Enlightened Web and Mobile Solutions
Why Media Lantern?
Passion
Love what you do, do what you love!
Our team members raise
families, build airplanes, hike the Rockies, homebrew beer, and
play in bands. But despited our varied personal interests, we are
united by a common purpose and passion for building amazing Web
and mobile experiences.
Top Talent
Ever feel like you don't have an agency's full attention, or you're
only receiving junior-level attention? Big or small, every project
matters to us, and we staff every project with senior level talent.
Our cloud architects, developers, and designers have experience with
companies of all sizes and types, from small solo-run projects up to
50+ member worldwide development teams.
Professionalism
Your reputation. Your budget. Your deadline. These are
critical to you, so they're critical to us. At Media Lantern, this
principle guides our work every day.
We strongly believe in this approach, and our customers agree: our
average relationship is 5+ years. Contact us today and find out why
Media Lantern's customers keep coming back for more!
Recent Work
News Rush: The News Social Network
News Rush is the leading news social network, allowing users to connect and share content around
mutually shared topics of interest. By adding context to the act of sharing, News Rush
reduces the "noise level" commonly found in other social networks, alllowing users to focus on
just those topics they want to see.
Media Lantern inherited this project as a server-rendered Django application. Although the
initial version was sophisticated, hosting costs were high, performance was low, and the mobile
apps were clumsy to use. While Media Lantern's UX designers streamlined the mobile apps, our
cloud architects rewrote the back-end in NodeJS and "serverless" techniques, yielding significant
performance improvements and cost savings. The result: a better mobile experience and over 80%
reduction in monthly hosting costs!
Aviation Awarnys: Charter Airline Expense Tracking
Awarnys is a specialized application for expense tracking in the charter aircraft industry. The company
has a unique approach based on the founder's experience with charter airlines that makes it ideally
suited to this purpose. Although Media Lantern can provide one-stop shopping with in-house designers,
Web and mobile developers, and cloud architects, we are happy to partner with other firms of our
customers' choosing as well.
This project is an example of Media Lantern's flexibility: The project was a "rescue" collaboration,
working with two other firms. Media Lantern handled the mobile app, rewriting it in React Native both to
modernize it and add new functionality to match ongoing work in the Web interface. React Native allowed
delivery in both iOS and Android, which was previously considered cost-prohibitive.
First County Bank
First County Bank is a 16-branch, full service financial instution in Fairfield County, CT. It is a very
active community bank and as such, its Web site is not the static "brochure" many sites end up being.
Instead, its marketing team is constantly publishing new events, product information, surveys, and other
items to drive engagement on the site.
Active editorial work on the site meant entry-level solutions such as Wordpress would not meet the Bank's
needs. Media Lantern implemented a full-workflow publishing solution based on the Drupal CMS, including
staging/production deployments, a palette of 15 "widgets" to support building pages, WYSIWYG editorial
tools, and integration with third party tools such as form management and mortgage services. Media Lantern
has also assisted the Bank with 3 design refreshes over the years to help keep the site itself up to date
and modern in its look and feel.
Atlantic Data Security
Atlantic Data Security has provided best-in-class security solutions since 1993. The company's employees are
engineers with deep technical backgrounds, a case where it is often tempting to make Web sites "DIY" projects
using internal resources. However, recognizing that building its own Web site was a distraction from the
company's core mission, they chose to leverage Media Lantern to to support upcoming marketing efforts on a
short timeline.
Media Lantern believes there is no "one size fits all" solution when it comes to software engineering.
Although we often recommend Drupal for heavy-duty CMS work, in this case Wordpress was a much better
choice. Its streamlined interface matched Atlantic Data Security's need for easily posting updates about
upcoming events, allowing the company to self-maintain the site once it was completed.
Quasonix
Quasonix manufactures radio telemetry transmitters, receivers, and modulators. Military and commercial
organizations often have special needs not met by off-the-shelf solutions, and the Quasonix product line is
highly configurable. However, this also means their products are not easily described through simple brochure
and product description pages. Quasonix resellers have a tool that allows them to create specialized price
quotes via a Web interface.
Systems integration is a particular specialty for Media Lantern, and this project is a good example of this
work. The core product specification formulas are held in actively-maintain Excel workbooks that would not
make sense to duplicate in "Web code". Instead, the Web site bridges directly to Excel, "running" the
spreadsheet and then producing formatted PDF price quotes for customers.
Firetalk
Live video streaming is a competitive space, but there are still niches in which a startupn can
establish differentiation and unique value. Firetalk's focus was on entertainers: musicians,
performers, actors, and other celebrities who want to reach out to and interact with fans but
in a more personalized manner than Youtube or other venues allow.
Although the product has now been retired (it was an experiment) it represents a truly soup-to-nuts
approach to application development, including graphic design, Web, mobile (iOS and Android), API,
back-end processing, reporting, marketing, realtime live-chat, RTMP, HLS, and MPEG-DASH video, and
many other components. Media Lantern's experience with other entertainment-industry sites and apps
was a huge asset in this effort.