For immediate release: Thursday, April 26th, 2012
Contact:
Andrew Sherry, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, (305) 908-2677, media@knightfoundation.org
Meghann Millard, Unspace Interactive, (416) 977-0269, meghann@unspace.ca
Jeff Reifman, NewsCloud, jeff@newscloud.com
NewsCloud Community Starter Released on Rails 3
Rails experts Unspace Interactive to offer cloud-based managed services
SEATTLE, WA. — Social media developer NewsCloud has released its open source Community Starter on Ruby on Rails 3. Community Starter is a simple, affordable platform to launch social media communities and add interactive features to existing websites. NewsCloud developed Community Starter with a $190,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Community Starter sites connect users to each other with news and features such as blogging, discussion forums, photo and video galleries, classifieds, peer to peer questions and answers, idea gathering and event calendars. Every Community Starter feature is tightly connected to popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google.
Visit www.communitystarter.org to watch an introductory video and to launch your own social media community. “No other platform provides such a turnkey suite of rich interactive features than you’ll find in Community Starter,” said Jeff Reifman, NewsCloud Founder. “You can even launch your community with news content from your favorite Twitter feeds.”
“NewsCloud’s Community Starter is a simple and affordable tool to integrate news sites with some of the biggest social networks. It is especially useful for local community news sites and community foundations supporting local journalism,” said Jose Zamora, Knight Foundation Journalism Program Officer. “NewsCloud’s Community Starter allows community foundations and local news sites to reach their communities on the social networks they use most, increasing their reach and their capacity to inform and engage.”
Rails experts, Unspace Interactive, are now offering cloud-based managed services for the Community Starter application. Organizations seeking hosting support and customization can contact Unspace to review their requirements.
Open source developers can participate in the evolution of the Community Starter platform by visiting our github page http://github.com/newscloud. Beginning May 1st, Unspace will assume management of the Community Starter open source repository, providing enhancements, developer support and routine maintenance and updates.
About NewsCloud
Launched in 2005, NewsCloud’s Community Starter provides robust open source community engagement solutions for news and community organizations. Visit newscloud.com or follow @newscloud on Twitter for additional information and updates. NewsCloud’s Knight-funded research on the engagement of young people in Facebook is available at www.newscloud.com/research.
About Unspace
Unspace Interactive is a premier Ruby on Rails software development team located in Toronto, Canada. Unspace was Canada's first Rails consultancy and has been at the forefront of this community since 2004. Unspace has contributed major open source projects like Haml and Sass and has hosted widely acclaimed conferences like RubyFringe and FutureRuby. You can learn more at unspace.ca or follow them on Twitter at @unspace.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950, the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.
