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.

I attended the Google Appengine Hackathon yesterday and was quite impressed with appengine as a platform for developing web applications.  Some of the benefits our engineering crew will appreciate are: python is much lovelier than php, the development environment is quite simple, and deployment is a breeze.  Say goodbye to Apache.

Benefits that clients will enjoy? Increased server reliability and easier scalability.

If you’re interested in working on a bunch of projects built on appengine, twitter @kortina.  We’re always looking to meet new engineers and have lots of work to do in the coming weeks.

A big Shoutout from the Couch to Adam Ostrow as he recently spent the day in the Carrot office after being one of the panel judges for Carrot’s Business 2.0 course at Quinnipiac University. Although Adam’s reputation is well-known, its only fair I give him the proper introduction. Adam is the Editor and Chief of Mashable, one of the favorite blogs among the Carrot Crew. He is also the founder of MindSay and the recent owner of ReadBurner. Check out all three of Adam’s endeavors as he one of the many pioneers in the New Media landscape. It was awesome to have a like-spirited New Media entrepreneur in the same room as the rest of the Crew working hard throughout the day, but then letting loose in the NYC scene at the end of the work day. Now, if I could only get them to bring me out next time.

Bobby, Sean and I went down to the waterfront between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges today at lunch… beautiful weather, blue skies, killer birds…

Yes, there were birds of prey about. Ok, they were chained to posts by the ankle, but still very much alive and awesome! A raptor exhibit-bus was near the park for an informational show about Hawks, Owls and even a Bald Eagle… there were a bunch of school children trying to crowd us, so we did the right thing and left before any school yard brawls could ensue, but not before snapping a few pics. The grand-daddy above brings the iconic song America, F*ck Yeah! to mind…

Julius here. So my first Shoutout from the Couch goes to Brian Shaler. Most of you probably know Brian from his infamous “Shalerjump” seen across the webiverse, however Brian is also a very talented web developer and photographer based out of Phoenix, Arizona. Brian was recently in town for PodCamp NYC 2.0, and stopped by the office for the afternoon to get in some work and, of course, a Shalerjump. Posing for the picture with him made me feel like I was in a live version of Super Mario, the NES original version of course. Anyway, thanks for visiting the Carrot offices Brian, and we look forward to seeing you again soon.

The Carrot Crew consisting of Bobby, Andrew and I just got back from day one of the Podcamp NYC 2.0 unconference. Its always an interesting experience attending these conferences as there is always a great mix of people merely there to sell their “revolutionary New Media” idea and those people genuinely invested in important conversation about the future of the New Media industry. However, we do thank everyone that did present in the variety of seminars we attended as each seminar offered the space to talk about the industry. Check out Andrew and I discussing the impact of Twitter and other new Media outlets (around 4:00 into the video), and of course we thank Laura Fitton of Pistachio Consulting for posting the video on Qik. Lastly, we would like to thank the Polytechnic University and everyone else that made Podcamp NYC 2.0 possible. We can not wait till 3.0!