http://www.transmodern.net/news/ en ajmatera@earthlink.net Copyright 2009 2009-12-01T08:57:22+00:00 {title_permalink=news} {title_permalink=news}#When:07:57:22Z I recently heard Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner of Blue State Digital, speak at a breakfast at the Harvard Club sponsored by Quantum Media. BSD managed Obama’s online fundraising and volunteer efforts. During the off-the-record talk Gensemer repeated what he’s said in interviews, but been mostly ignored, that when it comes to raising money on the web “email is still the killer app.” Although he didn’t address it specifically in his talk, social networking, including Facebook’s vaunted “Causes”, has been a disapointment. In an online interview Gensemer explained the real key to … Strategy 2009-12-01T07:57:22+00:00 {title_permalink=news} {title_permalink=news}#When:15:41:38Z In a time of dizzying change, it’s sometimes best to take the stance: “Don’t just do something, stand there.” Those publishers who, from the start. charged their readers for internet access to their content are now looking like geniuses, as this recent article about the Finanicial Times shows. It wasn’t that these execs could see the future. It was just that their business instincts told them to resist fads and stick with proven publishing models. “The growth of paid online services under the Financial Times banner shows that the paper was right to maintain pay walls … Strategy 2009-08-27T15:41:38+00:00 {title_permalink=news} {title_permalink=news}#When:11:56:08Z In the January/February 2009 Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn examines the real possibility that the New York Times may not survive the year—at least in print. Never mind how this will impact journalism. Hirschorn understands the real reason many of us are dreading the loss of the Times: “For those of us old enough to still care about going out on a Sunday morning for our doorstop edition of the Times, it will mean the end of a certain kind of civilized ritual that has defined most of our adult lives.” Marshall McLuhan expressed this better than anyone else, when he … Strategy 2009-08-25T11:56:08+00:00 {title_permalink=news} {title_permalink=news}#When:11:23:42Z Where is the king of open source database engines, MySQL, and where is it going? For many years during the beginning of the 21st Century, MySQL enjoyed a stable and ever growing popular place in the open source database engine space. As its core feature set, its speed and its stability grew with each release through the 3.x and 4.x cycles, MySQL became the default database engine for a majority of the world's internet applications. Founder Michael Widenius built a loyal following due to his candid and open approach to delivering bug-free software without the usual and unmerited hype that … Code 2009-08-25T11:23:42+00:00 {title_permalink=news} {title_permalink=news}#When:19:31:10Z h/t Signal vs. Noise Design 2009-08-21T19:31:10+00:00 {title_permalink=news} {title_permalink=news}#When:19:26:20Z subhead | And so it is today. When people demand to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. Read the rest of this provoking … Strategy 2009-08-21T19:26:20+00:00 {title_permalink=portfolio} {title_permalink=portfolio}#When:04:42:58Z When Transmodern Media took on the redesign of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology website, it was an unusual case. Most websites that badly needed redesigning were usually especially bad at offering great content or interacting with site visitors. Not so for the SPC site. | When Transmodern Media took on the redesign of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology website, it was an unusual case. Most websites that badly needed redesigning were usually especially bad at offering great content or interacting with site visitors. Not so for the SPC site. It was already doing a great job … 2008-12-03T04:42:58+00:00 {title_permalink=portfolio} {title_permalink=portfolio}#When:13:28:11Z In 2000, TMM Managing Director Angelo Matera was called in by Circle Media for advice on what to do with its money-losing, bi-weekly, tabloid newspaper, Faith & Family. The solution: reduce frequency, upgrade the product. Why not, Matera reasoned, produce an attractive, high-quality magazine every two months, instead of a mediocre newspaper every two weeks? In a Catholic market saturated with dreary publications, a quality magazine would stand out—and as a bi-monthly, it would cost a lot less, too. A plan was quickly set in motion to convert the staid newsprint publication into a glossy magazine in the style of … 2008-08-13T13:28:11+00:00 {title_permalink=portfolio} {title_permalink=portfolio}#When:13:08:52Z In 2005, the National Catholic Register was faced with a problem. While it was still the leading Catholic weekly newspaper in the nation, its presence on the web was almost non-existent. The NCRegister.com website was unattractive and not functional. Very little archived content was available on the site. And there was no mechanism in place to manage site access for paid subscribers. The root of the problem was that there was no one on staff to guide website development in a coherent direction. To solve the problem, the newspaper’s management outsourced website development to Transmodern Media. TMM worked with the … 2008-08-11T13:08:52+00:00