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machine learning

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)?

AWS

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.

machine learning

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...

AWS

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...

artificial intelligence

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...

Amazon Redshift

Implementing RedShift

Implementing Amazon Redshift, a popular data warehousing solution provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), requires careful planning to ensure optimal...

Amazon Quicksight

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...

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...

AWS

Top 10 things IT departments miss when setting up AWS

Getting started in AWS is easy. Anyone can do it! That said, when IT departments set up their own AWS cloud environments, they almost always miss...

RPGMatch User Avatars

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

AWS

AWS Partner Proof of Concept Funding

Discover how to test workloads and reduce IT costs with AWS Partner Proof of Concept funding. Explore the possibilities of AWS Cloud today!

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...

How to earn an AWS Machine Learning Competency

Since it's inception, AWS (Amazon Web Services) has been a leading provider of cloud computing services and in recent years has established itself as...

What is AWS CloudTrail

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

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...

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,...

Amazon Quicksight

What is Amazon Quicksight?

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

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...

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.

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...

What does Metal Toad do?

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

Lambda SnapStart

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

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...

What is Amazon S3?

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

Managed Services for AWS

One ‘gotcha’ I’ve experienced when discussing cloud ecosystems is that the term ‘managed services’ has drastically different meanings depending on...

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,...

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.

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.

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:

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.

The top 5 things to know about facial recognition

When Forbes quoted me in their article 12 Things You Need To Know About Facial Recognition Technology, I made the following contribution...

What is AWS EC2?

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

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

Is the AWS Machine Learning Certification worth it?

How does AWS Machine Learning Certification Compare to the Competition? Machine Learning is hot, and AWS machine learning is at the very top of the...

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...

CES 2022: A Quick Guide

With CES 2022 just around the corner, we've compiled the most essential information, so you're up-to-date on all things CES.

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.

What is AWS Lambda?

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

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...

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...

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)...

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...

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...

Kubeless: Role your own FaaS

All major cloud offerings have a Function as a Service (FaaS) tool. AWS offers Lambda, Azure offers Functions, GCP offers Cloud Functions.

Running FaaS on Linux Mint 19.3 with Kubeless

FaaS, the acronym for Function as a Service, is a cloud computing service that allows developers to build, run, and manage applications as functions...

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 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,...

The Future of Cloud Security

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

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...

How to host a virtual conference

This article first appeared in the Metal Toad newsletter.

How to make a website

22 years ago, I worked at a company called LACityWeb.com. The company failed in the year 2000, but back in 1999 we were selling websites. The sales...

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.

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...

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...

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....

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...

Setup a NAS on AWS

As part of Metal Toad’s Managed Services Team, I have worked extensively in custom cloud based solutions.

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...

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.

The Year is 2031

This article first appeared in the Metal Toad newsletter.

When should you use AWS Lambda?

Faster than the wing flap of a bee Bees flap their wings ridiculously fast, at around 230 beats per second (fruit flies are 80 times smaller than...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Amazon Quicksight

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

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

What are the different types of cloud service providers?

Back in 2014 when we first launched the Emmys on AWS, the service had been publicly available since 2006. While eight years might not seem that long,...

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...

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...

A CES Quick Guide

As an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, we’re thrilled to kick off 2021 with several Toads attending the first all-digital CES 2021!

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.

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...

Farewell 2020

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

AWS re:Invent announcements 2020

Things are a little different this year at AWS re:Invent, but one thing remained un

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

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...

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”.

Video Streaming + Cloud

Executive Interview with Joachim Bergman, CEO/COO at 24i. Joachim Bergman has been leading tech innovation for over two decades, with a focus on...

Metadata in the Cloud

Executive Interview with Rob Tucker, Founder of META. With over 15 years innovating tech solutions in media and entertainment, Rob Tucker leverages...

Digital Asset Management + Cloud

Executive Interview with Gary Ballabio, Head of Technology Partnerships at Cloudinary. Gary Ballabio has been innovating in the technology space for...

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,...

How Fast Can You Pivot?

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

Video Monetization + Cloud

Executive Interview with George Meek, CEO at InPlayer. George Meek has been in the technology field for decades and has focused on media and...

AWS re:Invent Quick Guide for Media & Entertainment

In a year of radical change, one of the biggest transformations has been the massive shift to online entertainment and engagement—powered by the...

Monetization in the Cloud

Executive Interview with Srinivasan KA, Co-founder, Amagi. Srinivasan KA has been a leader in the tech industry for over two decades. He began his...

Digital Watermarking & Security in the Cloud

Executive Interview with Ken Gerstein, VP of Sales at NAGRA. Ken Gerstein has been a sales and business development leader in the media and...

Cloud technology in Los Angeles

Los Angeles' Scope Los Angeles is a massive metropolis.  While only #18 by population - with a mere 18.7 million people - Los Angeles is 

What is AWS Cloud?

How AWS Cloud works, how AWS got started and how much of the cloud market AWS controls in 2020.

Awards Also Recognize Great Clients

We recently had some success I wanted to share. A product we built with WARN won a serious award at this year’s SEMA (Specialty Equipment...

Video Content as a Service + Cloud

Executive Interview with Philippe Brodeur, CEO and Founder of Overcast HQ. Philippe Brodeur got his start in the M&E space as a BBC producer and...

Linear Television + Cloud

Executive Interview with Igor Krol, CEO of Veset. Igor Krol has well over a decade of experience as a high-level executive in the investment banking...

Metadata + Cloud

Executive Interview with Shaun McCarthy, General Manager of Meta. Shaun McCarthy has decades of experience as a senior executive in the tech field,...

Streaming Video Infrastructure + Cloud

Executive Interview with Stefan Lederer, CEO & Founder of Bitmovin. Stefan Lederer is an internationally recognized expert in video and streaming...

Unstructured File Data at Scale + Cloud

Executive Interview with Barry Russell, SVP of Business Development & GM of Cloud for Qumulo. Barry Russell has been at the forefront of the cloud...

Data Optimization in the Cloud

Executive Interview with Jerónimo Macanás Candilejo, CEO & Co-Founder of Jump. Jerónimo is a digital entrepreneur with almost 20 years of experience...

Low-Latency Streaming + Cloud

Executive Interview with Per Lindgren, CTO and Co-Founder at Net Insight. Per has been a leader in the digital M&E world for over 20 years. He...

Artificial Intelligence + Cloud

Executive Interview with Greg Loose, Head of Media & Entertainment at Veritone. Greg is a long-time leader in the technology space, including SaaS...

Quality Control Solutions + Cloud

Executive Interview with Fereidoon Khosravi, SVP and Chief Business Development Officer at Venera Technologies. Fereidoon has been a leader in the US...

Agile Media Workflows + Cloud

Executive Interview with Lincoln Spiteri, VP of Engineering at Dalet. Lincoln has been in the telecommunications, media, and software industry for...

Media & Entertainment Cloud Ecosystem

Executive Interview with Ian McPherson, AWS, Head of North American Partnerships and Alliances Media and Entertainment. Ian is a longtime marketing...

The Media & Entertainment Cloud Ecosystem

For the Media & Entertainment industry, COVID-19 has had an unimaginable impact: Disney saw its profits fall 91% during the first three months of...

What's an AWS ISV?

In the world of AWS acronyms abound. The term ISV gets thrown around a lot but it's relatively easy to unpack. First, ISV stands for Independent...

But what is Phase 2??

I've been spending more time talking to clients about data engineering.

Data Lakes in Hollywood

Most people don't know that my experience in Hollywood goes back almost 20 years. My first real job was working at HOME BOX OFFICE (HBO) in the...

Media Content Distribution + Cloud

Executive Interview with Fredrik Andersson, Founder and SVP of Products of Accedo. In his role, Fredrik is helping the world’s leading video service...

Metal Toad Brazil

As we round the bend into Fall (which officially starts September 22), we are reminded of the changing season by things that are familiar to us:...

Cloud risk reduction

The morning sun from my home in Los Angeles is blood red as it shines through the smoke.

Why Core Values Transform a Tech Company

We’re all familiar with the basic corporate American experience. You clock into work, perform your required tasks, and leave at the end of the day.

How often should I update my website?

The short answer the the question: how often should I update my website? is every 3 to 5 years.  The much longer answer starts with: it depends.

The Impact of the Cloud on Universities

An Executive Interview with Chris Manriquez, Vice President for Information Technology/CIO at California State University, Dominguez Hills I’ve been...

AWS Rekognition, Comprehend, and Transcribe

Babu Frik, an Anzellan droidsmith with a talent for bypassing droid security systems, erased C3PO's memory. He felt very sad about it. He decided to...

Digital Rights Management (DRM) + Cloud

Executive Interview with Olga Kornienko, COO and co-founder of EZDRM, a cloud DRM-as-a-Service company. EZDRM’s innovative services provide a full...

Machine Learning - it's easier than you think!

10 years ago, a younger me interviewed a brilliant young man named Tony for a position as a programmer at Metal Toad.

How to Close an Office

On March 1, 2020, I handed in the keys to the Metal Toad office in Portland, Oregon — our corporate headquarters for the past five years — back to...

Media Supply Chain + Cloud

In this interview, I chat with Erik Åhlin, CEO and co-founder of Vidispine about media supply chains, how M&E companies can leverage the power of the...

The 5 Core Elements of Technical Advising

I recently had a conversation with someone who was looking for some advice on selecting a technical advisor for their team, and she had some great...

The Impact of the Cloud on Higher Education

Carmen Lidz is the Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer at Los Angeles Community College District, where she shapes the technology vision...

AWS MediaLive + Drones = Hackathon Fun

Hackathons! Weeeeeee!!!!! Am I right? I work in tech and I love it! I do not come from a technical background. Nope. I have decades of business...

Metal Toad & AWS Media Services: What We Hacked

Wednesday, May 6th at 9:00 am: Toads are poised at the starting line. Metal Toad’s AWS Media Services hackathon is about to begin!  

AWS Media Services + AWS Amplify

YouToad For the first Metal Toad hackathon of 2020, our goal was to build a web based social media platform for on demand video using AWS Media...

Metal Toad Office in Beverly Hills

After several years of operating in Los Angeles, in the nearby Century City neighborhood, Metal Toad has moved its central

How Cloud became the most important buzzword in business

Cloud is not the first (and probably not the last) disruptor to business via software. Over the past 50 years or so there have been four major epochs...

Metal Toad’s AWS Media Services Hackathon

This is an exciting week at Metal Toad—it’s hackathon time! Twice a year, the Toads devote two full days to rapid innovation, and it’s always a blast.

Cloud + Live Events

As CIO at sports and music entertainment giant AEG, Bill Martin drives the convergence of business and technology to deliver innovative success. Bill...

The Value of Values

Given the times it seems appropriate to lean back into some of the unique aspects of Metal Toad's work culture that I've had time to observe.

How to do machine learning in AWS

After being immersed in hundreds of announcements and innovations and inspiring presentations at AWS re:Invent, the key insight I came away with was...

AWS Personalize - AWS reInvent Insights

AWS Personalize, part of Amazon's suite of machine learning services, allows for creating highly curated experiences is a major differentiator for...

Cloud + Healthcare

Bridget Barnes has spent over 15 years leading strategic information system architecture at Oregon Health Science University (OHSU)—one of the...

Cloud + Utilities

Charles Eckstrom is the CIO of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. He’s been leading teams that successfully deliver large...

The Cloud May Be ITs Antidote for COVID-19

These are unprecedented times where it's hard to get anyone to pay attention to anything other than the COVID-19 epidemic sweeping the globe. But...

Cloud + Manufacturing

In this interview, Jim gives his take on the future of cloud, the building blocks of evaluating enterprise tech solutions, and his advice for other...

The Battle for Cloud Marketshare in Oregon

Oregon has always been well known for its timber industry.  Indeed at one point in the 1970s fully 12% of the States GDP was produced by timber.  While

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