Built inside our CTO engagements — so useful we packaged them.
Every one of these started as a real problem at a real publication. We built it for one client, it worked, and now you can have it too. We have a tool for that.
Awards engine
Now in pilotLaurel
A Best Of / Readers' Choice platform that runs on your own domain instead of a vendor's — nominations, voting and winners in one campaign, with the traffic and the SEO accruing to you rather than to someone else's directory.
The sponsorship ad server is built in, so the contest sells its own placements. And the winners directory is permanent — it keeps accumulating year over year, and keeps earning long after the votes close.
For any publisher who runs an annual Best Of or Readers' Choice — small-market weeklies through city magazines. Built so a small team can run a full campaign without opening a support ticket.
Intelligence engine
Early accessCompass
If you don't have a dashboard yet, how are you surviving as a business?
Compass maps your content against the eight reader needs — so you can see what your coverage is actually doing for your audience, not just how many people clicked it.
And coming next: the same map against business value — subscriptions, newsletter signups, ad revenue — so you can see which content moves the business, not just the pageview count.
For every publisher, at every size. If you make content and sell something, this tells you which content sells it.
Engagement engine
LocalCross
An AI-generated daily crossword built from your own articles. The clues link back to your coverage, so the puzzle sends readers back into the archive — recirculation and newsletter capture, disguised as a game.
Built for local and hyperlocal news publishers with a steady flow of articles — dailies and community papers especially, where there's always fresh coverage to build tomorrow's puzzle from.
Live now
Running with This Is Topeka.
Revenue engine
CopperEats
A restaurant directory that turns your dining coverage into revenue. Your best-of lists and dining guides become a year-round destination instead of a once-a-year issue — and there's a campaign playbook behind it for selling it to the restaurants and advertisers already in your pages.
Built for city and regional magazines. Dining is already your beat — this is the infrastructure that makes it pay more than once.
Do you have a specific project in mind?
Need a technical partner who specializes in the publishing industry? Let's talk — we'll build a customized project plan just for you.
Not sure which of these you need?
Neither were most of our clients. The free AI analysis looks at how your organization actually runs and tells you where the hours are going — and sometimes the answer is one of these, and sometimes it isn't.