Cartoons are no joke for King Digital and Optaros

By Jason Slater
Thursday, 12 June 2008

Cartoons are no joke for King Digital and Optaros With the evolution of the Web into Web 2.0 (42 things about Web 2.0 in 2008) Widgets are rapidly becoming a popular way of enhancing and complementing content on a Web site. Recently I was fortunate enough to chat with John Soppe, Managing Director of King Digital and Jim Munz, Product Manager at Optaros, IT consultants who are breathing new life into cartoon strips and panels, through a novel new widget, by engaging readers through the clever application of Web 2.0 technologies.

Typically Widgets have been seen in a contained dashboard environment such as iGoogle and Windows Sidebar but are now becoming a popular mechanism for enhancing all manner of Web sites and services. My own Blog (www.jasonslater.co.uk) for example, includes several Widgets that I feel add value to and complement the Blog itself. Adding value can help build and maintain subscribers and readership and for many others they also offer support for valuable revenue streams. Web based Widgets, Plug-ins, Gadgets and Gizmos demonstrate the flexibility of go-anywhere Web services and many libraries of Widgets are freely available around the Internet.

The Comic Renaissance

From time to time I hear the view that cartoons, especially single panel cartoons and cartoon strips in their printed form, are in decline however, in my experience, the opposite is true on new digital media platforms and there are many cartoon strips and panels out there that are enjoying growth thanks to new media delivery mechanisms. In addition, fantasy based comics are enjoying their own renaissance with big Hollywood names tying up with comic producers as they look to tap into and broaden their creative outlets (just look at the Hollywood blockbusters lined up this year, many of them are based on comic creations). Cartoons will invariably follow with Garfield in particular providing a great example with popular movies building upon their printed sibling.

These new delivery mechanisms are allowing comics and cartoons to enjoy a renaissance because of the increase in demand for online digital content as the popularity and flexibility of the Internet coupled with the ever increasing demand for unique and original entertainment, allows new cartoons (both niche and mainstream), old favourites and independent cartoonists to build up loyal reader bases that may never have been picked up or even noticed years ago – What The Duck by Aaron Johnson for example. As an aspiring cartoonist myself (Monk and his I.T. Junk, and soon Bev and Catey) this renaissance is great news as it offers opportunities for cartoonists like myself to reach out to and connect with readers in ways that have previously been impossible.

New Media Opportunities

Syndication is many a cartoonists dream but how does a cartoon syndicate manage the increasing demand for cartoons out there and take advantage of new opportunities in the digital world? This was the problem facing King Digital, the digital arm of King Features Syndicate, and they evaluated several potential solutions finally choosing to work with Optaros who managed to “combine all the required functionality and tick all technical and business boxes“. In particular King Digital were “keen to maximise the community capabilities of Web 2.0 whilst offering feature rich content“.

Optaros, a consulting firm delivering Internet applications that utilise the latest open source technologies, are bridging the gap between content providers and the consumer and in doing so delivered, in just eight weeks, an application that combines syndicated cartoon strips with Web 2.0 Widgets, in a syndicated Widget model, that can be deployed quickly and easily practically anywhere on the Web – this is Comics Kingdom™.

Using the Widget

“The Comics Kingdom™ widget is launched from a small frame linking back to Comics Kingdom™ servers and delivers thumbnails of several popular cartoons that can be navigated by clicking on the left and right navigation arrows. The title of the cartoon is shown at the bottom of the ad whilst the top bar offers a drop down scrolling selection of cartoon titles to choose from. Moving the mouse pointer to the middle of the ad produces a light-bulb icon which, when clicked, launches the widget and selected cartoon within the online comic section of the Times Union Web Site (www.timesunion.com/comics). The images shown here are from the Times Union Web site (www.timesunion.com).

Reaping the Benefits

Comics Kingdom™ involved the design and development of an application to present and manage King Digital’s syndicated comic strips for TimesUnion.com, the online news site for The Albany Times Union. There are currently 63 cartoons on offer and each has a 30 day archive offering over 1,800 cartoons – and this is set to grow as King Digital look to leverage their current assets and generate new content and services through this application.

At the back-end of the system are a number of administrative features including management of services, analytics and advertising management systems.

Optaros say “Since its launch in January 2008, TimesUnion.com has had a 94 percent increase in traffic and an 86 percent increase in ad inventory on the comics section.”

A positive indication for aspiring cartoonists was provided by Patti Hart, general manager at TimesUnion.com who said:

“The comics are one of the best-read sections of the newspaper and this new content area offers our online readers a colorful, interactive experience that we expect will keep them returning to the site – a definite plus for any potential advertiser.”

Now the Widget is in successful operation King Digital are already looking to the future with new ideas planned including translation into different languages, improvements to the navigation interface, a new “Fill In The Caption” section where readers can suggest their own captions to cartoons and share with others. New digital only content is also being considered, so too user generated content. Mobile users will not lose out either as King Digital are already looking at ways of syndicating to mobile platforms, both in the US Domestic and in the UK.

Watch out too for new Kingdoms as King Digital look to leverage existing vertical content such as Politics in perhaps a new Political Kingdom?

Building the Application

Optaros have applied a number of Web 2.0 techniques to the delivery of this new platform combining aspects of Open Source and Service Oriented Architectures with effective and useful interactive interface designs.

Optaros say “Readers can rate, comment on, create favorites and share comics. Additionally, they can learn about each comic’s creator and its characters. Users can browse their favorite comics, navigating through 30 days of archives of more than 60 different comic strips. Dynamic design features enhance the user experience with visually stimulating images, including a navigation bar with comic character artwork and the ability to choose an avatar to represent readers posting online comments. “

Although the widget can be invoked using just a single line of JavaScript the Comics Kingdom™ application is much more complex and is built using:

PHP – a scripting language, popular for building Web based applications. PHP describes itself as “PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.“. Many of the sites I run are fundamentally based on PHP – I talk more about the application of PHP, and other languages, on SL8R – Codezone.

http://www.php.net/

Symfony – An open source framework built on PHP for building Web applications. Symfony describes itself as “…provides an architecture, components and tools for developers to build complex web applications faster.“.

http://www.symfony-project.org/

MySQL – A popular open source database platform often considered as the “de facto” database standard for open source Web based development. In February 2008 Sun announced the completion of its acquisition of MySQL AB, read more in their announcement “Sun Microsystems Announces Completion of MySQL Acquisition; Paves Way for Secure, Open Source Platform to Power the Network Economy“.

http://www.mysql.com/

MySQL is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc. in the United States, the European Union and other countries.

OpenX – Open Source Advertising Service. OpenX recently announced their 2.5 beta is available for download. OpenX describe their service as “The free, open source ad server trusted by more than 30,000 web publishers in over 100 countries around the world. OpenX is a powerful ad serving solution that puts control over online advertising back in the hands of publishers.“.

http://www.openx.org/

AJAX – Asynchronous Java and XML. Ajax is a combination of technologies designed for supporting interactive applications for use on the Web. Ajax is often realised through the use of its components to update parts of a Web page without causing a complete refresh.

Dynamic JSON – Java Script Notation – creating data objects on the fly. An alternative to XML notation that is more lightweight and more directly aimed at the speedy exchange of raw data.

Google Analytics – Analyses detailed Web site visitor information
http://www.google.com/analytics/

REFERENCES

www.optaros.com/campaigns/hearst-case-study – Optaros: Hearst Case Study
www.timesunion.com – Times Union
www.kingfeatures.com – King Features
www.kingfeatures.com/sales/kol.htm – King Digital
www.hearst.com – Hearst Corporation
www.optaros.com – Optaros
www.monkandhisitjunk.com – Monk and his I.T. Junk
42 things about Web 2.0 in 2008, part 1 of 3 – www.JasonSlater.co.uk

Technorati Tags: widget,web 2.0,optaros,king digital,comic,cartoon,syndication

One comment so far

Arlen Coupland says:

Monday, 23 June 2008 at

A very nice write-up. Hopefully OpenX is doing the project well and some good use of the new API in 2.5-beta is being explored.

Cheers,
Arlen Coupland
OpenX