#8217;s 2009 presidential campaign. Her song &#8220;<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU">Crush On Obama</a>,&#8221; for which Kauffman sang vocal tracks behind on-screen performer Amber Lee Ettinger, has racked up 14.2 million YouTube hits.</p>
<p>Having gained a few new contacts, Kauffman pitched the idea of Phrequency last year to former Philly.com President Eric Grilly, who left the company in May to head digital operations at Comcast Sports Group, <a href="http://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blogs/media/2009/05/from_phillycom_to_comcast_sports.html">as the Philadelphia Business Journal reported</a> and we mentioned <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/comcast/comcast-roundup-e-mail-monetization-accusations-and-more">in an earlier Comcast Roundup</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;[I knew] that a newspaper would be a perfect organization to start something like this and that Phrequency could help Philly.com reach a younger audience,&#8221; she says.</p>
<p>Along with a web development team, she began storyboarding the site design, looking to magazines like <a href="http://www.nylonmag.com/">Nylon</a> for inspiration. After it launched and as the site developed, Kauffman began to realize that the original plans needed adjustment. Seven months later, it was goodbye genres, hello blog.</p>
<p>Kauffman says that the site has been improved with better embedable widgets and updated from <a href="http://advertising.yahoo.com/video/">Yahoo&#8217;s Maven video platform</a> to the industry-standard <a href="http://www.brightcove.com/en/">Brightcove</a> video player. Videos are a popular part of the site, she says, and photos are more strongly integrated with the new format.</p>
<p>The whole editorial process is streamlined. Instead of having to feed an entire photo gallery with pictures, copy and captions, an author can drop a picture that speaks for itself directly into a blog post; that was something the old content management system didn&#8217;t allow.</p>
<p>Kauffman says that the blog format provides a less intimidating, linear accessibility to readers. &#8220;There is something about a blog post that is friendly, gives you a little more personality,&#8221; she says. &#8220;People our age look at blog posts and understand it&#8217;s casual,&#8221; she says.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s even helped get content out there faster.</p>
<p>In late April, speedy posting helped the site <a href="http://www.phrequency.com/blog/Philadelphia_Police_Brutality_After_Bamboozle_Road_Show.html">break a story about alleged police brutality</a> that Philadelphia pop-punk band <a href="http://www.myspace.com/valencia">Valencia</a> documented after a show at the Theater of Living Arts on South Street, <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/friday-links/friday-tech-roundup-philadelphia-has-a-cell-phone-driving-ban-police-brutality-spread-on-social-media-and-more">as we reported</a>.</p>
<p><em>See the video from after the show below</em>.</p>
<p><object width="430" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/09Lu7Lu5Dlk&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x006699&amp;color2=0x54abd6&amp;border=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/09Lu7Lu5Dlk&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x006699&amp;color2=0x54abd6&amp;border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="430" height="355"></object></p>
<p>Since launch, Kauffman says that there&#8217;s been a &#8220;big change&#8221; in the way people are interacting with the site. They&#8217;re commenting more and linking more often.</p>
<p>Of course, it might be Kauffman&#8217;s connection with other online media outlets in the music community that could be driving some of those links.</p>
<p>Phrequency has been reaching out to local blogs like <a href="http://www.mikeymcfly.com/">Mikey McFly</a>, <a href="http://vanache.com/">Vanache</a> and <a href="http://www.latenightwallflower.com/">Late Night Wall Flower</a> to foster the community and expand its audience reach. In April, it partnered with <a href="http://www.mcjawn.com/">local arts and culture magazine McJawn</a> to host a <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/calendar/music/Phrequency_and_McJawn_Magazine_Present_Elevator_Fight_and_Akilles_.html">show at Northern Liberties-based Silk City</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a new generation of young, positive bloggers in the city that say &#8216;if we stick together, we can make Philadelphia better,&#8221; she says. &#8220;Everyone&#8217;s trying to make it and trying to create art that&#8217;s meaningful to them and to an audience. That&#8217;s something we can all share.&#8221;</p>
<p><em>When major Philadelphia Web sites change, Technically Philly will find out why in <a href="http://www.technicallyphilly.com/tag/the-redesign"><strong>The Redesign</strong></a>. </em><em>Every Wednesday, <a href="../category/shop-talk"><strong>Shop Talk</strong></a> shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others <a href="../category/shop-talk">here</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Shop Talk: Daniel Delaney of Vendr.TV</title>
		<link>http://technicallyphilly.com/2009/05/06/shop-talk-daniel-delaney-of-vendrtv</link>
		<comments>http://technicallyphilly.com/2009/05/06/shop-talk-daniel-delaney-of-vendrtv#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2009 18:30:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Christopher Wink</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Shop Talk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ben Kessler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Delaney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eden Soto]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[HD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philly versus NYC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[podcast]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unbreaded]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vendr.TV]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://technicallyphilly.com/?p=2289</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Daniel Delaney is sorry. He just finished a bit of a rant about how zoning laws that govern where street vendors can do business are putting a stranglehold on Philadelphia&#8217;s food cart culture, and seemed startled when I said I assumed he was now based in New York. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t mean that as an insult,&#8221; [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-2294 aligncenter" title="delaney" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/delaney.jpg" alt="delaney" width="420" /></p>
<p><a href="http://twitter.com/danieldelaney">Daniel Delaney</a> is sorry.</p>
<p>He just finished a bit of a rant about how zoning laws that govern where street vendors can do business are putting a stranglehold on Philadelphia&#8217;s food cart culture, and seemed startled when I said I assumed he was now based in New York.</p>
<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t mean that as an insult,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I just look at this stuff a bit scientifically.&#8221;</p>
<p>Indeed, Delaney, 23, is taking his food very seriously <a href="http://www.phoodie.info/2009/02/09/food-truck-vendors-with-no-internet-access-or-widely-available-phone-numbers-finally-there-is-a-video-podcast-for-you/">since launching</a> in February <a href="http://Vendr.TV">Vendr.TV</a>, a weekly podcast devoted to finding the best-tasting street food in the world. It was just picked up by a network funder, Delaney says, though he can&#8217;t yet disclose who.</p>
<p>While the University of the Arts alumnus has made that not uncommon trek up the Jersey Turnpike and his podcast&#8217;s stock is on the rise, he might have reason to remember where he first got his taste for food entertainment.</p>
<p>Read what goes into Vendr.TV and how he says our great food city could become a great street food city, too, after the jump.</p>
<p><span id="more-2289"></span>&#8220;I had interest in food, but when I went to school in Philadelphia, my interest exploded,&#8221; says Delaney, who graduated with a multimedia BFA from UArts in May 2008. &#8220;Really, Philadelphia has my favorite food scene. It&#8217;s originally a blue collar city, and I like unpretentious food. With Pennsylvania and its liquor laws, the BYOBs that have developed in Philly are my favorite food scene of all, of anything, I think.&#8221;</p>
<p>He noted South Street mainstay <a href="http://www.pumpkinphilly.com/">Pumpkin</a> and <a href="http://www.littlefishphilly.com/press.php">Little Fish</a>, the celebrated Queen Village haunt, as among his favorites.</p>
<p>But food ain&#8217;t Delaney&#8217;s only thang.</p>
<h3>THE TECHNOLOGY AND PROFIT</h3>
<p>He&#8217;s making a self-financed food podcast look and feel clean cut and professional.</p>
<p>The food geek with bushy black hair and matching rimmed glasses has a rotating crew of three cameramen and a traditional boom operator &#8212; after finding wireless microphones unreliable in the wind and noise of street food. He lucks out by having talented friends &#8212; all of whom are currently working for free.</p>
<p>His team films in HD, mostly on a <a href="http://www.google.com/products?q=Panasonic+HVX+HD&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a&amp;um=1&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;ei=wIIASoveAZfItgee5-2VBw&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=product_result_group&amp;resnum=1&amp;ct=title">Panasonic HVX</a>. Vendr&#8217;s hot film look comes from shooting at 24 frames per second in 720 p &#8212; the actual size of HD &#8212; and also swinging a wide-angle lens.</p>
<p>Delaney proves his diversity of skill by adding to his on-camera work by handling most of the editing, doing so in Final Cut Pro, though his operation is expanding. The show&#8217;s pre-roll graphics were created by motion designer <a href="http://edensoto.com/">Eden Soto</a>, who has done work for <a href="http://revision3.com/diggnation/">Diggnation</a> and Yahoo.</p>
<p>Justifying its professional look and crew, Delaney says he&#8217;s confident in bringing Vendr.TV to profitability.</p>
<p>Delaney, who will apparently<a href="http://www.philebrity.com/2008/08/11/update-rittenhouse-twitter-er-outs-self-offers-password/"> always be known as that guy</a> who <a href="http://danieldelaney.com/projects/playing-the-park/">started a Rittenhouse Square Twitter</a> account, declined to give specifics, but says he&#8217;s in talks for long-term sponsorships, content-sharing and other monetization excitement. There are licensing agreements in the works for distribution online with MySpace and others. He also points to plans for advertising, merchandise sales, micro-donations and even long-term hopes for publishing the best recipes he finds.</p>
<p>Later this month, the WordPress-based site will see a complete redesign.</p>
<h3>IS IT PHILADELPHIA?</h3>
<p>Delaney says he fully intends on Vendr to become a national brand that finds street food around the world, but his academic and culinary ties to Philadelphia make it hard not to call him one of our own.</p>
<p>Two of his first nine episodes were in Philly &#8212; others being in New York, Washington D.C. and at Rutgers University &#8212; including his most recent on <a href="http://vendr.tv/video/jamaican-ds/">Jamaican D&#8217;s near the Community College of Philadelphia</a>, seen below.</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="420" height="256" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="data" value="http://blip.tv/play/guwV_e4Fk5ha%2Em4v" /><param name="src" value="http://blip.tv/play/guwV_e4Fk5ha%2Em4v" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="256" src="http://blip.tv/play/guwV_e4Fk5ha%2Em4v" allowfullscreen="true" data="http://blip.tv/play/guwV_e4Fk5ha%2Em4v"></embed></object></p>
<p>It&#8217;s perhaps important he remember the country&#8217;s fourth largest media market because it&#8217;s <a href="http://www.beerlass.com/">city is one that takes</a><a href="http://www.hollyeats.com/"> </a><a href="http://www.bg-map.com/foods.html">its food very seriously</a>. But it is important Delaney brand himself separately because the food media market is certainly a saturated one (see sidebar at right)</p>
<p>Delaney thought it important enough to <a href="http://vendr.tv/blog/salt-pepper-ketchup/">personally welcome</a> the cluster&#8217;s new entrant, <a href="http://Salt-Pepper-Ketchup.com">Salt.Pepper.Ketchup</a>, which quickly received love from <a href="http://whyy.org/blogs/thesixthsquare/2009/04/15/coverage-of-vendor-carts-approaching-ubiquity-of-carts-themselves/">WHYY</a> and <a href="http://www.uwishunu.com/2009/04/22/salt-pepper-ketchup-new-philly-webshow/">uwishunu</a> after launching.</p>
<div style="margin: 5px; padding: 10px; float: right; width: 185px; background-color: #cccccc;">
<p><strong><em>Philadelphia Food Media:</em></strong><strong></strong></p>
<p><strong>Newsprint</strong>: <a href="http://www.phillymag.com/restaurants/index.html">Philadelphia magazine</a>; <a href="http://www.citypaper.net/food">CityPaper</a>; <a href="http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/food/">PW</a> and <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/restaurants/">the Inquirer</a>, which features <a href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/craig_laban/">Craig Laban</a></p>
<p><strong>Blogs</strong>: <a href="http://philebrity.com">Philebrity</a> spinoff <a href="http://www.phoodie.info/">Phoodie.info</a>; <a href="http://www.messyandpicky.com/">Messy and Picky</a>; <a href="http://foobooz.com/">Foobooz</a>; <a href="http://macandcheesereview.blogspot.com/">Mac &amp; Cheese</a>; <a href="http://www.foodaphilia.com/">Foodaphila</a>; <a href="http://www.philafoodie.blogspot.com/">Philafoodie</a>; <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/technically-not-tech/technically-not-tech-unbreaded">Unbreaded</a>.  And <a href="http://www.blogs.com/topten/top-10-philadelphia-food-blogs/">so many</a> <a href="http://www.prettytothink.typepad.com/">others that</a> <a href="http://www.philafoodie.blogspot.com/">I can&#8217;t</a> <a href="http://phillyfoodanddrink.com/">list</a> <a href="http://livingonthevedge.blogspot.com/">them</a> <a href="http://phillyfoodanddrink.com/">all</a></p>
<p><strong>Podcasts</strong>: <a href="http://Salt-Pepper-Ketchup.com">Salt.Pepper.Ketchup</a>; <a href="http://www.forkyou.tv/">Fork You</a>; <a href="http://www.fwts.net/">Fries with that Shake</a> and an audio podcast from <a href="http://phillyfoodguys.com">Philly Food Guys</a><a href="http://Salt-Pepper-Ketchup.com"></a><a href="http://vendr.tv/blog/salt-pepper-ketchup/"></a></p>
</div>
<p>But Vendr seems simply the most professional product of them all. So it just so happens that the best Philadelphia food podcast isn&#8217;t in Philadelphia at all.</p>
<p>An old head of mine once told me, as we walked on Pine Street near 15th, that there are only two kinds of kids who go to UArts.</p>
<p>&#8220;Those who want to be in Philly,&#8221; he said, looking toward Broad Street and the school&#8217;s landmark Hamilton Hall on the Avenue of the Arts. &#8220;And those who want to be in New York.&#8221;</p>
<p>After graduating, Delaney found himself going to New York more often and staying in Philly less. He decided to leave.</p>
<h3>FOOD PASSION</h3>
<p>But his street vendor obsession came with a senior thesis he did on how design affected business of Philadelphia&#8217;s mobile vendors. That said, the New Jersey-native says he has always had an eye for entrepreneurship, starting with his dog-walking business at 12-years-old &#8212; &#8220;complete with business cards and contracts,&#8221; he says.</p>
<p>&#8220;I particularly believe in low-level entrepreneurship,&#8221; he says, &#8220;And I don&#8217;t think you can get much lower level than a guy chucking hot dogs out of a cart to people on a sidewalk.&#8221;</p>
<p>He promises more Philadelphia-based episodes, including spots on roast pork carts and a cheesesteak crawl, partnering with <a href="http://www.twitter.com/unbreaded">Ben Kessler</a> of <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/tag/unbreaded">Unbreaded</a>, <a href="http://technicallyphilly.com/technically-not-tech/technically-not-tech-unbreaded">whom we have covered</a>. In mid-March, Delaney was shooting at University City&#8217;s <a href="http://phillyfoodguys.com/specialty-shops/ride-the-magic-carpet-university-city-truck-food/">vegetarian cart Magic Carpet</a>.</p>
<p>But because city street vending licenses are tied to specific locations, Delaney says, many cart owners sit on a single corner for decades, relying on the cheapest, most common fare and not taking any chances. Licenses without guaranteed locations, like they are in New York, he says, breed competition and bring more diverse choice.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s here when Delaney seems most excited and passionate &#8212; food legislation.</p>
<p>That enthusiasm and the glut of other food blogs are all possible because of an increasingly better-versed public, he says, which is in thanks to the Food Network.</p>
<p>&#8220;It has built a new vernacular for food and entertainment,&#8221; Delaney says. &#8220;And then in just the last three years, there has been a complete change of how entertainment is being created. The Internet is democratic, and the tools to use it are cheaper than ever.&#8221;</p>
<p>He&#8217;s leveraging that trend of online communities. Vendr.TV will begin to give away merchandise, like T-shirts, to viewers and will soon launch regular &#8220;Five Dollar Dinner&#8221; meet ups.</p>
<p>He hopes it all will help him get further faster in the development of his product, he says. And for that, he isn&#8217;t apologizing.</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="420" height="256" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="data" value="http://blip.tv/play/guwV9JNWk5ha%2Em4v" /><param name="src" value="http://blip.tv/play/guwV9JNWk5ha%2Em4v" /><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="256" src="http://blip.tv/play/guwV9JNWk5ha%2Em4v" allowfullscreen="true" data="http://blip.tv/play/guwV9JNWk5ha%2Em4v"></embed></object></p>
<p><em>Every Wednesday, <a href="../category/shop-talk"><strong>Shop Talk</strong></a> shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others <a href="../category/shop-talk">here</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Shop Talk: Philadelphia Weekly redesign with Keith McGinnis of Review Publishing</title>
		<link>http://technicallyphilly.com/2009/04/15/shop-talk-keith-mcginnis-of-review-publishing</link>
		<comments>http://technicallyphilly.com/2009/04/15/shop-talk-keith-mcginnis-of-review-publishing#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Christopher Wink</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Shop Talk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Center City]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[City Paper]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[departments]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Keith McGinnis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Market West]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Northern Liberties]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philadelphia Weekly]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Review Publishing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Redesign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://technicallyphilly.com/?p=1697</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Update amended: 8:50 p.m. 4/19/09 From time to time in the recent past, one of the most trafficked Web sites in Philadelphia has gotten a major redesign. Unfortunately, there was never one source that covered the whys and the hows. Now there is: Technically Philly. So, here&#8217;s the first in an irregular series of our [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1842" title="philadelphia-weekly" src="http://technicallyphilly.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/philadelphia-weekly-300x205.jpg" alt="philadelphia-weekly" width="300" height="205" /><em></em></p>
<p><em>Update amended: 8:50 p.m. 4/19/09</em></p>
<p><em>From time to time in the recent past, one of the most trafficked Web sites in Philadelphia has gotten a major redesign.</em></p>
<p><em>Unfortunately, there was never one source that covered the whys and the hows. Now there is: Technically Philly.</em></p>
<p><em>So, here&#8217;s the first in an irregular series of our <a href="http://www.technicallyphilly.com/category/shop-talk">Shop Talk</a> department, called <a href="http://www.technicallyphilly.com/tag/the-redesign">The Redesign</a>.</em></p>
<p>Both of Philadelphia&#8217;s big alternative-weeklies have changed their online looks in recent months. It just so happens that the one that came out last may have started first.</p>
<p>At the end December, <a href="http://www.citypaper.net">CityPaper</a>, founded in 1981 by <a href="http://schimmel.com">Bruce Schimmel</a>, went from <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080211094345/http://www.citypaper.net/">this</a> to <a href="http://www.citypaper.net/">this</a>. And then, early last month, <a href="http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com">Philadelphia Weekly</a> made its own jump from <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080113011121/http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/">a cluttered display</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;We knew we needed to step up our platform online, not just re-skin the site,&#8221; says <a href="http://twitter.com/kbot215">Keith McGinnis</a>, <a href="http://www.reviewpublishing.com/contact.html">the IT <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Web</span> head over at Review Publishing</a>, PW&#8217;s Samson Street-based parent company. &#8220;Now we have a platform that can help us rise to the occasion.&#8221;</p>
<p><span id="more-1697"></span>Though PW&#8217;s move came just months after a big redesign from CityPaper, their primary rival, it wasn&#8217;t much more than coincidence, McGinnis says. Review Publishing and PW staff began sketching the overhaul at the end of 2007.</p>
<p>&#8220;From a design perspective, it was about making [the site] look more pleasing. From a traffic perspective it was about decreasing bounce rate and increasing time on site,&#8221; McGinnis said. The changes include lots of new user interaction and two new robust listings services.</p>
<p><img class="alignright" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitter_production/profile_images/69676947/keef-small.jpg" alt="" width="200" />It&#8217;s meant to be a major step for the weekly, which was founded in 1971 as the Welcomat, and focused on moving their product off the homepage, which previously got almost all PW&#8217;s traffic.</p>
<p>Their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system">CMS</a> remains <a href="http://www.clickability.com/">Clickability</a> and, though McGinnis declined to give details, the site also uses a variety of third party services integrated for different functions. The new design was outsourced to <a href="http://www.o3world.com/">O3 World</a>, a Northern Liberties firm owned by Mike Gadsby, Keith Scandone and Mike Terkanian &#8212; &#8220;shout out to Gads, Keith and Terk,&#8221; McGinnis, 31, says.</p>
<p>Of course, PW has its detractors, most notably former staff writer <a href="http://www.phillymag.com/articles/philadelphia_meet_your_future/page1">Joey Sweeney</a>, who has used his popular city blog <a href="http://www.philebrity.com/2009/02/23/philebritys-five-immutable-laws-of-what-happens-when-alt-weeklies-redo-their-websites/">Philebrity to rail on the design &#8212; before it was even launched</a>. He took particular issue with alternative weeklies cobbling together large databases or other functions that have established competition, like listings.</p>
<p>The new PW site has done just that, including detailed <a href="http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/real-estate/">real estate listings</a> and <a href="http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/events/">an events calendar</a>, but McGinnis, who is celebrating his eighth year with PW&#8217;s parent company, says the fight isn&#8217;t as lost as Sweeney suggests.</p>
<p>&#8220;In my opinion, it&#8217;s not really about competing with Craigslist. It&#8217;s about having an audience who trusts your brand, and then giving them a classifieds-type marketplace to buy and sell items. The one advantage we do have is locality,&#8221; McGinnis says.</p>
<p>The site now features an expanded registered-user area and PW now offers embedding code for its self-hosted video. Users can also now comment and rate all content and review bars, restaurants, events, and other businesses in the listings section. Readers also now have the ability to submit bands and musicians for PW to review, and suggest events, restaurant, bar, realtors or other businesses to their guides.</p>
<p>&#8220;From an audience perspective, it&#8217;s the overall relief that the site is much more pleasing to look at and much, much more functional,&#8221; McGinnis says. &#8220;A few geeky items: the headline font on the site for all content is swapped out with flash using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Inman_Flash_Replacement">SiFR</a>. So the headlines arent a standard web browser-safe font. You dont see it everywhere, it looks hot, and its a tip of the cap to print in a new media world. Were getting to take advantage of our vendors Akamai delivery network, something I never though Id get to work with.&#8221;</p>
<p>One back-end feature he most like is the new automation of Print2Web and Web2Print.</p>
<p>&#8220;So anything that starts in either workflow can be crossed over to the other rather seamlessly,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Im really proud of this. Most print publishers are dealing with it. It&#8217;s a well known challenge of making the transition from newspaper to new media publisher.&#8221;</p>
<p>He also says there were profit-driven changes.</p>
<p>&#8220;There was an effort to create a balance of display ad inventory, traditional banner advertising, sponsorship opportunit[ies] and new methods,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Mostly where IAB standards were placed, how many per page, what type of ad units would be allowed, etcetera.&#8221;</p>
<p>PW is making additional revenue with its new &#8220;premium listings,&#8221; ad boxes posted throughout the site landings and placed heavily in their various guides. Entries from those guides purchased the higher profile space, giving an event, band or business more visibility, he says.</p>
<p>When it comes to an alt-weekly bringing the daily traffic necessary to generate online revenue, McGinnis won&#8217;t discuss PW&#8217;s plans in detail but says he isn&#8217;t too threatened by fears of declining advertising revenue.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s really about finding alternatives to banner ads,&#8221; McGinnis says, &#8220;It all comes back to the basics. Generate an audience, captivate them with content, organize relevant advertisers around that audience and youve got a business model that will work.&#8221;</p>
<p>During the next six to eight months <a href="http://www.ACWeekly.com">ACWeekly.com</a> and <a href="http://www.SouthPhillyReview.com">SouthPhillyReview.com</a> will see the same platform shift. But it started with PW. After the beginnings of that design, McGinnis says it&#8217;s hard to imagine the staff could have known what the alt-weekly world would have looked like when it launched.</p>
<p>&#8220;It just so happens, one and a half years later, the economy had tanked and <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20090222_Inquirer_owner_files_for_bankruptcy.html">Philly newspapers were going bankrupt</a> the week we relaunched,&#8221; he says. &#8220;It&#8217;s either the best time or the worst time to be in the media industry. The difference is only where you are standing.&#8221;</p>
<p><em>Follow Keith on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/kbot215">here</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/phillyweekly">Philly Weekly here</a>.</em></p>
<h3><strong>What do you think about their redesign? What&#8217;s good and what isn&#8217;t?</strong></h3>
<p><em>When major Philadelphia Web sites change, Technically Philly will find out why in <a href="http://www.technicallyphilly.com/tag/the-redesign"><strong>The Redesign</strong></a>. Every Wednesday, <a href="../category/shop-talk"><strong>Shop Talk</strong></a> shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others <a href="../category/shop-talk">here</a>.</em></p>
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