CultureHaus, the Denver Art Museum’s social and educational support group for art enthusiasts, has launched a new website in collaboration with its sponsor 90octane.

Josh Van Engen, a senior designer on 90octane’s interactive team, serves as the marketing co-chair for the CultureHaus board of directors. He and co-chair Court Earp pulled in 90octane creative conversion specialist Lisa Forgan for website design and development assistance.

At the new site, CultureHaus members and the public can access information about the group’s activities, including a calendar of upcoming events and photos and videos from past projects. The site also details the organization’s 14-year history and provides a snapshot of current news.

CultureHaus invites interested individuals to attend upcoming events, including a tour and party on Jan. 12, 2012 to celebrate the new Clyfford Still Museum and the annual banner gala to be held in early 2012. Learn more at www.CultureHaus.com.

About CultureHaus
CultureHaus is a social and educational support group of the Denver Art Museum. It provides its members with a wide range of opportunities to learn about art and collecting. At exclusive events held nearly every month, members and guests can enjoy unique insights about art, private exhibition viewings, and the chance to meet other art enthusiasts and make new friends. For more information, visit the new site at www.CultureHaus.com or find them on Facebook and Twitter.



By Annie Hay, Marketing Associate

Google+ announces plans to create business pages following Ford’s decision to join the Google+ Project.

Google ran into a rather awkward predicament this week when Ford attempted to create a Google+ page and was asked to list its gender. Still in its beta stages, Google+ obviously still has a few kinks to address.

In response to Ford’s dilemma, the Google+ Project employee Christian Oestlien announced that Google+ would be working to roll out business pages in the coming year. The pages, Oestlien explains, will be more customized to business use and will be optimized for communication between users and brands.

Despite the gender question, Ford’s use of Google+ is an exciting hint at what is to come. In an interview with ClickZ, Scott Monty– Ford’s head of social media– said, “‘The Huddle chat capability has potential for webinars, analyst calls, even customer service [uses] for people to have a face-to-face experience of the brand.’” Furthermore, the “Circles” feature offers enormous potential to companies if Google+ decides to replace “Friend,” “Family” or “Colleagues” circles with circles that allow audience segmentation and targeted messaging.

It is unclear whether or not Google+ will remove Ford’s profile on the networking site, but in the meantime, “[Google is] discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. [Google's] policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles.”

To learn more about Ford’s revolutionary social strategy, check out their live chat tomorrow at 1:30 EDT. For more info on the event, check out their Google+ profile–and just F.Y.I., they will be heading back to the “G+” platform for a “Hangout” afterward.

By Annie Hay, Marketing Associate

The release of the Google+ project has generated excitement and skepticism across the world. Google+’s future success will depend on how well Google plays the social game–and so far, we like where it is are going.

The much-anticipated annoucement of Google’s new social networking scheme came last week when it announced the release of the Google+ project. In an attempt to address the most basic of human needs, “the need to connect with others,” Google  created what it claims is the most seamless, realistic way to connect socially over the internet.

“Not all relationships are created equal. So in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents and almost nothing with our boss,” explained Google on its blog. Using this model, the search giant created +Circles, a way to  share selectively with those the user cares to share with. Using a drag-and-drop feature that allows users to actually select a friend and drop him or her into an appropriate friend “circle,” users can easily share with those they care about–and not with those they don’t.

In an attempt to avoid the spam-like over-abundance of  Facebook’s News Feed, Google+ incorporated the +Sparks feature. Intended to serve as a “conversation-starter,” Sparks+ works as a content-filter that provides users with content from all across the internet according to the user’s pre-specified interests.

Perhaps the most revolutionary Google+ feature is its +Hangouts. In an attempt to make on-screen hangouts less forced and more natural, this feature allows multiple users to meet up using a live, multi-person video.

By Annie Hay, Marketing Associate

“Leave no mudder behind…”

It sounds like the 90 credo, right? “At 90octane, we believe trust is the differentiator. Trust in your coworkers and invest in each other’s success. ”

This weekend, four members of the 90octane crew will be participating in what has been called “The Toughest Event on the Planet,” namely, the Beaver Creek Tough Mudder. Call it living our 90octane values  outside the workplace, or call it insanity, these four will be reppin’ 90 and hopefully having a blast in the process.

We will report back to you on the latter on Monday…

Whatever you feel  like calling their mission, give a little shout out to whoever it is you send your prayers to because this group of four is going need it–take a gander that this video link: Tough Mudder

If you still are not impressed by 90octane’s mad skillz, let us break down some facts:

• The race begins in Beaver Creek Village, elevation roughly 8,500 feet.  The 90mudders then cover 10 miles, running up to 11,500 feet, then back down via mudslides, 12-foot walls, and raging snow-melt streams.  That means a total elevation change of 4,250 feet…just sayin’.
• For their second obstacle, the crew will crawl through an overgrown PVC pipe in standing, 40 degree water, for a really long time, in the dark.
• Throughout the course, the 90mudders will climb a series of 5 Berlin Walls, army crawl through deep mud below razor wire, and enjoy a Chernobyl Jacuzzi (words cannot describe this in any better way).
• The Mudders will finish the race by going through Electo Shock Therapy: an obstacle with electrical wires that dangle jellyfish tentacle-style over muddy water and carry up to 10,000 volts of electricity.
• Proceeds go to the Wounded Warrior Project.
• For full course details check out this link: http://toughmudder.com/events/colorado/beaver-creek-course-map-2011/

So, say a little Hail Mary or a Hallelujah when you wake up Saturday morning, and think about our 90mudders as they battle it out for world domination–or at least some sweet orange headbands and bragging rights around the coffee machine Monday morning.

Best of luck to Kinnick Wheaton, Gloria Dutton, Annie Hay and Josh Van Engen!

By Annie Hay, Marketing Associate

When U.S. special forces raided Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan late Sunday night, neighbors were the first to report the events. An IT consultant, Sohaib Athar, tweeted: ”Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event),” followed a short time later with a tweet saying: “A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S” The bang that Mr. Arthar heard was the sound of U.S. Navy Seals blowing up their damaged helicopter.

Mr. Arthar’s Tweets turned out to be the first announcement of the raid that finally killed Osama Bin Laden. Over the past five years, and particularly since the start of protest movements across the Middle East, Twitter has played an increasingly large role in the reporting of world events.

Even before president Obama made the formal announcement at a hastily organized press conference, Keith Urbahn, chief of staff to former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tweeted: “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden.”

Sites like Twitter and Facebook saw enormous increases in site traffic immediately after news broke. Twitter recorded around 4,000 Tweets per second during Obama’s press conference and 50% of polled readers on mashable.com said that they first learned the news via a social media site. Internet news sites also reported a major spike in Internet traffic following the announcement of Bin Laden’s death. Akamai’s Net Usage Index recorded 4.1 million page views to news sites around 11:30 p.m. ET Sunday, which is a 28% increase in North American traffic and a 24% increase globally.