We know that Avatar was a lot of Computer Generated animation, but how about the iPad commercial during the Oscars last night? I was excited to see the commercial, but immediately noticed that I was looking at a perfectly square iPad instead of a rectangular shaped device that we’ve already seen pictures of. Wait, no it is a rectangular shape. Wait, now it is a square again. What’s going on here? Is anything we see in that commercial real?
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I enjoyed Hot Chip’s The Warning (2006) and Made in the Dark (2008) a lot. Good beats, quirky synth, interesting vocals and super listenable.
A new Hot Chip album wasn’t on my radar, so I was excited to discover a new album on Zune - One Life Stand. I guess the title single has been out for a couple of months, but new to me. After a few listens, it’s shaping up to be another great album, and is really good stuff for worktime.
Check out the live BBC performance video below - pretty great!
Check out the Pitchfork review for a lot more meat and insight… "Hot Chip steadily rebuilt their reputation by toughening up their sophistipop side. Their melodies began to develop an itchy, nervous twitch, and they earned dancefloor credibility…" and "Hot Chip crafted some of the sneakiest and most effective earworms around" - good stuff. Enjoy!
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Well, at last the reason for me being a little quiet during the past two months is nearing its end. The big news is that SMBLive, the company behind CloudProfile where I was CEO, has been acquired by ReachLocal. You can see the formal announcement of the acquisition here - http://www.reachlocal.com/press/reachlocal-acquires-smblive.
I am thrilled about the combination with ReachLocal. In the acquisition process, we found that our new colleagues at ReachLocal share our DNA and passion for helping small and medium businesses to digitize and leverage the web. Through the combination with ReachLocal we are also able to bring our customers significantly more scale and a deeper product portfolio of paid advertising and marketing services. Finally, we realize that small businesses often need hand holding and support as they embrace the web, and through the more than 30 offices of ReachLocal we can now bring a uniquely local touch to our customers.
I will be expanding upon the rationale for the merger and our roadmap in the coming months as we are able to share the details. In the meantime, please keep pounding on us and providing us with your feedback on CloudProfile. We thank you for your support and are here to help you!
-Alex
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This video demonstrates how "books" could be reinvented leveraging the form factor of the iPad. It’s going to be crazy cool.
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This video demonstrates how "books" could be reinvented leveraging the form factor of the iPad. It’s going to be crazy cool.
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Glad to see my friendly Realtor, Greg Robbins, using CloudProfile, which is now part of ReachLocal. He’s just starting a new office here in Guilford, CT, so CloudProfile is a great approach to getting the new business online and easily discovered. You can find him here:
http://gregrobbins.cloudprofile.com/
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There is much more to the maneuvering around Flash on the iPhone and iPad platforms than meets the eye. This post from AppleInsider does a good job of laying out some of the background context around it. It also makes a solid argument for why Apple will NEVER support bringing Flash onto the platform.
In my own experience, the lack of Flash support hasn’t gotten in the way of the complete and great lifestyle change that the iPhone has made possible. For interesting applications, I think it’s time to say goodbye to Flash and focus on HTML5.
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You gotta love the ability to use Twitter to monitor the status of various web sites and services. Wondering if Facebook is up or down? Wondering if GoToMeeting is up or down? Just do a search on Twitter!
Four years ago, an IBM study predicted that the amount of "digital information" would double every 11 hours by the year 2010. Then in 2008, IDC issued their own prediction that was a bit more measured - predicting that the amount of digital information in 2011 would be 10 times the size it was in 2006. No matter which is true, the amount of information online is growing at a staggering rate, and for most of us that means a great deal of difficulty in sorting out the relevant information from the noise. Going forward, it seems likely that both businesses and individuals will require automated search agents that search the Internet, or subscribe to certain types of information feeds, filter for relevance, and present back to their user only the information that the user really needs !
With the popularity of social networks on the rise, it occurred to us: instead of building another standard company blog, why don't we embrace the current content we generate out on the web and pull it into our website? So we did.
One of Mural's SaaS ventures is CloudProfile, a great way for businesses to publish text, photos and updates in one place and have them pushed out to a number of social media accounts like Twitter & Facebook.
Everyone at Mural has a CloudProfile, and all of our updates are pulled into this page. It's a bit of a crazy idea, but we love it and hope you enjoy it as well!
Mural provides online marketing & user experience design services to telcos, ISPs & technology-focused companies. We believe in producing work that results in positive, measurable growth for our clients by focusing on Acquiring Prospects, Converting to Customers and Creating Advocates.
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