Blog

Media & Entertainment

AWS at NAB 2025

Explore a curated look at AWS's groundbreaking demos at NAB 2025, including a GenAI-powered virtual person, live sports cloud production, video...

Artificial Intelligence

Automating Developer tasks

Automate developer tasks with Git hooks for documentation, security, and Jira comments, enhancing workflow efficiency and code quality with minimal...

Artificial Intelligence

How do I pick the right GenAI Model?

Learn how to choose the right GenAI model for your business with insights on AWS Bedrock and key industry players. Discover our expert tips and...

Artificial Intelligence

ChatGPT is getting replaced by AI

The rapid advancements in generative AI models are shaking up the industry, with new contenders like DeepSeek and Alibaba surpassing ChatGPT,...

Artificial Intelligence

Why your company needs a GenAI-powered intranet

Discover how Amazon Q's generative AI transforms intranets, enhancing productivity, collaboration, and decision-making with seamless data integration...

Artificial Intelligence

AWS Sample+ Hackathon: CDK to Terraform

Convert AWS CDK to Terraform with Amazon Q Developer in a hackathon project for faster deployments.

Artificial Intelligence

Stop GenAI-ing your customers

Discover why businesses should prioritize deploying Generative AI internally to enhance efficiency and safeguard customer trust, rather than risking...

What can save you from an AI Disaster?

For companies looking to understand if they are ready for AI, this article will assist them in understanding evaluation criteria.

Machine Learning

Commitment to Responsible AI

Metal Toad commits to responsible AI with fairness, explainability, privacy, and transparency. Explore their journey in using machine learning for...

Artificial Intelligence

GenAi making sweet music

Generative AI is now creating high quality text, imagery, video, and even music. Finding the right use case for your business is the hard part.

Artificial Intelligence

Knowledge Bases in AWS Bedrock

Push your context windows further with relevant data from a knowledge base.

Artificial Intelligence

GenAi: Infinite Paradox of Choice

Just because the hallmark of generative AI is natural language, that doesn't mean free form inputs are the best way for enterprises to integrate...

Artificial Intelligence

How to Design a Proper GenAI Proof of Concept (PoC)

Our VP of Engineering outlines the questions a properly designed proof of concept (PoC) needs to answer, particularly for complex technologies like...

Artificial Intelligence

How to use AI to get insights from LinkedIn ADS

Discover how to extract, upload, and analyze LinkedIn Ads data using Amazon Quicksight, enhanced by the capabilities of Generative AI with Amazon Q.

Machine Learning

Toadbook Hackathon Project

Discover how Metal Toad's team utilized AWS services and ML to create a simple social network platform at their latest hackathon. Explore the...

Business

Why you shouldn't say refactor

Discover why saying refactor isn't enough in agile coding. Enhance project success by focusing on customer value.

Machine Learning

Is Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence?

Gain clarity on the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Discover the role of AWS in accelerating AI and ML...

Artificial Intelligence

The future of Generative Ai is in automation

Broad proclamations about Ai changing the world are doing nothing to help people understand how they should be using it. In the absence of specific...

AWS DevOps

Recent Cloudwatch Application Signals Announcement

Explore Amazon CloudWatch Application Signals: Revolutionize cloud monitoring with SLO tracking, rapid troubleshooting, and holistic application...

Who Uses Amazon Web Services and Why?

Discover the diverse range of businesses and organizations that rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and explore the reasons behind their choice.

Exploring the AWS Services List

Discover the extensive range of AWS services and explore how they can benefit your business.

SaaS Application

Monitoring Quicksight

Monitor Quicksight with Cloudwatch and custom metrics

Artificial Intelligence

The robots are painting

A lot has been said in the media about AI generated art, but how does it actually work (from a human perspective)?

Cognito and SES setup

Setting up Cognito with SES is required if you are going to send more than 50 emails a day. here are the steps to have SES and Cognito avoid spam.

Artificial Intelligence

Metal Toad Prompt Engineering Hackathon

In this latest event, in the last week of September we embarked on a journey to learn how to work with prompt engineering, unleashing the power of...

Artificial Intelligence

Biggest Pitfalls When Building a SaaS Application

Building a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application can be a rewarding endeavor, but it's important to be aware of potential pitfalls that can hinder...

Hackathon

Prompt Engineering Hackathon Learnings

As Large Language Models have risen to the everyday usage, Metal Toad took a few days to have a hackathon and see how much they could accomplish in 2...

Database

Implementing RedShift

Optimize AWS Redshift implementation with best practices in data modeling, performance, security, cost management, and integration for effective data...

Artificial Intelligence

Metal Toad’s Approach to Implementing Quicksight

Amazon QuickSight is a business intelligence (BI) tool provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that enables you to create interactive and visually...

Machine Learning

How does facial recognition work?

Last week, Forbes quoted me in their article 12 Things You Need To Know About Facial Recognition Technology. I am a member of the Forbes Technology...

Artificial Intelligence

RPGMatch User Avatars

For modern user applications having an avatar to represent you is important.

Business

AWS Partner Proof of Concept Funding

Discover how AWS Partner Proof of Concept funding helps test workloads and reduce IT costs, enabling a smooth transition to AWS Cloud. Learn more...

Artificial Intelligence

What is AWS Control Tower?

You are up and running in the AWS cloud. You've done multiple PoCs, and you have a number of workloads using S3, EC2 and multiple RDS databases. So...

AWS DevOps

What is AWS Migration Evaluator?

Discover how AWS Migration Evaluator simplifies cloud migration with detailed assessments, cost projections, and performance optimization, ensuring a...

Machine Learning

How to earn an AWS Machine Learning Competency

Learn how to earn an AWS Machine Learning Competency and elevate your company's expertise in delivering machine learning solutions on AWS.

Artificial Intelligence

What is AWS CloudTrail

AWS CloudTrail provides a record of all API calls made within an AWS account.

Artificial Intelligence

ReactJS Amplify App Part I - Overview and Auth

This is a three part post about our experience using AWS Amplify to develop a food logging app for the Metal Toad hackathon. Here in part one we...

Artificial Intelligence

5 Signs You Need AWS Cloud Migration Consulting

At some point in the last decade, you’ve probably bought a new computer. And at first, it’s great: performance is zippy, but after a few years,...

Machine Learning

Leveraging AWS Machine Learning to Transform HR

Discover how AWS Machine Learning can transform HR by enhancing efficiency, decision-making, and employee engagement while automating repetitive...

Machine Learning

What is Amazon Quicksight?

If you're looking for a powerful, cloud-based business intelligence service, Amazon QuickSight deserves serious consideration.

Business

Tell a Story

User story mapping is an effective technique for product development that helps teams understand the context of the full application and how...

Machine Learning

ML Augmented Development (1 of 3)

In the last few months, the world has come to know ChatGPT as a source for ML generated writing.

Machine Learning

How to use ChatGPT

You may have already heard about this artificial intelligence writing readable text. This will have a profound effect on the need for knowledge...

Machine Learning

What does Metal Toad do?

Welcome to Metal Toad! So you’ve been hired at this cool tech company cal

Artificial Intelligence

Lambda SnapStart

AWS re:Invent is in full swing and with it come new services that people have been asking for.

Artificial Intelligence

Cloud Readiness Assessment

If you are being asked to assess whether you company is ready to migrate to the Cloud, you're not alone. As of 2022, 94% of companies use cloud...

Artificial Intelligence

What is Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 is short for Amazon Simple Storage Service, and it is the storage in the cloud.

Artificial Intelligence

Managed Services for AWS

Explore the different meanings of managed services in the context of AWS. From AWS Managed Services to consulting partners and product offerings,...

Machine Learning

What is Deep Learning?

Deep learning is a category of artificial intelligence (AI) used to find patterns within various types of complex datasets which can include textual,...

Machine Learning

How to choose the right cloud provider

The promise of cloud technology has spawned tremendous innovation by some of the biggest, most powerful companies in the world.

Business

My Promotion to UX Designer

As a new UX Designer, Laura Chaves shares the story of her new role, how she got started, and what she's excited about. Click to read the full story.

Machine Learning

Automated Content Moderation with AWS Machine Learning

The AWS Rekognition POC enables companies the ability to moderate user-generated videos using machine learning. Designed by Metal Toad and Mux. Learn...

Artificial Intelligence

The Cybersecurity threat from Russia

On Thursday, February 24, 2022, Russia invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Immediately after, in a speech, President Biden said the following:

Media & Entertainment

NAB Show 2022: A Quick Guide

NAB Show is back in-person and better than ever! View our quick guide to learn about the event and the answers to some of the most common questions.

Artificial Intelligence

What is AWS EC2?

AWS EC2 is short for Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud.

Machine Learning

Amazon SageMaker

What is Amazon SageMaker? If you are new to the machine learning development world you not know what you need to know about Amazon SageMaker

Machine Learning

Big Takeaways from AWS re:Invent 2021

While normally I consider myself a consistent writer, since this summer it's been difficult for me to muster to will to research and share the...

Business

CES 2022: A Quick Guide

Stay updated on CES 2022! Discover must-attend sessions, top keynote speakers, and essential tips for making the most of this premier tech event.

Artificial Intelligence

AWS re:Invent 2021 Day 1 Recap

Wondering how the first day of AWS re:Invent 2021 went? Find out in this blog article from our Front-End Thermer Laura Boemo.

Artificial Intelligence

What is AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda, for those not familiar with it, is an event driven serverless (what is serverless?) platform for compute resources

Machine Learning

AWS reInvent: what to expect 2021

As an award-winning AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and AWS managed services provider, we are pumped about the

Workplace Dress Code

As I was deciding what to write about in a blog for a software company, I didn’t recall anyone writing one here about fashion or dress code at the...

Artificial Intelligence

THE NEW HOME OFFICE MODEL

Technology has brougth great benefits to society and organizations such as:

5 Time Management Tips That Work

Time management is a decision-making process with the intention of planning and organizing how you divide the time to be spent on specific activities...

Artificial Intelligence

AGILE METHODOLOGY

WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Project Management

The Power of a Personal Retrospective

Metal Toad first introduced the concept of a retrospective to me in 2014. As an agile software company, our teams undertake retrospectives (retros)...

Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence and the Cyberpunk dream

I was always amazed at the way the media convinced me that Artificial Intelligences would think, behave and act like human beings. That made me look...

Media & Entertainment

Digital Rights Management and the Cloud

As the CEO of BuyDRM, Christopher provides key insight and management to staff based around the world, as part of BuyDRM’s mission to deliver the...

AWS DevOps

Kubeless: Role your own FaaS

Learn how to deploy serverless functions using Kubeless on Kubernetes as an open-source alternative to cloud-based FaaS solutions.

AWS DevOps

Running FaaS on Linux Mint 19.3 with Kubeless

Learn how to deploy serverless functions on Linux Mint 19.3 using Kubeless, an open-source alternative to AWS Lambda and Google Cloud Functions.

Artificial Intelligence

Ecommerce trends 2021

I recently bought a t-shirt online. Printed on the shirt is a hilarious mash-up of a cartoon from the 80s (He-Man) and a modern-day meme ("do you...

Media & Entertainment

Media Orchestration + Cloud

With over 23 years in the industry, Art Raymond has been involved in media and advertising for the totality of his career. From the very beginning,...

Machine Learning

The Future of Cloud Security

1) What is the state of cloud security today? Cloud security today is

Media & Entertainment

Back to work

For the first time in 12 months, I am exploring options for an actual office space outside of my home.  As many of you know, Metal Toad went...

Tips to manage stress

In this pandemic`s time we are all living, stress can be really part of our lives. We all have stress sometimes in our life, at work, at home, and on...

Content Management System (CMS)

How to make a website

Learn how digital presence has evolved from static HTML sites to dynamic web apps and discover modern hosting solutions on AWS.

Media & Entertainment

How to work remotely

Get our top 5 tips to doing remote work right. We've been working remotely since 2019 and learned a number of things the hard way.

Media & Entertainment

What is wallstreetbets Reddit?

It's likely been impossible for you to miss all the talk about GameStop stock. This upside is due to a corner of the internet called Reddit. More...

Media & Entertainment

What is Clubhouse?

By now you've probably heard about Clubhouse, the hot new social app. While I'm sure many of you are already on the inside, perhaps even hosting your...

Machine Learning

How to Host a Website on AWS in 5 Minutes

For most casual website owners, it’s often easy to simply use a hosting provider with built in support for their CMS and integrating analytics....

Machine Learning

What is Machine Learning?

Machine learning is a field of computer science where mathematical systems “learn” from massive data to adjust their internal models using linear...

AWS DevOps

Setup a NAS on AWS

Discover the best NAS solutions for AWS, comparing GlusterFS, Zadara, and SoftNAS based on performance, setup, and use case suitability.

Media & Entertainment

Work from home forever

In March of 2020, as a joke on my Instagram I posted a photo of my dog saying he hoped nobody ever went back to work. Now almost 11 months later, it...

Artificial Intelligence

Difference between Defect, Error and Bug

In the testing world it is very common that Quality Engineers talk about defects, bugs and errors, during the software development life cycle.

Media & Entertainment

The Year is 2031

This article first appeared in the Metal Toad newsletter.

AWS DevOps

When should you use AWS Lambda?

Learn how AWS Lambda can cut costs from millions to mere dollars by billing in millisecond increments, transforming cloud computing efficiency.

Artificial Intelligence

Adaptability, Reinvention, and Media Security

Our CTO, Tony Rost, sat down with Senior Product Manager, Julie Scott, to talk about her key takeaways from this year’s re:Invent: organizational...

Media & Entertainment

Consumer Electronics Show — CES 2021

We recently wrapped up the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2021, and I wanted to share my thoughts with you. This was the first year we went all...

Machine Learning

Chaos Engineering & AWS CloudShell

Our CTO, Tony Rost, sat down with engineering manager Nathan Wilkerson to talk about his key takeaways from this year’s re:Invent: Chaos Engineering...

Artificial Intelligence

What is Quality Assurance?

If you have ever had a bad experience with a product, such as a new cell phone application or a bad food delivery, would you use that product or...

AWS re:Invent

How to get started with AWS Quicksight

Our CTO, Tony Rost, sat down with product leader Dave Bellous to talk about his key takeaways from this year’s re:Invent: AWS Quicksight

Artificial Intelligence

How to pick the best Headless CMS

In the past few years, Metal Toad has increasingly migrated clients to headless CMS providers to reduce costs, improve the conten

Business

No one ever got fired for buying IBM

Technology consulting firms are everywhere. Many have familiar names like IBM, Accenture and McKinsey. Some may be vendors you're working with. But...

Artificial Intelligence

How to avoid malware

The SUNBURST malware, likely of Russian origin, was a remarkable and devastating breach of cybersecurity. The data gathered will likely advantage the...

Business

A CES Quick Guide

Discover how to make the most of CES 2021, the premier global tech event, with tips on sessions, networking, and keynotes.

Artificial Intelligence

You’re on mute…

When it comes to summing up 2020 it’s the ubiquitous phrase “you’re on mute” that is both perfect and a little painful.

Machine Learning

A UX perspective on AWS re:Invent 2020

In 2020, a majority of events moved online, making them more accessible than ever before, and an outcome of this change has created new opportunities...

Design

Farewell 2020

On New Years Eve, from the comfort of my couch, I watched the “Good Riddance 2020” Pink Martini streaming event on OPB.

Machine Learning

Takeaways from 2020

This was a bizarre year that delivered a mix of stress and opportunities. I found new hobbies, new tricks for remote working, and new ways of...

To Blog or Not to Blog

For someone who does not consider himself much of a writer, “To Blog or Not to Blog?” is a ques

Git

Top Five Lessons I Learned in 2020

Saying this has been an incredibly difficult year is an understatement. Both personally and professionally, we were all stretched, challenged, and...

Database

AWS Chime: Lessons learned

A lot has changed during 2020. One is the number of people working remotely. That’s the Q4 hackathon theme was “Remote Work in 2020”.

Media & Entertainment

Video Streaming + Cloud

Interview with Joachim Bergma discussing video streaming innovations, cloud integration, and the future of media and entertainment amidst COVID-19.

Media & Entertainment

Metadata in the Cloud

Interview with Rob Tucker, catalog management, and cloud integration in media and entertainment, highlighting AWS support and future industry trends.

Media & Entertainment

Digital Asset Management + Cloud

Insights from Gary Ballabio of Cloudinary on media management, digital asset optimization, and the future of cloud in the media and entertainment...

Media & Entertainment

Performance Monitoring + Cloud

Executive Interview with Brenton Ough, CEO and Cofounder, Touchstream. Brenton Ough has been innovating in the technology field for over 20 years,...

Artificial Intelligence

How Fast Can You Pivot?

This year was the year of being nimble, and it’s not been easy.

Get notified on new marketing insights

Be the first to know about new B2B SaaS Marketing insights to build or refine your marketing function with the tools and knowledge of today’s industry.