We've been around now for over a year-- and in that time, we've grown tremendously in terms of readers, and of course the way we disseminate the information that makes up RANmagazine.   Trevor, our esteemed publisher, and I get into lots of discussions about how I think magazines and most other general periodicals will die a slow death, while he believes magazines will be around for years and years.  One thing we do agree on though-- RANmagazine, the printed version feels like butter when you thumb through it.

See, we have a crack team of illustrators, layout designers, photographers that make up our team... Not to mention a damn good printer that ensures the finest paper and best ink we can afford will make every issue look like a collector's edition. Have you ever gone over someones house who is a true bibliophile? You know, that person that's probably a member of Oprah's book club, and has every issue of Omni, GQ, and National Geographic in a special bookshelf in the den?  They don't even call it a den-- it's The Reading Room...  I do-- my uncle Randy. And he looked at RAN and was impressed. But wait-- I thought we were talking about RAN's website, right?

My task,  is to create a website worthy of being every bit as good as the printed magazine.  Becoming the place that promotes and also creates. RAN is about building community and knocking down barriers.  Informing and proclaiming.  The website is a far-reaching missionary of this doctrine.  Hence-- today I am totally revamping the website to do just that.

Since the magazine is broken into sections and departments, it makes sense to do that here.  Just like we have sections that mirror the body's 5 senses-- See, Listen, Taste, and so forth, we're placing our stories here right on the front page, just like that.

The site is fully mobile capable-- Just go to m.ranmagazine.com -- or scan the QRcode on the front cover of the magazine with your keitai.  If you have an iDevice (iPhone, iPod, et al) or Android Phone (samsung epic, Sony X10, etc) then just visit www.ranmagazine.com like normal...  The site will auto load an optimized webapp just for you.

This also goes for our Online Editions of RAN.  In the right-hand column, you can see every issue of RAN, ready to be read. Plus if you have an iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle, or whatever-- you can  download them into your device-- all without connecting your device to your PC. So you're never far away from the latest issue of The Voice of Nagoya.

Our internet community is spread out across a lot of different mediums; we have 400+ fans on Facebook, and over 50 people and other news outlets are following us on Twitter.  Sometimes we'll plan an event or cover a story, and the conversation gets all jumbled up. So beginning yesterday, I installed some tools and enhanced the ones we already had, all in the name of tying things together.  If you notice the top and bottom of your web browser when you load the page (Only the latest versions of IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari) there are now toolbars that give you complete access to the entire site's navigation, sharing and posting tools, and also instant messaging and video chatting functionality.

After doing research on our site analytics, we find most people visiting the site usually come here after seeing a story shared on Facebook, or tweeted through Twitter.  This means most people are already using these social networking sites when they land on RANmagazine.com.  Our site will now automatically know this and log you into our site using those identities.  No more having to remember yet another login and password...

The site IM and video chat are both connected as well--Feel free to play around with it for now-- but we have some events planned that will use this space to host "town meetings" and take Nagoya's pulse.  It was always our goal to make RANmagazine.com something akin to a street corner where everyone checks in, sees what's going on in the area today, chats a bit about what's current, then goes and does their thing...  So with this in mind, welcome to the new RANmagazine.com!

Let me know what you think, as always-- Comment below!! Go somewhat easy though-- We're still finalizing some things here and there...  Also if something isn't working properly please let me know so I can look into it!!

Thanx,
J L Gatewood
Chief Editor and Web Monkey
RANmagazine