We want to congratulate our customer and partner, Groupe Média TFO (the largest producer and distributor of French-language educational and cultural media content in Canada), for winning this year’s second place award for the most innovative use of technology in content management, and for all the hard work they put into getting there.

What makes true cloud-born software different from software that is simply rebranded with the buzzword “cloud” and wrapped in a virtual machine? This blog covers the major benefits of true cloud software and the growing concern about file security.

The office has returned to its usual buzz at our headquarters in Burlington, MA now that everyone is back from Amsterdam and IBC2014. This year’s International Broadcasting Convention attracted over 55,000 people from around the world, all interested in the future of electronic media and entertainment technology. I had a chance to catch up with three of our jet lagged Signiant crew about the most interesting thing they encountered. Here’s what Margaret Craig, Rick Clarkson, and Nelson Hsu had to say about this year’s IBC.

Almost every B2B software company on the market today has its own version of the “cloud mantra,” explaining how the cloud is transforming business, how it’s creating new opportunities for global reach and collaboration, and how their software is cutting edge. But marketing is one thing, and the actual technology is another. Not all companies mean the same thing when they use the term “cloud.”

Last year, Guardian Journalist Paul Lewis gave a moving TED talk on the rise of citizen journalism, explaining the power of people around the world recording their environment and telling their own story. Lewis’s talk seems all the more appropriate today with so much activism happening against a backdrop of civil unrest. “Citizen journalism and this technology has inserted a new layer of accountability into our world,” says Lewis. Through two powerful examples of murder and cover-up exposed via citizen journalism, Lewis explains both best practices and the transformative role citizen journalism is playing in 21st century news gathering.

Media companies are well aware how mobile computing has changed the end user experience. Consumers are now comfortable capturing and sending all types of content on their mobile devices, and have even become vital news sources for on-the-ground reporting. Signiant recently released a free mobile app for Media Shuttle to help media firms benefit from the trend of mobile media capture.

Since I was born in 1992, I doubt I actually count as a member of Generation X (or, as the internet has begun to put it more casually,“90’s kids”), but there’s still a certain part of me that feels very connected to that last decade before the millennium. Whether I’m browsing online lists of the defining films or reminiscing about the few toys that I was actually old enough to appreciate, I can easily get swept up in the nostalgia. So I was fascinated by the prospect of National Geographic’s “The 90s: The Last Great Decade?” a three-part, six-hour documentary that aired in early July.

There is a new air about our corporate headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, a modest building nestled between the local shopping mall and a wooded bike path you can follow for 20 miles to Cambridge. Everyone seems more polished, and I swear I’ve seen more collared shirts and heels than usual. Perhaps we’re waiting for the paparazzi to swarm since hearing the news that Signiant won an Emmy for excellence in Technology and Engineering.

Today, some of the most innovative TV advertisers are working with a technique known as post-production product placement, a more natural form of traditional product placement — something that once seemed like an improvement over commercials but has gotten rather ridiculous as of late. Post-production product placements are less disruptive because they are placed in TV shows after they’ve been created, allowing advertisers to carefully select a clip to implant a brand image like the billboard in this scene. They can even insert TV tickers appropriate to each market, allowing viewers to engage with a brand via social media.

The question of how best to utilize the advantages of the cloud was the catalyst for our newest software product, Signiant Flight. Just released yesterday, Flight offers the ability to quickly and securely transfer large files and unstructured data sets to and from multiple cloud storage platforms.