Marketing Magic to a Thumping Beat.

In my business, I talk with big and small clients all the time about their marketing and advertising efforts and specifically their websites. I am often surprised that a minority of these otherwise perfectly capable business people have trusted their website to the kid down the street, a brother-in-law or the cheapest developer they could find. The results have ranged from frustration to unmitigated disaster. I have heard of major corporations being held captive as the rights to their URL’s are owned by their web development company, that the software used to create their site was proprietary and can’t be moved, updated or repaired, that the servers hosting their site mysteriously vanished taking their site down with them or that the Brother-in-law, who has taken over two years to produce three pages, has found a new job and can’t finish their site. Would you trust your inventory control system or POS to anyone other than a professional, what about your accounting or sales management?...

More and more folks are buying Apple laptops as stats from the end of 2008 indicate. Apple’s laptop fleet including the MacBook, MacBook Pro 15” and 17” and the thinnest and lightest laptop the MacBook Air have vaulted into 3rd place behind corporate giants Dell and HP. Apple commands 17.6% of the market gaining 2.2% in 2008 while most of the rest of the industry struggled to maintain their existing share. A big reason for Apple’s success has been it’s bundled iLife software package purchasers receive free with the purchase of their laptop. There are five applications in the iLife suite iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, iWeb and iDVD. iMovie lets you import video footage from your camcorder and create mini movies on your Mac. Garageband is a music creation program that is addictive and fun even for those who don’t play a real instrument. iWeb helps you create your own website and iDVD helps you create DVD’s in minutes. But it is iPhoto I want to concentrate on today. iPhoto all by itself is...

If you drive a vehicle that’s a few years old and you’re thinking about looking for a new one you will certainly be amazed at the newest and latest electronic toys to be found in the modern auto cabin. High-end Audi’s, Lexus and BMW’s boast a host of jaw dropping technology that makes your next ride safer, sound better and provide more information than ever before. Today’s vehicles only need the key to be in your pocket as you approach to unlock and start your vehicle. There is no longer a need to actually insert the key into the ignition any longer. Sports cars now come with big buttons you can push to start the engine once they have sensed the key on your person. Tiny sensors in the bumpers warn you with an audio sound or a light on the dash or rearview mirror when you are about to back up into an obstacle and some will apply the brakes before impact. There is even a system that will parallel park your vehicle for you without any input from you other than turning it on. Just take you...

Have you ever been put in charge of arranging a meeting, conference, event or concert where you where expected to provide some sort of audio amplification? Most of us in the corporate world reach for the phone book and get in touch with our favourite meeting planner or audio/visual company who look after all the technical details and equipment for us. If you volunteer or sit on the board of a small charity with limited funds this may not be an option. I recently had this thrust on me and I had to rent a public address system and operate it myself. I used to play in bands and had some exposure to sound reinforcement, but had not touched a board in many years. Here’s how I approached this challenge. I knew I needed some microphones, a mixing board, amplification and speakers. I also knew that A/V firms charge a small fortune for their rentals so taking the DIY route I headed over to Long & McQuade, a local music store that rents audio gear to musicians who know how to watch their pen...

Websites are becoming as commonplace as the business card and are no longer the exclusive domain of those with deep pockets or the corporate world. Not-for-profits, associations, special interests, and the average person are all online looking to advance their interests. In 2008 according to the International Telecommunication Union 84.3% of Canadians use the Internet regularly. Canada is right at the top of the list of countries whose population has access to high-speed connectivity. Online shopping has felt the economic downturn but expectations of growth continue. With millions of web sites all struggling to be seen, how can you ensure your site is noticed? My clients ask me this question weekly and there is no single answer. Google is still the world’s largest and most used search engine and the way it finds, ranks and displays its search results is a closely guarded secret and one that is forever being refined and modified. There are a series of things you can do to ensure your s...

Many of us are claiming our little corner of the internet, launching a website for our company or our pleasure. Over the last dozen years I have helped many clients launch their website and I have worked hard to ensure they achieve their ambitions. Along the way I have learned a few things I thought I might share. The first thing to remember is to keep it simple. Winking, blinking and moving icons should be avoided at all cost. Clutter only confuses the visitor so use the KISS Rule liberally. Use images and graphics keep text to a minimum they won’t read it anyway. Hire a designer and don’t do it yourself. The navigation needs to be intuitive and the site needs to look great when you are out there competing with the whole world for attention. Code is king. Elegant web designers adhere rigidly to the clearly established web coding principles and standards, your web savvy nephew may not. Why should you care? Because Google looks for properly coded sites and places them higher in the rank...

For the last few years Apple’s GarageBand application has allowed musicians to plug in their keyboards or electric guitars, process the sound and record their ideas on their Macintosh computers. Because it comes free on every new Mac as part of the iLife suite (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, and GarageBand) it has gained a foothold with professional musicians looking for an easy way to record to basement musician wannabes who enjoy being mad scientists and creating everything from jingles and podcasts to rough garage band demos to ringtones. Apple’s latest version of GarageBand in iLife ’09 has a very interesting addition allowing you to learn to play a real instrument like a guitar or piano. Both my kids, my wife and I have all taken music lessons over the last few years and I have found that while some teachers are outstanding there are others who give you the distinct impression that they are only looking to make a little extra spending money. There seems to be no standards and what pr...

Twitter, heard of it? No, it’s not the return of the local Robins or Blue Jays to your back yard, although I can’t wait for that to happen, it’s a software program designed to stay in touch with friends and family. It is really a micro-blogging site that is restricted to 140 characters that you can use from a cellphone or via your favourite instant message client. If you want to have a look, surf over to www.twitter.com where you will find a simple, pretty site with a great big green button inviting you to “Join the Conversation”. Punch the button and fill out a few questions. Now you need to add the folks you want to communicate with. You can search for those who are already Twitter members by typing their name or invite them to join via email by typing in their email addresses separated by commas into the box provided. Now sit back and wait for a few friends to reply to your invitation. Once you have a little group to talk with you can post your first update. Select the “home” link a...

Digital cameras have made sharing photos by email simple. But if you have more than a couple of images to show email has its limitations. I don’t know how many times I have received a message that my email box is full only to discover that one of my clients has flooded it with a couple of huge image files. I have also started my day wading through 20 emails with one or two emailed images attached to each one. There are better ways to share your photos without the email problems. Online services like FLICKR offer shutterbugs the perfect place to upload your vacation photos and share them with family and friends around the world. You can find FLICKR at www.flickr.com and at the top right is your create an account button. The next page has a bunch of stuff but really you only need the top bar of navigation. Select the YOU button and create a profile for yourself. You’ll need to set your privacy levels and add your “Buddy Icon” which will be your identifier in the world of FLICKR. You can ...

Getting great digital shots requires a bit of thought and a couple of useful gadgets so let’s take a look which camera features will take your photographs to the next level. Cameras The MEGA PIXEL Digital photography continues to advance but many consumers have become fixated on the mighty pixel. Mega Pixels seems to be the biggest concern and really if your camera delivers 7 mega pixels or better you have more than enough for most applications. Unless you plan on printing huge poster sized photos, most digital cameras now provide enough pixels to produce great detail and sharpness. Really the cameras digital sensor’s physical size and it’s level of “noise” should be a bigger concern than its mega pixels because the larger the sensor the more light it can process and the better its quality the lower the noise or “fuzziness” it will produce in your images when stressed with low light situations or very fast shutter speeds. DIGITAL ZOOMS Many digital cameras offer optical zooms augmented...

Digital storage is exploding. Our computers are packed with photographs, music, movies and email. Consumers are moving away from their desktops with huge hard drives to smaller, lighter laptops with much less storage capacity. These intensive libraries require back-up and an external hard drive is an obvious solution. We discussed back-ups in these pages before so all I will say is please back-up your files and ensure your data remains secure and intact. In this weeks column I want to talk about using an external hard drive as a storage location for your media files. Recently Apple released the new iLife 09 software package with new versions of iPhoto, and iMovie. As I played with these new versions I realized that our families photo collection was spread over two or three computers making finding the photos we wanted to find more difficult. I have an external hard drive kicking around that I used to use as a back-up disc and decided to put it back into service as my photo storage driv...