Mass High Tech Citizenship Award Winner!

I am extremely proud to announce that Beehive Media is a 2008 Tech Citizenship Award winner. This award, presented by Mass High Tech, recognizes "22 technology companies in New England that have excelled at giving back to their communities." Being one of just a handful of small companies on that list is especially gratifying.

We redesigned, rebuilt and maintain the web site for Project Just Because, a non-profit serving needy families throughout Metro West. This organization is truly a front-lines service organization helping those most in need without barriers and without bureaucracy and we are very proud of our ability to help them succeed. Since launching the web site, they have grown tremendously and attribute a large amount of that growth to the web site.

Hot Drinks, Cool Hands

I LOVE product design. And I truly love this particular solution to a simple but common and heretofore not well-solved issue.

http://www.stephenreed.net/products_ceramic_cup_2.html

Innovation is Over-Rated

Despite the title of this blog, I couldn't agree more with this article in the Harvard Business Review:

http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/berkun/2008/07/why-innovation-is-overrated.html

Innovation isn't really the point - solving problems is. So ignore our title, we mean what he means!! :)

Multi-touch display - on a sphere!

Multi-touch displays are one of the great innovations of the past couple of years. The ability to zoom and/or scale objects by simply pinching or spreading two fingers across a display is an incredibly intuitive and useful feature. I use it constantly on my iPhone and I can't wait till I have a laptop and/or Minority Report-like computer to do the same. When Microsoft announced its Surface tabletop display, it was an exciting moment for us. We have had several clients who we feel can use these displays though we have yet to implement it for anyone. Our real estate clients in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are likely to use them for events or sales centers. And our Knowledge and Innovation clients will use them for conferences and presentations.

And now, along comes something that pushes it all to a new level. Microsoft has announced a multi-touch display in the shape of a sphere!



We built a Google Earth and Flash application (first in the world mashup of Flash and Google Earth, according to Google) for a client in Abu Dhabi for which this would be perfect! Imagine, you see the Earth - on a sphere! You zoom into Abu Dhabi. You see a 3D city being built on an island. You zoom in and fly around and watch videos and.....I think I better hop on the phone now with them!

My External Brain

Whether it's my reliance on gadgets (iPhone, computer, etc.) or the hyper information overload of our times or the outcome of the activities of my youth ('nuff said) or just a genetic reality....I have a terrible short-term memory. Actually, my long-term memory ain't so hot either. Not for the important things - things that I really KNOW and have to KNOW, I really KNOW. But as I come across interesting things, information, research, helpful tips, etc., if I want to capture them, I have previously relied on my gadgets. But bookmarking a web site, copy/pasteing into a document, using digg or deli.cio.us, etc., have only taken things so far. I just came across the next level.

Evernote!

This is a software application (Windows and Mac) and a web tool that allows you to quickly and easily save snippets of information from your clipboard or entire web pages to a centralized spot. More importantly, all of the info is searchable, including text within images - supposedly even HANDWRITTEN NOTES!! While this all sounds too good to be true, the video demo is inspiring. I've just signed up and am testing it out - so far, so good!

As the founder refers to it, this is like having an external brain - something to keep track of everything you need. Just what the doctor ordered!

Evernote

Seeing Context and Scale in these Sublime Photos

This is a fascinating set of super high resolution photos from Chris Jordan. They consist of some interesting environmental and political statements using very interesting photos that must be amazing to see in person - one is 10X23 feet in real life. But the interactive zoom feature works pretty well. They do an amazing job making big scale issues understandable in a visual way. This is data visualization done in a compelling and artistic fashion.

Chris Jordan Photos

Copy/Paste/Paste/Paste/Forget/Find/Paste/Paste FOREVER

As the web site says "Have you ever copied a link to a webpage and couldn't for the life of you remember the link later on?" This tool fixes that - download and install this app and it will remember everything you copy/paste and post it online for retreival and/or sharing. Great idea! And it is a solution to a very specific problem.

controlc.com