SXSW with Rocksauce |
Michael Robin | MARKETING | 03.04.2013 @ 8:00 pm
We’ve been MIA for about a week now and there’s a reason. We’ve been concentrating a lot of our efforts into making sure your Rocksauce experience at SXSW is nothing short of well… Rocksauce this year! We’ve been designing t-shirts, a super special edition of Appetite for Destruction and coordinating an interactive gallery lounge all for your enjoyment at SXSW!
The Power of Image: Samsung VS Apple (Again) |
Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | BUSINESS | 02.26.2013 @ 7:00 pm
You’d think that Apple and Samsung would eventually just get tired of beating the stuffing out of each other on a daily basis, but nah, these two are pretty much mortal enemies locked in a death grip while tumbling off a cliff at this point. Even if one of them does “win,” it’s going to emerge battered and broken and unable to compete. I’ve long been of the opinion that the ongoing legal and patent war between the two companies is absolutely toxic for the mobile industry and is stifling innovation all over the place, but it genuinely feels like it’s worse than ever. It’s been too long since we’ve been genuinely blown over by a new device (although Google Glass may change that) and I place the blame squarely at the feet of these two dueling giants.
But what both companies have gotten especially good at is cultivating their respective images, images so powerful that’ll be hard to knock them off their pedestal even if (or when) something truly superior shows up.
SXSW Mentor Session: Q Manning, CEO of Rocksauce |
Michael Robin | MARKETING | 02.26.2013 @ 3:00 pm
SXSW provides a unique forum for making valuable, one-on-one connections that can take your career to the next level. These connections sometime occur via panels, networking events and even through chance meetings in the hallways at venues where our programming occurs. Another avenue to make these valuable, one-on-one connections is the SXSW Mentor Program, which includes the Interactive, Film, and Music festivals and conferences. The SXSW Mentor Program allows registrants to participate in a seven to ten minute meeting with an industry veteran or insider. Typically, these short meetings provide a great forum for the mentor to dispense important advice, guidance, counseling and inspiration to the mentee. More after the JUMP…
Samsung Hypes the Galaxy S4′s “Orb” |
Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | BUSINESS | 02.24.2013 @ 2:00 pm
We know that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is going to be announced on March 14th (because it’s pretty much the worst kept secret in the history of poorly kept secrets) and we also know many of the features that will be included, thanks to frequent updates by Samsung as well as plenty of loose lips (which already sink ships, but do so far more effectively when the ship is already leaky). Still, sinking ship metaphors only apply to rumor control surrounding Samsung’s highly anticipated new smartphone — the Samsung brand is stronger than ever and if everything that we have learned is even half true, then the S4 will be a device to be reckoned with (and will hopefully force Apple to do something nuts and/or incredible with the iPhone 5S).
The latest Galaxy S4 feature to be announced is a familiar one to any smartphone user who likes to play with photography apps, but that doesn’t meant it isn’t any less cool. The Samsung Orb isn’t just another panorama app: it’s positioning itself as the panorama camera feature to end all other panorama camera features.
Twitter Contests Are a Double Edged Sword |
Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | MARKETING | 02.22.2013 @ 9:00 pm
The internet and mobile media represent the pinnacle of human communication and technological achievement, offering us a future filled with unlimited opportunities, where we can be kinder, smarter and just simply better. It also gives us the forum to be awful and offensive and — let’s be perfectly honest here — frequently hilarious. Every act of kindness on the internet is instantly counteracted by something horribly (and often horribly amazing), ensuring that the online world never becomes a true force for good or a true force for evil. It’s a purely gray world where anyone can be anything they choose to, even if their avatar has completely different motivations than their real world self.
All of this is best encapsulated by Twitter contests, which represent a company or entity attempting to connect to people on a personal level…but everything generally devolves into chaos.
A Featured App is the Key to a Blockbuster App |
Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | MARKETING | 02.22.2013 @ 7:00 pm
How do you discover new apps? Unlike movies, books or video games, mobile apps are rarely hyped through for months in advance through traditional media. When an app finally appears on a news network or in the pages of a popular magazine, it’s because it’s already hit it big. The truth of the matter is that apps are still a young medium and like early cinema and early video games, the world is going to treat them as a niche for awhile, even after they’ve clearly evolved into something big and important. Heck, video games are only now being recognized as a vital part of the cultural landscape decades after they hit the scene and it took movies a good thirty years to stop being “just a fad.” Mobile apps are only a few years old, so it’ll probably be a few more years before we starting seeing them covered and previewed like other forms of entertainment.
In the meantime, there seems to be only one way to become a blockbuster app: you’ve got to get featured.
SXSW Contest Will Relocate a Start-up to Austin |
Jacob Hall, Editor-in-Chief of TapSauce | BUSINESS | 02.21.2013 @ 9:00 pm
Austin, Texas and SXSW have a mutually beneficial relationship. As a city, Austin is home to countless artists and start-ups and has a culture that encourages creative businesses. As a festival, SXSW brings all kinds of thinkers to the city to showcase their work, get noticed and advance to the next level. Because of the very nature of Austin, it’s a great city to plant your roots and pull yourself up by bootstraps (or whatever other cliche you want to apply) and SXSW is all about giving struggling designers, artists, developers a chance to flourish. One feeds other other and vice versa. It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship.
And a new SXSW contest demonstrates just how intertwined the city and this festival have become: one start-up company will be relocated to Austin, all expenses paid.
Crowdfunding and the SEC: A State of Uncertainty |
Kyle St. Romain | BUSINESS | 02.21.2013 @ 7:00 pm
Crowdfunding is a relatively new phenomenon whereby individuals can post a project on a number of sites such as Kickstarter, Crowdtilt, or RocketHub (there are a lot to choose from). Basically, you come up with an idea, post it to one of these crowdfunding platforms, and hope the crowd comes to your project’s rescue in the form of donations or pre-orders.
SXSW 2013: An Infographic |
Michael Robin | MARKETING | 02.19.2013 @ 6:00 pm
SXSW is just three weeks away and soon filmmakers, techies and music fans will fill the city for 10 days. To coincide with the fast-approaching festival, we’ve released this colorful infographic share with you it’s impact on Austin. You may remember we released this infographic last year outlining the Evolution of SXSW to emphasize the importance of SXSW interactive as the new playground for the tech industry. This year we’ve taken the focus on a more local level.
Companies That Get It: Mailbox App and the Future of Email |
Kyle St. Romain | APPS | 02.14.2013 @ 5:00 pm
A while back, I caught wind of a new app that was being developed to change the way we manage email. The first article I read about this new app was on TechCrunch, and I scoured the web thereafter to learn more about how this (or any) app could get my inbox down to zero, and keep it there. The magic bullet of an app is called Mailbox, and it is developed by a company called Orchestra, Inc. Follow this link to read more about Mailbox: Putting Email In Its Place.
Mailbox has been in development for a while now. Orchestra has always aimed to help solve the problem of inefficient emailing, and its first app called Orchestra To-Do tried to solve exactly that. The problem they had, as many to-do list apps seem to have, is that people don’t stick with it. Instead of permanently migrating to-do listing activities away from email and into a more robust program, people seem to revert back to emailing themselves to-do items. I’m guilty of that. Orchestra experienced this same phenomenon with the decline in usage of its to-do app, and iterated—Mailbox was born.