While most people are taking this long weekend as a chance to get away, a couple of guys around here decided to take this opportunity to stay in - in the bathroom. Stew Dansby and Ben Wilson climbed into a bathroom together to get some serious business done this weekend and they wanted to record it. So they setup a recording studio, laid down a couple of tracks and were very satisfied with themselves. 

Ben did the recording as Stew called upon his years of experience as a high school thespian to deliver a perfect performance. According to Stew, many props were used in an effort to get the right noise, including: an overstuffed pillow, a WW2 documentary box set, a guitar amplifier and a cutting board. 

The recordings will be paired with animations from Tyler Johnson and will become a video for a landing page. Tyler also storyboarded the video and Ben will do all the final editing. This has been a big project for YellowHammer and one we can’t wait to see finished.

Nice work, guys. You’re certainly #1 in our book. Now please wash your hands before returning to work.

By Amy Van Der Veer

YellowHammer was unofficially awarded “Least Professional Booth” at yesterday’s highly-publicized NYCUncubed tech talent fair.  However, despite popular belief, it turns out a fog machine and DJ lights are actually effective (albeit obnoxious) recruiting tools.  ”Clearly top Ivy league talent are attracted to bright lights and things like inflatable sharks,” said Yellowhammer CIO Jared Christopherson.  There was tough competition though with big names like Spotify, Shutterstock, and our dear friends at Appnexus all vying for the same talent.  Some may have given themselves an unfair advantage though — Tumblr had a puppy sitting on their table.  Jerks. Thanks for the free booze though.

In the end, the event was a great success that introduced us to some very talented people and saw CTO Ryan Hubbard chatting it up with CNN.   Jared, somewhat less glamorously, was interviewed by Inc. magazine about his reckless behavior after indiscriminately emptying clip after clip of an overpowered Nerf gun into the crowd.

There was a minor panic in the YH back office when one of the company checkbooks went missing for exactly one day and was then mysteriously returned to its rightful place. When the bank statement came, our habitually-overworked controller was confused by a check that had been written out to a school district and signed by YH co-founder Joe Hirsch.

Everything became clear when we started receiving a stream of letters from schoolchildren thanking us for the sports supplies.

It turns out that Joe, in a rare display of civic duty, donated to an elementary school in the Bronx to give them gym equipment. Sure, he did it in his own name rather than YellowHammer’s, but we salute him nonetheless.

Also, thanks to the students for truly entertaining letters such as these:

And everybody says, “Where?”

“Right there,” responds Microsoft.

“Where?”

“There”

“There?”

“Here”

“What’s that?”

“That’s the new logo for Windows 8. We wanted to get away from the ‘flag’ look that had developed over the past few years and back to the ‘window’ look for the imagery. We used a single color and avoided mimicking materials to keep the look very ‘digital’”

“Oh. So you landed on light-blue squares?”

“Well it’s got that cool perspective thing going on.”

“Huh.”

“Also it changes color depending on the color you select for your computer.”

“Oh. I guess that’s kinda cool.”

“Yeah!”

“Chill, bro.”

“Okay.”

Once upon a time he was an intern, then he became a staff member, then an office manager. Now he’s a wheelin’ dealin’ business development pro after representing YellowHammer at an industry conference in Vegas.

Congratulations to our eponymous college football team, the Crimson Tide, for winning their 14th national championship.

“Rammer Jammer YellowHammer, give ‘em hell Alabama.”

By JB Israel

There is a bill in the House of Representatives right now called Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA. Some people believe it’s a necessary step to stem the tide of copyright infringement on the internet. Some people believe that it’s a draconian step that seeks to control and ultimately destroy the internet. Some people don’t understand the internet, or this bill, or how piracy differs from theft, or why passing poorly understood legislation would be a problem. Unfortunately it’s in this third group that we find some of the House representatives that are currently responsible for this bill. 

If you want to read more about Congress’s general attitude towards this bill as well as learning about a few congress-people that seem to be less crazy check out this article: Dear Congress, It’s No Longer OK To Not Know How The Internet Works or this article from Techdirt.

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JB Israel, a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, is the head of our graphic design department and an observer of advertising trends.

As cliche as it is to post a TED video, we’re going to go ahead and do it because this one is just awesome:

In honor of a great game last night I decided to make a “YellowHammer Giants” logo