I’ve always been under the impression that an office isn’t really an office until the supreme overlords from corporate have paid a visit.  So I’m happy to say that our office is now official … thanks to this week’s visit from several members of the Harman exec staff.

Max explaining his strategy for serving in Ping-Pong

And the timing couldn’t have been better.  Not only had I recently finished setting up the SoundBar and PS3, but our design guru was able to put some additional touches on some of the office decor that he had put up over the last few months.

Not only that, but the blu-ray set of Star Wars came in a couple weeks ago, and my LEGO Hoth Playset arrived with just enough time to assemble.

All in all it was quite a successful day.

-Ryan

It has been a pretty busy week.  Last Thursday we announced a partnership with Slacker to bring their personalized radio service into cars via Aha (check out the coverage here).

This week we’ve been demoing Aha in Harman’s booth at the biannual Frankfurt Auto Show. We’ve been showing some of our upcoming content, including Slacker, radio stations, hundreds of new podcasts, and audio books, accessing them through a new Ferrari radio.

Harman, Aha (background), and Ferrari look good together

The show itself is amazing, dwarfing all other auto shows in size. BMW has one entire hall to itself with an elevated roadway built around the top of their booth with cars driving on it. Most car companies are showing at least one all electric or hybrid concept car and there are lots of very cool designs.

The first two days on Tuesday and Wednesday were only open to the press and exhibitors and Tuesday especially seemed to be the day that senior executives from the auto industry made the rounds. If was an amazing opportunity to demonstrate Aha to chairmen, heads of purchasing, top infotainment execs, and other senior people from major car companies world-wide.

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If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news the last day you have probably seen that we have ourselves a new content partner … Slacker Personal Radio!

Later this year, Aha users will be able to access Slacker content from within Aha, and in doing so connect that content to a variety of different stereo interfaces.

So if you are keeping score at home, that’s Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Inrix Traffic, podcasts, and now Slacker Internet Radio.  We are getting dangerously close to something for everyone.

There has been a flood of coverage over the last day, and if you are interested in reviewing any of them I urge you to check out our Twitter feed (where we’ve been on quite a tweet spree).

-Ryan

Snack time

Time goes by so fast.  It seems like only yesterday (ok, a month ago) that we welcomed the very first Aha interns to our world.

Alas, school had to go and start again.  That means that Emily and Kyra are en route to the great Pacific Northwest (especially lovely this time of year) to return to the wonderful world of academia.

And since Friday’s before three day weekends are notoriously vacant days around most offices, we opted for a Thursday Sundae Bar Day (try saying that 10 times fast).

Mmmmmm

Thanks again to Emily and Kyra for all the great help!

-Ryan