Half the staff here at Carrot are quite “into” Twitter. The other half, not so much. @mikegermano made a tweet about the addictive nature of Twitter that caused an interesting discussion and the start to a big blog post comparing Twitter to cigarettes. While we work on the article we just wanted to have a visual of some Twitter brand smokes…

Branding is a critical component of any product’s or organization’s public perception. As the new brand manager for Carrot Creative I, Maury Postal, do hereby solemnly swear to do everything in my power to develop and maintain the most strategic, dynamic, and memorable brands in the world.

As a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology with degrees in Graphic Design and Marketing, I bring to Carrot the diverse background required to elevate every brand in our portfolio to superstar status. Stay tuned to this space in the coming weeks for some exciting developments in Carrot’s new strategic branding platform.

I will be attending the Numenta HTM Workshop in Palo Alto, CA this June! The workshop explores Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) and the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing (NuPIC). Not only will I be soaking up the newest developments on HTM and NuPIC, soaking up the summer Cali sun, but I have also been asked to discuss “Neuro Computation in the Cloud” during the Lightning Talks on June 24 at the workshop. This is a result of the 2nd place finish Christopher Laan and I received from this year’s Numenta Game Challenge.

If anyone else is going to be at the workshop, please let me know so we can meet up!

I just got off the phone with Blake Burris of Joyent, in which we discussed application scaling and hosting concerns, and I am thrilled to endorse Joyent for any application deployment needs. After working with Joyent to deploy the MLB.com Facebook Application, we found it necessary to further discuss future collaborations as well as offer support to one another as both Carrot and Joyent figure to be at the forefront of most New Media trends. Be sure to keep your eyes on the lookout for the great meetups that Joyent has planned in NYC, which Carrot will definitely be a part of. Dates will be released soon.

Carrot Creative is excited to announce the launch of the UBRSTAR website. As the primary developer of content, design and social network implementation, we are proud to partner with The New Haven Theater Company to offer live theater and stage stardom to the world. UBRSTAR utilizes a troupe of both live stage performers and online performers that can become part of the performance by submitting online videos of their character of choice (given the specific performance). The live performance, in which live stage actors must interact with their online counterparts, is broadcast live through Ustream.tv for the global audience to view and simultaneously comment and provide content at the leisure of their own chair. This summer’s show will be a contemporary version of a Shakespeare classic entitled “Run to the Capulets, Raise Up the Montagues: The Investigation of Romeo and Juliet.”

(more…)

We are thrilled to announce the Beta launch of SometimesDaily with Amanda Congdon. SometimesDaily is the newest online offering from Amanda Congdon, video blogging superstar and arguably one of the first successful pioneers in the video blogging realm. Amanda is known for her previous success on “Rocketboom,” “Amanda Across America,” and ABC News. And while her newest endeavor may offer a few similar elements from her previous successes, SometimesDaily is “an off-beat, interactive variety show exploring life’s themes through the inquisitive eyes of Amanda Congdon.” All of us are so grateful to work with Amanda and Oxmour Entertainment to assist in developing the online presence and web capabilities for SometimesDaily, and we can assure you that the innovative design and functionality of the SometimesDaily website is rivaled only by the shows vastly creative content. Be sure to tune in every day to SometimesDaily!

Somehow we have overlooked a blog post about this so far (I believe our twitter accounts have covered it, however). There are a few items that we use many, many times a day and find ourselves almost unable to live without them… this is one of them.

JING: This amazing (let me repeat- Uh-Mazing) service is currently free. This is hardly a justice to it’s capability, but the short of Jing is this- you can very quickly and seamlessly screenshot images or video of anything on your screen, within an area you select, and just as quickly choose to either shoot it to your personal ftp/site, save to your computer, or let them host it for free! The best part? If you choose to shoot it to the web, it will upload and auto place the URL into your clipboard- all you need to do is paste! This is all achieved with one click. Anyway, try it for yourself… the UI on the desktop widget is awesome. A true pleasure to use on Mac or PC

^— Screenshot of Jing menu, taken with Jing!

Do yourself a favor and check out their video demo, if you still have doubts. My only complaint is the logo… the curve/arrow on the ‘g’ makes me die a little inside, but the service itself actually makes up for this transgression.

VIP TXT was recently featured on the Web2NewYork blog!

We are thrilled to annouce that VIP TXT will be unveiled Tuesday, May 13 at the Web2NewYork Networking Party. Although it has been a long and arduous process getting VIP TXT ready for launch, we could not be happier to have it prepared for the summer months. And although we will be debuting it in the New Haven, Hartford and Stamford CT areas, we can guarentee that it will not be long before VIP TXT is THE connection for all of your nightlife needs.