Company Description:
It is one of the largest news, information and communications organizations in the US. The newspaper prospered under Kinmouth’s guidance and grew to be the dominant daily newspaper in the market. Each successive publisher in the Press’s long history has upheld the same high journalistic standards as its founder. In addition to its print resources, the Asbury Park Press offers an array of internet services through IN Jersey, its multimedia division, including Web site development and online advertising. Electronic versions of the Asbury Park Press and Home News Tribune, are available on the web.
Project:
New Jersey’s Tax Crush Program
Business Challenge:
Asbury Park Press’s need was to come up with an 8 day web based program to share their articles and study on the New Jersey’s Tax situation. The program was named “Fighting New Jersey’s Tax Crush”, and needed to portray the seriousness of the high tax situation in the state of New Jersey. The business challenge was to come up with a fully interactive user aided presentation which could serve the need of brining the situation to the end users (in this case their subscribers and readers) notice. Since this was going to be a micro site, APP wanted the design to be very considerable and to be compatible with their existing website. The program involved a lot of interactive graphics and charts.
“Fighting New Jersey’s Tax Crush”
APP’s “Fighting New Jersey’s Tax Crush” program was developed and deployed in a record time of 1 month keeping the quality of the work intact and just as expected. Content in the program was segregated day wise and would last for a span of 8 days, where only day one would be active on initiation and appropriate day tabs would be activated as days pass. The application comprised of “Tax Pain” and “Town Rank” charts developed in flash and driven by PHP and XML, all charts were completely interactive having responses designed for several user inputs. The program also comprised of individual state maps of USA comparing NJ taxes with other states. IBM’s Many eyes was integrated to allow user to have a visual search on speeches. The application had articles and research content as well, which had a management console for the administrator allowing the administrator to manage content whenever required.
Solution:
Various comparison charts using dynamic data, Whole USA map with county wise tax comparison. Multiple articles facility.
Benefits Of Solution:
- AIT’s idea of using PHP and flash for the development of the program came in very handy for APP as far as integrating the program application with their existing website was concerned.
- Visually appealing charts and interactive graphics gave end users a great experience and portrayed the seriousness of the issue very well.
- Since XML was used instead of flat files of traditional database, end users were saved from waiting too long for the content to load.
- All page and articles were provided with a backend control panel to manage content, this also helped APP to add/ embed videos whenever and wherever necessary.
- Popularity of the program grew very quickly as the design was very content oriented unlike other special reports.