MediaCatalyst hosts the monthly Amsterdam chapter of CreativeMornings in 2013

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Kimberlee Kraus

CreativeMornings-Amsterdam-586x277

  • Date: Thursday, February 28, 2013
  • Time: 8.00 to 10.00 AM (CET)
  • Location: MediaCatalyst, Herengracht 182, 1016 BR Amsterdam, 1st floor ballroom see map
  • Speaker: Bart Lacroix, co-founder of the 1%Club Foundation
  • Theme: Money
  • Cost: FREE!
  • Reservations begin Friday, February 22, 2013 sign up here

Starting in January 2013, MediaCatalyst began hosting the Amsterdam chapter of CreativeMornings, a free monthly breakfast lecture and discussion series started by Tina Roth Eisenberg in September 2009 in New York City, with our local Amsterdam chapter being run by Álvaro Marquez. Continue reading →

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MediaCatalyst wins six W³ Awards

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Matthew Carney

MediaCatalyst is proud to report that its work has been honoured in the 2012 W³ Awards. The annual awards recognise creative excellence on the Web.

MediaCatalyst’s work for Sony video game Killzone 3, international leukemia charity DKMS and World Press Photo claimed a total of six honours:

·       Gold Award / World Press Photo / Website Features–Photography

·       Gold Award / DKMS / Web Video–Non-profit

·       Gold Award / DKMS / Branded Content–Non-profit

·       Silver Award / Killzone 3 / General Website–Games and Gaming Related

·       Silver Award / World Press Photo / General Website–Cultural Institutions

·       Silver Award / DKMS / Web Video–Animation

The awards are sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts, consisting of top-tier professionals in media, advertising, interactive and marketing firms across the globe. For more information about the W³ Awards, please visit www.w3award.com.

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How to write effectively for the best search engine results

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Kimberlee Kraus

Article written by Donovan van der Roest

Our very own SEO genius, Donovan van der Roest wrote an article recently that was featured in the marketing blog KarelGeenen.nl, and we’d like to share it with you. If you’d like to read the original Dutch version, you can see it here, the English version follows after the jump.

Continue reading →

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EU Cookie Law

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Kimberlee Kraus

With the May 26th deadline looming for the United Kingdom to comply with the European Union’s Cookie Law, the internet is buzzing with concerns over what this means for all those affected as fines for non-compliancy are set to run as high as £500,000. While numerous sources for information are available online, here are some of the highlights.

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Monthly Muse – April 2012

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Kimberlee Kraus

Here’s April’s Monthly Muse, highlighting beautiful things or ideas we’ve seen across the digital world in the last month. This month features a guest author from Strawberryfrog Amsterdam… drumroll… Mr. Ben Culpin. Thanks for contributing Ben!

COVER STORY: An Ikea-designed town, beautiful or bonkers?

via Tom Keane

With the Olympics coming to East London this year, Ikea have decided to build a village with all of its principles in mind: Will you have to put your house together with an allen key? Will it look good for a couple of years and then start to fall apart? Source: Co.Exist

Continue reading →

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Monthly Muse – March 2012

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Kimberlee Kraus

There’s a lot happening in the world of mobile and tech in general. Here are some of our fav links.

COVER STORY: “iKill” Infographic Charts The Human Cost Of The iPhone

via Anna Sardini

Anna’s comments: The average worker at the iPhone plant in China would have to work three months to afford an iPhone. So what is the level of ‘injustice’ that you are prepared to put up with for your technology? Source: Co.Design

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When a brand asks for your personal content, what do you expect in return?

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Matthew Carney

Many aspects of our lives exist in the digital realm. This takes the form of our personal content. That is, our photographs, email, favorite music and movies, the contacts in our phones, frequently travelled routes and more. This is all content that we are actively documenting and responsible for taking care of. It is content that is meaningful to us. It is content that we have interacted with and it is content that forms the record of our own invaluable personal history.

If you are anything like me, for the most part, your personal history is digitally documented and stored across accounts on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google, Pinterest, WordPress, iTunes, iPhoto, Spotify, Instagram, the list goes on.

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Top 5 iPhone photo apps

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Kimberlee Kraus


Photo taken using the iPhone 4 stock camera and edited with Camera+ and Adobe Photoshop Express (photographer: me)

Photography has come a long way since its beginnings, as more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day to Facebook alone (source Facebook statistics). Smartphones have become so popular that even professional photographer Annie Liebovitz recommends the iPhone as the camera to buy:

“When friends ask famed photographer Annie Leibovitz what camera they should buy, she suggests the iPhone. Appearing on NBC’s new Rock Center news program, Leibovitz suggested the iPhone because it is ‘the snapshot camera of today’, saying it is ‘accessible and easy’” (source MacRumors).

The artistry of photography has also evolved significantly as photo editing applications are available for free or for pocket change, and are very easy to learn and use. You can see some stunning examples of how far you can really go with these applications on iPhone Art, a collaboration site dedicated to iPhone photography. Continue reading →

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Effective Facebook posting: How to increase user interaction

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Kimberlee Kraus

A good deal of companies maintain a Facebook page as part of their web presence, for marketing, hiring new employees, even for customer support. It’s an excellent medium to interact with users, both to release information quickly as well as to receive feedback. The following are a few tips on how to increase your user interaction:

Make your profile noticeable, this is what your audience sees first

Your profile pic

“Profile pictures matter. The site feature that attracted most attention on Klout, Facebook and StumbleUpon was the profile photo.” Source Mashable: Here’s How People Look at Your Facebook Profile — Literally

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Moving from apps to web – the revolution has begun

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Kimberlee Kraus

Written by Frank Gaine

As outlined in our last blog entry, we reviewed over twenty automotive and motorcycle mobile websites in Europe and the US. We also had a look at the native apps (available through the app store) that these manufacturers provided. An interesting trend has emerged – the move away from native app towards more capable mobile websites.

Mobile websites versus Desktop websites
It seems that fewer and fewer manufacturers are prepared to tolerate their users muddling through the full desktop version of their websites while using mobile phones. This is the case even though some of these sites perform quite well on the small screen (if you count the need to zoom and scroll horizontally apart). Instead, most provide bespoke sites for mobile browsers. In general these mobile web sites can be described as scaled downversions of the desktop website in terms of content, functionality and needless to say physical dimension.

Mobile web versus Native App
Inevitably the question is asked whether or not to create a sumptuous mobile app whose content can be curated and that can perform morequickly. The answer all depends on what you need it to do. Unless you have to rely on functionality that only an app can perform then the answer seems to be – build a mobile website. Mobile websites generally cost less to build, need less specialized skills to put together and are quicker to market.

Continue reading →

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