November 7, 2007
Marketing
Last Monday, Schematic officially opened its Media Insight Center in our New York office. Built in partnership with Ball State University, MIC will help our clients get critical quantitative feedback about their products.
Read the Press Release
Photos of the Event
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- November 7, 2007 at 11:51 am
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November 6, 2007
Technology
By Christian Lander, Associate Manager, Corporate Communications
Always the innovator, CES will be experimenting with opt-in RFID (radio frequency identification) tags on press passes beginning with the January 2008 gathering in Las Vegas. Officially, the tag helps authenticate passes and improve security for the event; it also poses some interesting questions about the future of trade shows.
With RFID tags, organizers will be able to track which booths, seminars and events members of the press are attending. Everything from booth position to the most popular site on the floor can be tracked and then analyzed into pricing structures for the next year. It could be interesting to see how much of a factor location plays when it comes to press coverage.
Read more at engadget.com
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- November 6, 2007 at 9:19 am
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November 5, 2007
Technology
By: Christian Lander, Associate Manager, Corporate Communications
The Sunday New York Times had an interesting article about the use of cell phone jammers — small devices (pictured) that let people block all cell phone signals around them. The power of these devices ranges from a few feet to a few hundred, and have been used by individuals, restaurants, and even churches.
The Times story opens with a man riding on a commuter train who gets fed up with an overly loud young woman whose every second word is “like.” He pushes a button on his jammer and her phone is cut off.
Reading this, you can almost feel the relief and satisfaction of instantly stopping an annoying conversation. But the story raises interesting questions about the rights of the individual as opposed to the rights of the crowd. Every responsible cell phone user would most likely applaud the man’s actions, but anyone with a respect for civil liberties has to cringe a little at the idea of another person being able to control your lines of communication.
It’s a debate that has no clear end in sight, but talking on a cell phone is passe anyways. Aren’t we the text message generation?
Full Story at The New York Times
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- November 5, 2007 at 6:15 pm
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November 1, 2007
Technology
By Christian Lander, Associate Manager, Corporate Communications
Last night, 670,000 PlayStation 3s were humming across the globe. But instead of being used for games, they were helping researchers at Stanford University find a cure for some of the deadliest diseases on the planet.
The folding@home project is a distributed computer program that links multiple PS3s to help them with the enormous amount of calculations they need to do for their disease research. (”Folding” here refers to protein folding.)
All you need to do is download the program to your PS3 and let it run–and you can consider yourself part of the fight against Alzheimer’s, mad cow disease (BSE), Parkinson’s, and even cancer.
Hopefully this project will encourage other worthy causes to tap into the immense amount of money, research, and power that we put into our entertainment devices.
Folding@Home Page
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- November 1, 2007 at 9:38 am
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October 26, 2007
Marketing
A real estate company in Dubai has created a 20,000 square meter advertisement. It is the largest outdoor ad in history and reflects a growing trend of creating ads that are visible from airplanes and, presumably, Google Earth.
Whenever I fly into a city, I’m struck by the large blank roofs of warehouses and factories. I can’t help but wonder if one of these advertisers might be able to build something useful (like a shelter, recycling facility, food bank, or adult education facility) and then put the ad on top of that.
Full Story at The Guardian
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- October 26, 2007 at 7:02 am
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October 24, 2007
Marketing
Target has introduced a new series of gift cards made from a corn-based bioplastic called “Mirel.” One of the great drawbacks of most corn-based plastics is that they biodegrade only in very specific conditions, but it looks like these new Target cards will break down in a regular old backyard compost heap.
Full Story at TreeHugger
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- October 24, 2007 at 6:51 am
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Schematic’s Costa Rican office has a new face to show visitors and clients, as well as some great new additions that will make the crew’s life easier. Our office has been under a remodeling process for some months and is now ready for use.
Some of the upgrades include:
- Total electric and data network upgrade
- Server room set up (racks, servers and others)
- UPS installation for Servers
- Reconfiguration of some spaces, offices, doors, walls
- Carpeting
- Painting
- Furniture build-out in production area
View more pictures here
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- October 24, 2007 at 6:49 am
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October 22, 2007
Marketing
Schematic and Starz! have been nominated for an Emmy for their work on the Vongo MCE/Vista application.
The nomination comes in the category of: “Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for Best Use of “On Demand” (Consumer Scheduled or Programmed) Technology Over Broadband Networks For Passive “lean-backward” Viewing (TV).”
A big congratulations to everyone that worked on the project.
List of Nominees (Emmys Official Site)
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- October 22, 2007 at 11:31 am
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October 22, 2007
Technology
As much as we all love the iPhone, it’s definitely far from perfect. Case in point: it’s great to get stock prices at the push of a button . . . so why can’t we get sports scores that way?
Actually, it turns out we can, thanks to Schematic’s Richard Herrera.
Richard has built three web-based applications that give iPhone users up-to-the minute scores and information about the NFL, college football and Major League Baseball.
Just point your Safari Browser to:
Fumbleview (NFL) - http://fumbleview.com
Pickleview (MLB) - http://pickleview.com
Fumbleview U (college football) - http://u.fumbleview.com
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- October 22, 2007 at 11:29 am
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October 19, 2007
Technology
Ask anyone from RIM (Blackberry) if they think that patent law needs to be reformed. Last year, the mobile device manufacturer was faced with a ridiculous lawsuit by NTP, who claimed Blackberry had infringed on their very loosely defined patent for mobile email.
Inspired by the $600 million+ payout, a cottage industry of companies and lawyers have started to go after more and more patent paydays.
To prevent further miscarriages of justice, the EFF has released their Patent Buster list of patents that need to be overturned.
Full Story at Wired
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- October 19, 2007 at 12:30 pm
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