Every year, the Entertainment Software Association hosts E3, an industry-only showcase of the hottest upcoming games and hardware in the videogame world. The conference, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, is highly exclusive and widely covered by the gaming media. This was our 7th year attending with our client, Sony PlayStation, and we brought some loyal PS fans along for the ride.
High Dynamic Range Imaging
Advancements in digital compositing have led a formerly complex process and technology to become mainstream. High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) is now a one-click process with Photoshop CS5. HDRI is a series of multiple exposures combined into a single image providing a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image. HDRI allows for a more accurate representation of real scenes, capable of displaying a greater dynamic range than what can be captured with film, digital and even the human eye.
Posted in Creativity, Design, Technology Tagged contrast ratio, digital cameras, dynamic range, exposure value, HDRI, Imaging, luminance, multiple exposures, photographs, Photography Leave a comment
8 Great Tips for Large-Scale Email Deployments
At Direct Partners, we’re recognized for our direct approach to marketing. We collect large sets of customer information, conduct data analysis and market based on our informational findings. Direct Partners sent over a quarter of a billion emails in 2009 and would like to share our ideas about deploying large scale emails.
Posted in CRM, Marketing Tagged compliance, data, Database, Email, email campaign, email list Leave a comment
Part 2: Setting up a testing environment – Mobile
In the first post on “Setting up a testing environment” we went through some of the many options that are available, but left out an increasingly important segment. The mobile web is growing at a furious pace…
Posted in Technology, Web Development Tagged Browser, Insight, Mobile, mobile devices, QA, Testing, Virtualization Leave a comment
Digging Deeper
Over 2,000 years ago, Plato wrote Phaedrus. He wrote, “Socrates feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, ‘cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.’” Today, every answer we could ever ask is at our finger tips. I wonder: has that made us smarter?
Why Email Marketing Isn’t Dead in the Age of Social Media
There’s a lot of online chatter about how social media is taking over the online marketing landscape and how this affects email marketing. We’re going to take a look at what email currently means and how it integrates with social media to become another avenue for acquisition/retention marketing.
Posted in CRM, Marketing, Social Media Tagged direct mail, Email, email campaigns, marketing strategy, social networking 4 Comments
iBeliever
It’s an understatement to say there was so much build up prior to Apple’s unveiling of the iPad. The net was buzzing with what Apple would introduce. Would it be an iSlate or iTablet or some form of a netbook? When they introduced the iPad and its feature set, most people thought it was just a larger version of the iPod Touch. In a lot of ways it is… Yet will it succeed?
Creating a Greener Workplace
It’s that time of year again – pubs are stocked up on green food coloring, Shamrock Shakes flow like water, and Leprechaun is checked out of every video rental store. That’s right; it’s St. Patrick’s Day! You wear green, you drink green, and you party green. How about you start working green? In the spirit of St. Patty’s Day, here are a few things you can do in the office to make a difference every day.
Posted in Direct Partners Tagged green revolution, recycling, saving trees, sustainability 2 Comments
Rapportive & Banner Ads
With convergence of web and TV media, and more savvy online users just over the horizon, the usefulness of pay-per-click has unquestionably diminished… As ads become more obnoxious, some reactionary developers have turned to browser plug-ins to block ads or replace them with artwork or even personal photos. Nothing super innovative has happened in this space, until the UK start-up Rapportive released their Firefox and Chrome plug-in.
Posted in CRM, Creativity, Marketing, Web Development Tagged Advertising, banner ad, banner ads, banner blindness, Email, pay per click, relevant links 1 Comment
Getting Along with Very Large Databases
In tech jargon, a “Very Large Database,” or VLDB, is a database that contains several billion rows of data, or occupies more than a thousand gigabytes of storage space. Strictly speaking, most databases won’t ever become very large. However, Direct Partners knows what special considerations come into play once a database becomes a VLDB.
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