commercials

Chicago-based Clean Urban Energy has raised $7 million in Series A funding, the company announced today.

The company has developed a software platform, and the monitoring and analytic services to go with it, that take advantage of a building's thermal mass and thermal-energy storage (TES) to make it run more efficiently and save on energy costs.

Clean Urban Energy says its software analytics platform can reduce the expense of a building's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning energy use by 15 percent to 30 percent.

"By aggregating and optimizing the thermal storage properties of multiple buildings, CUE unlocks … Read more

In the last several decades, Sony has been known for its esoteric commercials featuring inanimate objects doing extraordinary things that often reflect design elements that inspired the featured product. In other instances, Sony advertisements are a visual odyssey meant to inspire the consumer, and are only loosely related to the product in question. The Japanese company has released another bizarre video in a five-part series on YouTube, dubbed "Two Will," which teases the upcoming S1 and S2 tablets.

In contrast to the darker, shadow play-themed video in part one, this one presents a more complicated Rube Goldberg-like contraption. Bouncing colorful balls cause the S1 tablet to roll sideways on a track, which is set up with rubber "fingers" that compose an e-mail message in the Android (Honeycomb) operating system. The message "Comfort with the smooth touch" is labeled below. The mind should be boggled at this point, but perhaps it's a svelte way to say communication is fast and easy. We'll see about that.… Read more

Two companies tied to prominent technology entrepreneurs are among those that received funding through the NASA's Commercial Crew Development effort, the government agency announced yesterday.

Blue Origin, which was started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, received $22 million in the funding round. PayPal co-founder Elon Musk's SpaceX received $75 million. They were flanked by Sierra Nevada and Boeing, which received $80 million and $92.3 million, respectively.

The Commercial Crew Development program, which began in 2009, is arguably one of the most important efforts under way at NASA. Its goal is to help U.S. private enterprises develop … Read more

WALTHAM, Mass.--There's loads of technology available to make commercial buildings smarter and more efficient, but getting beyond a small niche of trophy green buildings requires big changes to current real estate practices, not just a technology make-over.

Every year, many buildings are built or retrofitted to improve water and energy efficiency and offer a good interior space for occupants. But often owners and occupants don't take full advantage of advanced technologies, creating a situation where buildings don't perform up to the level they were designed for, industry experts say.

"What about Gus the janitor? The … Read more

Long after the big game ends and Green Bay Coach Mike McCarthy washes off the Gatorade, blogs and the Twitterverse are still sorting out the Super Bowl commercial winners and losers. But according to AdBowl, it looks like Volkswagen will take the trophy for its Darth Vader ad.

AdBowl, which has run an online voting competition since 2002, shows Volkswagen's "The Force" commercial still holding first place in the Top 10 Overall category, with an average rating of 4.37 (out of a 5-point scale with 1 being a "fumble" and five being a "… Read more

If you ever wanted to know how well a particular company's commercial campaigns are performing in the increasingly DVR'd world, TiVo has the solution for you.

The company announced the launch of a free tool today, called Ad Scorecard, that provides insight into how well companies are advertising their brands on television. The platform is designed to provide brand managers and marketing executives with information on whether or not TiVo users are actually watching their commercials and how effective those ads are at capturing user attention.

"TiVo wants to make it easy for all marketers to begin … Read more

The financial software market is so competitive that there's really no reason to settle for a mediocre program; there are plenty of great ones to choose from. Unfortunately, jGnash falls into that group of programs that just don't cut it. Although the program works, there are many things about it that turned us off.

We got off on the wrong foot with jGnash immediately; it took an extremely long time to load, and once it was up and running, it had a huge negative impact on our system's performance. Our litmus test for personal finances software is … Read more

The car company better known for reliability than high-performance engineering released a commercial for its sold-out Lexus LFA in which the 552-horsepower exotic sports car shatters a champagne flute with the sound of its exhaust alone.

"The glass is actually broken by the precision sound of the vehicle," said Dave Nordstrom, vice president of marketing for Lexus. "We wanted to show just how deep our pursuit of perfection and commitment to innovation goes. The LFA was designed to deliver its own unique exhaust note, and this illustrates that beautifully."

The commercial was recorded in a sound … Read more

Apple's "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads have been widely regarded as one of the company's most effective campaigns. But they may be over and done with, if Justin Long, the "Mac" in those ads, is right.

Speaking to The Onion's non-satirical A.V. Club site in a interview published Wednesday, Long said that he heard from his co-star in those ads, John Hodgman, that Apple plans to "move on" and try something else.

"You know, I think they might be done," Long said in response … Read more