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Posted 9/3/2008 by JanS, Acct Mgr
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You would think the ability to load up on TV shows to watch at your convenience would lead to couch potato marathons, many extra hours of TV watching, and disassociation from others, especially your significant other.
Not so says NDS. 43% of users actually report improvements in their relationships since purchasing a DVR. Upon further inspection the DVR is less demotivating than you might think.
Among many other things, if you're in the mood to watch TV you're probably going to end up surfing and watching total crap even if nothing is on. Not so with a DVR. You've always got content at your finger tips and can get your fix without surfing for hours. More quality time to spend with your loved one is always good for the relationship. Also, there is no reason to fight over which show to watch if you both have different favorites on at the same time. Most DVR's can record one show while watching another. You're also more likely to watch each other's shows proving unique bonding time.
In my humble opinion the biggest reason for the DVRs relationship power is the pause button. No need to get frustrated if you're watching something important and your significant other needs you to do a chore.... pause, take out garbage, get a beer, unpause. Everyone's happy.
Steve Tranter, vice president, broadband and interactive delivery, NDS Americas says,"It's one of those technologies that, once you use it, it makes you wonder how you coped before."
What do you think... helped, hurt, no effect?
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Posted 9/3/2008 by TomB, Acct Mgr
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Google has has become a competitor in the web browser business with the beta public release of Chrome.
So far in using Google Chrome Beta, I am extremely impressed with the browser.
Here is the key points Google has focused on.
One box for everything
Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.
Thumbnails of your top sites
Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.
Shortcuts for your applications.
Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.
My personal two favorite things of Google Chrome so far are
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Posted 8/27/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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If you watched any olympics coverage online, then you got to see the real power of Microsoft silverlight: how well it handles Web video. Well now those darn liberals have joined in the fun.
That's right...I'm talking full screen HD quality live streams from the democratic convention in Denver, with the ability to change camera angles! Barak's ears look smaller from the side, so I'm suggesting you hop on to camera two for his acceptance speech after the nomination.
Take a look at http://gallery.demconvention.com/Default.html
I guess Silverlight is no longer the Ralph Nader of online rich media players! :)
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Posted 8/26/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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So the iPhone topped Stephen Colbert's latest ThreatDown, a list of the top five threats to America. Why? A kill switch. Check out the video (skip ahead to 5:40):
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Posted 8/22/2008 by ccook, .NET Prog
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RockScroll has been introduced on Scott Hanselfman’s blog. If you work with Visual Studio, this is a must. I have found it to be one of my most used features of Visual Studio. It keeps the ‘visual’ interpretation of even the largest of code files intact. Check it out:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingRockScroll.aspx
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Posted 8/22/2008 by Declan, Acct Mgr
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Today I got group request via facebook, when I saw it was an invitation to join the “ArbCamp 2008” group, I got very excited, because I attended the 2007 event, and it was incredible. I had not seen anything like it before (well in the US anyway), marketing students where furiously taking notes as Derek Mehraban from Ingenex Digital, gave a lecture on web marketing. There were groups of people chatting about -- Mobile web, SEO Tactics, Getting Attention in Social Media, Outsourcing, Startup Funding, and a bunch of other exciting topics. This was social networking on steroids, one hundred, plus likeminded people, who had so many interesting things to say, all from different companies and all with a different spin on how their companies went about creating web projects.
Sorry Derek -- I plagiarized this from the Facebook Group
ArbCamp is modeled after Open Space Technology meetings, with a self-structuring agenda and a core principle of adaptability. Our goal is to get techies, marketers, publishers, musicians, filmmakers, businesspeople, poets and academics engaged with one another for a few intense hours. Everybody who attends will set the agenda for the day, with food, meeting spaces, and a basic schedule provided.
ArbCamp is about creating community: the most important part of what we’ll do is discover how we can work with each other.
What:
The annual Arbcamp event goes into its second year. This two-day conference is focused on the theme of Publishing: Digital, Print, Media…
Who:
Arbcamp is for anyone in publishing, whether book publishing, news media, web development, music publishing, digital publishing, printing, marketing, blogging, podcasting, film production, social media, and more.
When:
October 18-19. 9AM – 5PM both days. Events may extend into the evening.
Where:
Morris Lawrence Building at Washtenaw Community College 4700 East Huron River Drive Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105 (see google map)
Why:
Arbcamp is an annual event focused around the idea of making cool things happen in Ann Arbor. Last year’s Arbcamp had over 100 people. This year’s event has been extended to two days and looks to bring over 200 people to southeast Michigan.
Arbcamp 2008 official site http://arbcamp.org (still under construction, you can see the 2007 site here http://www.connectannarbor.com/arb-camp/)
ArbCamp was especially interesting to me because I had just moved to Michigan from Florida and I had no understanding of the local web scene. I had moved from one University town where 352 was by far the largest web development company, to another University town that I knew nothing about – I was standing on the shoulders of giants, I was on a mission – to do in Michigan as other relocated account managers had done in Florida, Atlanta, and Seattle. It is proving harder than I thought, we have some very smart people up here, but I will not back down!! The economy will change and I will be here waiting to embrace it.
I have ArbCamp to thank because I got the opportunity to associate myself with the very rich talents of my fellow Brickyard tenants
Derek Mehraban -- CEO Ingenex Digital Marketing
Ross Johnson – CEO 3point7designs
Brian Kerr – CEO @ Different Chairs
Andrew Miller – CEO @ Your Search Advisor
Dan Cooney – CEO @ Cooney Information Group
Bill Merrill – Principal @ Gordian Labs
If you live in Michigan or surrounding area’s and you have even the smallest interest in the web related technologies get yourself down to this event, it is absolutely amazing.
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Posted 8/22/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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I read about a site from Microsoft this afternoon called www.photosynth.net, and after trying it out, it's pretty amazing. I'm sure you've heard about software you can use to make a panoramic image from a series of photos. Well this is an amped up version of that.
Basically you take a bunch of photos of your subject and upload them. The tool automatically detects similarities in the photos and stitches them together. but rather than producing a flat panoramic image, it creates a 3D rendering of the room. Best of all, you can do the traditional approach of standing in a spot and taking pictures all around you, or you can take images surrounding an object to create a 3D version of it. Imagine using that to show off a product for an ebay auction of e-commerce site!
Still confused? Here's Microsoft's description from the Live Labs site:
Photosynth is a potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.
Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point the photos were taken from. With this information, we recreate the space and use it as a canvas to display and navigate through the photos.
Providing that experience requires viewing a LOT of data though—much more than you generally get at any one time by surfing someone’s photo album on the web. That’s where our Seadragon™ technology comes in: delivering just the pixels you need, exactly when you need them. It allows you to browse through dozens of 5, 10, or 100(!) megapixel photos effortlessly, without fiddling with a bunch of thumbnails and waiting around for everything to load.
Here's one I whipped together of our conference room. Yeah, our conference table is a pool table. We're so cool. Like the art we made out of our old 15" CRT monitors?
Check it out for yourself. Very cool software!
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Posted 8/22/2008 by Declan, Acct Mgr
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I currently manage a few of our International clients from countries such as Ireland, England, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. We have proven that we can attract International clients and work successfully with their web teams to launch great products. This shows that time zones and language barriers are not a factor when a company wants true quality and the job done right! I credit this International attraction to our “Success Starts with Strategy™" process and how we tackle our custom web development projects, coupled with the knowledge and professionalism of our staff.
With our recent launch of LogoYes in Japan, now I have the pleasure of adding Japan to the list of our International client countries!
The Japanese site is live at http://www.logoyes.co.jp/
Logoyes Japan Homepage
We took the American English language site at http://www.logoyes.com/ and translated it to Japanese. However, this was much more than a simple translation. The Japanese character set is much different than the American English character set, so we had to build in special support for Japanese characters and fonts. This was particularly challenging, because the Logoyes Flash application gives users the ability to create and edit business cards, so we had to restructure all of the editing controls to support the Japanese fonts and font sizes. Because of the large file sizes of Japanese fonts (due to the complexity of their characters), we installed a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up the load time of the application worldwide.
Logo Creater Step 1
Additionally, Japanese design and layout styles are somewhat different than American styles, so we made changes to the layout of several interface screens so they were more appropriate for the Japanese market. Additionally, the standard size and layout of business cards in Japan is different than those in the U.S., so we had to change all of the business card templates to accommodate the Japanese market. Finally, we changed the way the checkout process works to interface with Japanese credit card processors.
Thanks the our team for their incredible hard work over the past few months, which include
Project Managers
Dana McPherson
Geoff Wilson
Lead Designer
Lincoln Anderson
Lead Programmer
Evol Greaves
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Posted 8/14/2008 by PeterV, VP, Marketing
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Is this old? From the Tony Snow quote, I'd say yes. But is it still funny? Again, I say yes. Enjoy:
Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash
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Posted 8/13/2008 by Geoff, Pres/CEO
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If you haven't seen this Web site yet, you should. It is an extremely impressive demonstration of Microsoft Silverlight's capabilities, and specifically its awesome video streaming capabilities. Not to mention a GREAT way to watch the Olympic games!
http://www.nbcolympics.com
Click any of the "Watch It Now" videos. You'll need to download the Silverlight 2.0 beta plugin (free quick download) if you don't have it yet, and then you'll be able to watch a ton of live feeds and recorded content from the Olympic Games.
Most impressive is the quality of video (it looks like high definition, although the screen size is smaller) and the interface to control the video. You can actually watch up to 4 live video steams on your screen at the same time. The whole interface is extremely impressive. Definitely check it o
