Lightray Productions announces the launch of the FireStatLA website for the Los Angeles Fire Department, setting a new standard of accessibility and transparency for fire departments across the nation. The website is part of the larger FireStatLA initiative whose purpose is to evaluate and quantify the performance of fire and ems units, and fulfill Mayor Garcetti’s back to basics agenda.
Lightray Productions provides design and technology solutions for government agencies and departments including aerospace, law enforcement and other community serving organizations. We recently embraced the challenges that Fire Departments face with the Los Angeles Fire Department, one of the largest in the nation, as our pilot.
State of the Art, Easily Updatable Website
Lightray announces the launch of a new website for the Vedanta Institute of Los Angeles, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing educational programs to instill higher personal and spiritual values in individuals and the community as a whole based on the ancient philosophy of Vedanta.
Lightray Productions Launches Mobile Responsive, ADA Compliant Website for The Los Angeles Fire Department.
LOS ANGELES – September 12, 2014 – The Los Angeles Fire Department, one of the largest fire departments in the nation, is pleased to announce the launch of their new website, designed by Lightray Productions. Found at www.lafd.org, the new website has a modern look and feel, is mobile and tablet-friendly, and compliant with the American with Disabilities Act (section 508) to meet new city mandates and extend information accessibility.
Lightray announces the launch of Berkeley Wall of Fame. A new site created and conceived by Lightray in collaboration with UC Berkeley University Relations department.
————————
BERKELEY –UC Berkeley’s Alumni has lead to a hotbed for revolutions beyond just People’s Park and it wants you to know about each and every one of them. Whether it’s theory of the accelerating universe, the food revolution, open-source computing, the effects of the school’s alumni have changed the world and there is a new site launching to tell you all about it.
The Berkeley Wall of Fame (berkeleywalloffame.org) launches on May 9, 2012, with the first selection of what will be an expanding showcase of alumni whose vision and talents have changed the world. Created in a blog style to enable it to continuously grow, the site includes individuals across a diverse range of areas, as well as pairings of people who are connected in offbeat ways. Visitors to the site will be able to nominate alumni to include on the wall.
“It is impossible for us to know about all 400,000 Berkeley alumni and their achievements,” said David Blinder, associate vice chancellor of University Relations. “Rather than the University determining who is important, the website invites alumni to consider, ‘Who inspires you?’ This is just the kind of out-of-the-box approach we need to engage our alumni and demonstrate Berkeley’s far-reaching influence.”
Alumna Kimberly Brooks (née Shlain) ’89, a contemporary artist, conceived of the idea for the Berkeley Wall of Fame and donated the services of her web design and development firm, Lightray Productions (http://www.lightray.com) to build it. The campus’s University Relations department will manage the site.
“I always wanted a simple way to learn about who is making waves from my alma mater. The Wall of Fame idea brings Berkeley’s extraordinary alumni together in a fresh, exciting way,” she said. “It celebrates alums we already know about, and it showcases those you should know.”
Blinder said the site redefines “fame” within a distinctly Berkeley context of groundbreaking research, imaginative thinking and creativity, and public service.
The initial unveiling, which covers 12 individuals, includes:
The site also contains a section called Connections that pairs alumni in unusual ways. For example, both George Takei (who attended Berkeley) and John Cho ’96 played Mr. Sulu on Star Trek about 40 years apart. Chief Justice Earl Warren 1912, J.D. 1914 overturned the infamous “separate but equal” ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. His Connections counterpart, actor Gregory Peck ’39, became synonymous with Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, movie history’s most enduring fictional character of racial heroism.
“There’s an undeniable pride that runs thick in the blood of Cal alums,” said Brooks. “I offered up Lightray’s expertise and push Berkeley into new territory in terms of recognizing fellow alums and dribbling it across the web and key social media– facebook, twitter and beyond. These are Alumni that deserve to be celebrated and inspire other alumni to make waves and reach new heights in what they do as well.”
The site integrates social media to enable visitors to share, “like,” and comment on posts; participate in online quizzes and other fun activities; and follow inductees who are active on Twitter and Facebook.
“Beyond showcasing Cal’s incredible alumni, the site connects visitors to them whenever possible, helping to strengthen the ties from one alum to the next and across generations,” said Blinder
Visit berkeleywalloffame.org to see who is part of Cal’s amazing family.
Lightray announces the phase I launch of a new website for NEW DIRECTIONS, a Los Angeles based non-profit working directly with Veterans from their VA headquarters addressing issues of homelessness, drug addiction, ptsd, and job retraining to name a few. Lightray first began work with the organization over 6 years ago, and in a continued effort to reach more veterans and broaden their donor base – once again the site has been revamped to keep pace with the times.
“There was a need to hammer home to potential donors how extensive the challenges are for returning Veterans. As a first step, we overhauled the New Directions homepage, ensuring that if a potential donor goes no further, at that first glance, they ‘get it.’ ” says Jessica Thompson of Lightray.
New Directions continues to break new ground in their work to get Vets off the streets, and leading happy and productive lives. Check them out at www.newdirectionsinc.org.
Lightray was awarded the contract to overhaul the LAPD website and branding in a competitive bidding process.
SITUATION: The LAPD serves approximately 3.8 million residents in an area encompassing 467 square miles and 18 communities. For the previous six years, a four officer unite had updated the website manually. It had become 10,000 sprawling pages of non-database driven information.
SOLUTIONS: Lightray’s first step was to provide the department with a new look and feel to reflect Chief Bratton’s new leadership. A visual audit, and branding analysis was conducted. The results were a new logo, streamlined materials and a face-lift for the existing site within the first eight weeks of the project.
Simultaneously, Lightray performed a critical analysis of the existing content — of what should be most prominent, what would be updated most often, and how the language of the site could be translated from “cop talk” to the general public. The online unit needed to be able to update the information easily without the need of a webmaster.
Since the LAPD serves such a large territory, there is a high risk of the public not feeling connected to the officers who serve them. The site needed to emphasize neighborhoods, instead of divisions, so that visitors would have a direct connection and interest with how crime was impacting them directly, as well as how law enforcement was specifically serving them. Lightray created a cross-relational database that would allow people to find their officers by looking up their neighborhood first.
RESULTS: The visual refresh was a tremendous success, doubling traffic within the first year.
CRIME STATISTICS
Previously, crime statistics were relayed via COMPSTAT, a spreadsheet familiar to the department but not easily interpreted by a public unfamiliar with the system. It was clear that the key to getting people engaged in safety was to make them aware of crime. It had to be easy to use and updated daily. Visits to the site quadrupled after the crime maps launch. www.lapdcrimemaps.org
COMMUNITY POLICING
Lightray worked closely with division Captains to learn that officers wanted a way to easily email their constituents. They were savvy enough to set up their own lists, but it was clear that they needed a department-wide solution that collected emails in one place and then segregated the addresses according to the Senior Lead Officers that patrolled that neighborhood.
Lightray’s application requests that the user type in their address and zip code. With this information, we were able to cross-reference their location with the corresponding patrol unit. In the process, we built a simple step-by-step administrative newsletter tool that allows officers in every division to easily create and re-use templates, process crime alerts, work with existing divisional CAD units, and blast emails to the residents of their patrol area that sign up for the information.
Furthermore, the application can streamline efforts to deal with potential terrorist threats by allowing officers to communicate easily with groups of potential targets or key locations such as malls, hospitals or federal buildings.
CONVERGENCE
To maximize the success and effectiveness of this technology solution for the LAPD, we added an important user option. At the moment a user is typing in an address to check out crime in his or her area, they may opt to receive an epolicing newsletter.
We look forward to sharing this wealth of knowledge and the tools we have created with other law-enforcement agencies.
Launch Site:
LOS ANGELES – Today the Los Angeles Police Department announced its new features on it’s website, including the introduction of satellite imagery in its popular CrimeMaps feature.
CrimeMaps allows users to view updated crime activity anywhere in the city. It is a part of a suite of applications created by ePolicing™, a partnership of Los Angeles firms Lightray Productions and Psomas. ePolicing™ specializes in web applications for Police Departments across the nation.
“CrimeMaps is consistently one of the most popular features on our website. said LAPD Chief William Bratton. “These latest upgrades are part of an ongoing effort to keep our site ahead of the curve in using technology to be transparent and communicate with the public.”
“Providing crime maps satellite imagery with recognizable landmarks take the maps out of the abstract and something relate citizens to.” said Kimberly Brooks, founder of Lightray and ePolicing™.
Users are also no longer required to input or know a specific address to view the maps. Users can simply drag and zoom into the area of the city they’re interested in to get more information. This marks ePolicing’s integration with the widely-used Google Software which will be available to all the departments ePolicing services. “These new ePolicing features represent continuing advancement of the ePolicing product suite providing better value and capabilities to our customers.” adds Craig Gooch, Vice President of Psomas.
This is an exciting upgrade for CrimeMaps, which was heralded by the LA Times, CNN, and MSNBC as the first of its kind in technology integration and ease of use when it launched in 2006.
Another new feature is LAPDTV.org, an expansion of the site’s capacity to offer videos. In addition to messages from the Chief, the LAPD will offer “Inside the LAPD,” a weekly television series carried and broadcast by LA Cityview 35, the official cable television channel for the City of Los Angeles. LAPDTV.org will also offer a section called “Solve a Crime,” where surveillance videos of crimes caught on tape can be viewed, allowing the public an opportunity to provide information that could lead to a suspect’s capture and arrest. “By employing Google’s video player, LAPDTV.org provides the videos on a system that many users are already familiar with and more universally accessible.” Added Brooks.
“Call it a public service, call it shrewd PR, call it a token bid for approval, but the LAPD just added crime maps to its web site, and is planning to launch some sort of blog. Excellent move.”
-Cracks in the Steel Curtain: LAPDOnline Reaches Out
LA VOICE.ORG
“We would especially like to applaud the hard-working LAPD Online Unit for the remarkable “behind-the-scenes” effort it took to make this. Which offers many impressive new features, including a gateway to E-Policing, and Crime Maps….”
– Firefighters Applaud New LAPD Website
LAFD News & Information
“Angelenos can play gumshoe Philip Marlowe and track crime patterns in their neighborhoods and throughout the city, thanks to a new, high-tech initiative from the Los Angeles Police Department. ”
– Website Puts Crime Tracking on the Map
Los Angeles Times
“The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has a great online tool that has the potential to dispel the myths about given neighborhoods (or, create new myths, as the case may be.)”
-LAPD Crime Maps – Comparing Hollywood and Echo Park
Democraticspace.com
“I have been watching the evolvement of the LAPD Blog with interest. … thoughts, and issues facing the leadership of the LAPD (a conversation with many, …Crime maps provide you with a system to identify the crime trends in your neighborhood…“
– EPolicing – LAPD style
Open Eye:Chat
“A curious commentor recently asked if there was a site that provided crime updates for our neighborhood. As it so happens, the LAPD Crime Maps provides a site that allows you to see several days worth of documented criminal activity…“
– Crime In Your Neck Of The ‘Hood
Lincoln Park View Neighborhood Watch Blog
“In an Open Letter to the LAPD and LASD the LAPD has finally gotten a blog!… of the LAPD will rub off to our local brothers in law enforcement. …please take note about our woefully inadequate crime maps and license some tech…”
-Hey SFPD! Listen up!
Metroblogging San Francisco
“The LAPD has been making some interesting headway lately into the digital realm.They revamped their website some time ago, put up the city’s most wanted list,lots of monthly statistics, and launched the ever popular LA Crime Maps...”
– Does This Mean We Get To See Pictures Of Bratton’s Kittens?
LA Noir Blog Spot
“The new LAPD online crime map that allows one to see reported crimes in any area of the city illustrates what the district is dealing with. In the picture below, each dot represents a reported crime within just two miles of the East LA …”
-LAPD Online Illustrates What’s Bedeviling LA’s Crime
Independent Sources
“LAPD is now offering very detailed and cool crime maps on their website. Don’t become a dot!!”
-Interesting Use of Technology
Brandon Bits Blog
