Mural Consulting

iPad Commercial Computer Generated Too?

Jeff Hagins — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:34:22 +0000

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?

Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dt2qmyeQD8

Sophistipop Earworms - Hot Chip - One Life Stand

James Stolp — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:01:33 +0000

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!

Links:

Pitchfork: One Life Stand Review

Videos:

Tags:

Hot Chip
Music
Album

CloudProfile has been acquired by ReachLocal

Alex Hawkinson — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:12:08 +0000

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

Links:

Learn more about ReachLocal

Tags:

CloudProfile

Cool - Penguin’s vision for books on the iPad

Alex Hawkinson — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:36:37 +0000

This video demonstrates how "books" could be reinvented leveraging the form factor of the iPad. It’s going to be crazy cool.

Links:

paidContent article

Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdExukJVUGI

Tags:

iPad
Apple
tablet

Glad to see Realtor Greg Robbins on CloudProfile

Andrew Brooks — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:54:14 +0000

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/

Links:

Greg Robbins on CloudProfile

Why Flash Will Never Come to the iPad

Alex Hawkinson — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:09:53 +0000

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.

Links:

Inside Apple’s iPad: Adobe Flash

Tags:

Apple
tablet

If you aren’t using CloudProfile Email Publishing, You Should be!

Jeff Hagins — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:28:01 +0000

I Love Real-time Social Monitoring!

Jeff Hagins — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:29:32 +0000

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!

Amount of Information Online

Jeff Hagins — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:09:41 +0000

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 !

New Email Publishing for CloudProfile

Jeff Hagins — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:33:43 +0000

We have always supported email publishing, but as of today we are now allowing: * Photo attachments to a post * Multiple Photo attachments to a post We will be adding many new email publishing features in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.