Innovation Day

Churning out work. Multi-tasking. Chaos. We thrive on all of these things at HMA. But lately we’ve been so busy we haven’t even had time to acknowledge Innovation Day. It’s the day of the week where we all come to the table with the latest and greatest in technology and news regarding the many industries we work with every day. In case you can’t tell, it’s my favorite day of the week. Here’s what we discussed today:

Dan shared a story about the development of a revolutionary nanotechnological process that creates a waterproof, magnetic, antibacterial paper. We all agreed Forbes’ technology column is a must-follow.

If MacBook Pro and the iPad had a baby, this is what the end result would probably look like. Then the foodie in Sam drooled over this lickable wallpaper. The rest of us gagged over all the many things wrong with this concept.

Dianne and the rest of the team weighed in on Facebook’s recent purchase of Instagram for $1 billion. It may have been a smart business decision, but only time will tell what is truly in store for Instagram.

Aaron shared some interesting downloadable actions for Photoshop. They help ease your workflow and simplify certain advanced Photoshop techniques like creating maps for example.

Cliplets is a marriage of photos and videos, or in other words it’s the app that helps you create those Harry Potter-esque moving photos. The only downside, Zach said, was that it’s currently only available for Windows.

As usual, Drew had multiple fun things to share. Russia is upping their Internet security.  Plus, two of the oldest libraries in Europe, the Vatican Library and the Bodleian Library at Oxford, are digitizing their collections of ancient texts from greats like Homer, Sophocles and Plato.

My innovation was Google’s announcement of Brand Activate. This initiative is working to help re-imagine online measurements. While Internet advertising industry does need to revamp and universalize the way it measures key metrics, but we’re not convinced Brand Activate is the best way to do this.

Amanda shared that researchers predict cell phones will possess x-ray capabilities at a distance of about four inches. We decided there are some things we’d rather just not see.

Rita shared Wavii, a fun new way to consume news feeds for any given topic. We wonder if Facebook’s news feed is up for the challenge.

What innovative news have you recently stumbled on? We’d love to hear about it!

Leave a Reply