If you are a small business owner, auctioneer, real estate agent, restaurant owner, etc., you undoubtedly have or know that you need to have a website. A website is more than just an online flier that you can use to show your business.  You should think about it as a digital extension of your physical space.  In your office, do you have bright pink walls with green text with maybe some flashing glittery thing bouncing in the corner?  If you were walking downtown and looked into someone's shop and it looked like their website, would you go in?  Chances are, you wouldn't. 

Research has shown that you online visitors know within 50 milliseconds whether or not they are going to use your website or if they are just going to close out of it. 

If you do already have a website, let me ask you a couple questions. 

   1. Are you able to update the website on your own, or do you have to call for updates?
   2. Do you have to use additional software to update your site?
   3. How long does it take for those updates to actually happen?
   4. How well has your site adapted to recent web standards?  Were you even informed that your site is falling into obsolescence?
   5. Is the design agency you used still in business?

KRVN and the Rural Radio Network were created principally to further the cause of agriculture and rural businesses.  We're here to help, and you can build upon our reputation to build a site you will be proud to own.  Together with Radio Web Services, we are offering design, hosting, and website management services that you can't find anywhere else.

Radio Web Services' unique website management system allows you to build great looking, well functioning pages without any additional software or training.  You don't need to hire a web nerd to update your sites, it truly is easy enough that anyone can do it.  Using a patent-pending process, you are able to edit the content just as you will see it on your website.  In addition, it has systems designed specifically for:
    - Blog and News Posts
    - Calendars of Events
    - Inventory Management (full e-commerce coming soon!)
    - Photo Galleries
    - And much more

If you would like more information, please contact your existing KRVN Sales Representative or feel free to email me and I will help you get connected with the right person!

Hi internet explorer using friends.  I understand that you may have had a bad experience with updating your browser in the past, but... It's time to put that behind you and upgrade your browser a touch.  Click on Help and then About real quick and note the version number.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

What's it say? If it is below version 6, then you're in the 1.1% of internet users that are running an extremely buggy and security-flawed version of Internet Explorer.  If your machine hasn't been hacked yet, it will. You should upgrade with a quickness, because you are seeing a very poor representation of the internet.  Internet explorer 5 has no idea how to display modern websites, and I don't know of any serious webmasters that actually make an effort to make sure their site is going to look perfect on your browser.  It would take more time to make a site IE 5 friendly than it took to write the site in the first place. 

If it is at version 6, then you are among the 30.1% of users that haven't quite made the jump to the latest version.  You're close, but as you probably notice on a lot of websites, IE6 doesn't handle CSS well... at all.  Here at KRVN, we spend several hours each month combing through our site to fix styling bugs that only you and other Internet Explorer 6 users see.  Other sites probably don't even go that far, so you're likely seeing a very sad version of the internet :(  There are also a lot of security vulnerabilities that are unlikely patched on your system, so you should run q quick windows update and get those checked out.

If you upgrade to IE 7, then you will get improved website rendering, faster browsing speeds, and several other enhancements like a phishing filter and tabbed browsing.  Firefox has had tabbed browsing and other great features for several years, but I digress. Webmasters everywhere will thank you for upgrading.  It makes our lives so much easier, and it also keeps your computer a bit safer as you browse the net.   

Please be safe online, keep your systems updated, patched, and happy!

My friend at Sprint alerted me yesterday morning to some happening in the cell phone world that I thought you all might find interesting. CTIA is the International Wireless Association for the Wireless Telecom Industry (yet for some reason their initials don't match their name). Every year they hold a big conference, which as my friend from Sprint says, "Is the WWDC of cell company conferences." They get together and discuss news and new technology, basically.

Some interesting tidbits from their conference from April 1:

• 84% of Americans have cell phones (think about how many households have more than one...two...three cell phones.
• Cell users worldwide used over 2 trillion minutes in 2007, up 18% over 2006.
• 48 bllion text messages were delivered in Dec of 2007 alone. 1.6 billion messages per day, up 157% from Dec of 2006
• The cell industry reported revenue of $71 Billion, with $23 Billion coming from data services alone

Obviously text messaging is becoming very popular. I text more than I talk these days, and I almost always text before I call someone to see if they are going to have time to talk. I text my boss, I receive txt messages from Google Calendar reminding me of things, Sandy (free online personal assistant) txt messages me whenever she needs to remind me of something, and email is constantly flowing through my phone.

KRVN txt messages you with the very latest market data if you subscribe to our Mobile Markets, and I can imagine a time in the very near future when you will be able to send a txt message to our on-air studio with song requests, contest entries, etc. Imagine Adam saying, "...to win tickets, be the 38th person to send me a txt message at 1234!"

I hope you are all ready, because there are going to be some VERY fun changes coming to our websites. We just returned from the RadioInk conference in San Jose, which was all about making radio stations' websites more useful for you, the listener/viewer. We are going to be adding some features that will make it more interactive on every level. We want to know what you think of our news stories, so you'll be able to thumbs-up or thumbs-down a story, for example.

Here are a couple of highlights from just today:

Fun Barge - If you are a member of Stafford's fan club (Facebook) and you add him as a friend, then he will announce your birthday when it comes around. I think he is also planning on letting members of his fan club in on contests and other fun stuff before the rest of the listeners get a chance. So you get a little bonus for being a fan :)

Twitter - Everyone I know that has a facebook account checks their news feed every hour to see what is going on with their friends. Twitter takes this idea to the next level by giving you quicker updates without having to open a web browser. When your friends update their status or respond to something you have said, you'll get a little note in the corner of your screen that goes away after a couple seconds. It just pops up, lets you read it, and goes away. it's very easy to use and after you get used to it, it isn't distracting at all. In our effort to stay ahead of the curve, we have started publishing our news headlines on twitter. If you don't have an account, register for free on Twitter.com , then go to http://www.twitter.com/krvn and click the "Follow" button. Every time our news guys publish a story, you'll get a notification before anyone else. You'll know what's new up to 40 minutes before the rest of the internet visitors! You can also type a message and reply back to us, so you can let us know what you thought of a story.

We have much, much more coming, but we have only had a day to digest the material from the conference and we're not sure how much to unleash on you all at once :) Get ready, though, because KRVN.com is about to really become YOUR site.

- Bryan (http://twitter.com/bryanthompson )

Earlier today, Steve Jobs announced (among other things) a new model in their Macbook line of laptops. I have been waiting for this announcement for months and months. Speculation ran wild and people went through great lengths to create mockups of what they thought an Apple ultra-portable laptop would look like.  Apple had hinted at such a machine for months, but there was never any confirmation, so it was left to us to dream and hope that such a product existed.  Being a huge mac fan and resident nerd here at KRVN, I figured I'd throw my opinion out there now that it is official.

This is the laptop I've been waiting for for the last 8 months, and I couldn't be more excited about it.  It is the smallest, fastest, best-looking laptop in its class, and it will work perfectly for the kind of work I do (programming, graphic design, writing).  I had to qualify that statement, because this laptop isn't for everyone.  If you don't already have a Mac or PC at home that you use regularly, then you don't need this laptop.  This machine is for people that are okay with not having a cd-rom drive and extra "stuff" to lug around.  The hard drive is a moderate 80gb, it has 2 gigs of ram, 13.3" widescreen, full-keyboard, one USB slot, a micro DVI port, and power port.  That's it.  No cd-rom, firewire, extra ports.  It weighs 3 lbs and is .76" thick at its tallest point, but it tapers down to a mere .16".  That makes this laptop as small as (if not smaller than) a one-subject notebook.  Add in 5 hours of battery life and I can't imagine a better machine for people who are on the move. 

The best gallery I have seen can be found here.