Rhino Records came to the wise fellows formerly known as Bryght for assistance in re-working the venerable Internet destination for a band which defines community participation - The Grateful Dead.

The Rhino team came with a good idea of their goals - mostly based on feedback from the Dead community who waited with bated breath for what would happen next to their beloved band's online presence.

When this venerable publisher of romance novels came to Raincity Studios, they arrived with a deep understanding of their customers and already had a vision of a participatory community in mind.

Votika is the brain child of a business grad school student Yuk Man Liang who approached Raincity Studios to fill in the talent gaps his team lacked for building and launching a cultural voting community site.

The concept is a weighted voting scheme in which community members assemble "top ten" lists of everything from politicians to "hot babes" and then vote list items up or down. The goal is to harvest the opinions of trend-setters and "Joe Public" alike to
enable social networking and cultural exchange based on similarities in taste and opinion.

SPIN Magazine isn't the first iconic brand Raincity Studios has shepherded into the brave new web world, but is definitely one of the most exciting projects we've ever brewed up.

Much is written about the tricky process of successfully publishing content both in print and on the web while maintaining brand consistency, keeping reader interest and still making revenue. Indeed print and web are different media but with the SPIN project, we've found a comfortable balance by creating a comprehensive online magazine publishing platform.

The web is a powerful tool - you know that. When a top-quality, professional design is used for political and social purposes, the result can be profound as education and information are distributed with seeming ease.