09 Jun 2010
Today I had an interesting conversation about business podcasting for a B2B focused small business looking to generate leads and perceived expertise in their area. We chatted a little bit about the tools that were needed and observed that, far from being a big burden, podcasting is relatively low effort while giving an authentic connection with people who consider you an expert in your field.
Podcasting fulfills much the same role an email newsletter/mass contact does – yet manages to differentiate itself in the medium to actually get onto people’s desks in a bit of a unique way. Technically podcasting is pretty easy to implement, with WordPress being one obvious tool to make it happen online and most new computers sporting Windows, OS X or Linux coming with free software included (or at least easily available) to produce the content.
So what’s our role? Just lifting the bar, really. From snazzy intro/outro music to standardised call-to-action snippets that get attached or rotated week by week, a little bit of expertise goes a long way to creating a successful, easy to create podcasting experience. This makes it easier for small businesses to stay in it for the long haul, building better brands, leads, and adding value for customers.
13 Mar 2010
Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Mobile is a piece of software recently released for iPhone/iPod touch that is rather interesting for a number of reasons. I noticed it because it largely overlaps with a product that we’ve been canvassing support for to release on the iPad (and likely still will), but there seems to be a lot more going on here!
Firstly, it’s worth noting that this free software is published by Adobe, developed using Flash, and is featured in the App Store.
For those who keep their head off the Internet/are apathetic towards Apple’s mobile platform powerplays, let me just briefly note that Apple and Adobe are hardly best of friends. Accordingly, while the approval of a Flash-based application is a little cheeky, the elevation of one to featured app store status is straight up devious.
We can only speculate as to whether pragmatic or political reasons motivated Adobe’s development in this way. Self-evidently, they have a lot of in-house competencies around Flash development, but they would also love to get a product approved insofar as it drives adoption of their Connect platform (which, unlike the App Store app, is anything but free).
There are many less sneaky ways of building a compelling tech demo. If I had to guess, I’d attribute the use of Flash to a substantial existing software investment for web-based clients that was largely portable to the mobile context. The impact this has on user experience is likely to be minimal, as they likely redesigned the frontend entirely – though obviously other performance concerns may apply.
At any rate, this is the first I’ve noticed of approvals of overtly Flash-based applications. If possible, this may open the App Store floodgates even further, while providing hope to many for whom the barrier to entry in terms of rewriting code was simply too high.
We’re excited about this as certain component parts of software we’ve developed depends strongly on Flash for data visualization and reporting. The prospect of being able to deploy this on the iPhone (and yes, the iPad) is a compelling opportunity that is, plainly, freaking exciting.
24 Feb 2010
I stumbled across quite a visually beautiful commercial today. Its script follows:
In the future, one thing is certain.
Someone’s going to drive it.
Someone’s going to collect it.
Someone’s going to lie on it. Sit on it. Sleep on it.
Drink too much German beer on it.
Someone will sit in front row seats, here, here and here.
Someone will land it. Someone will save it. Someone will find it. Then get happily lost in it.
Someone will sleep five stars, someone will sleep under the stars.
Someone will ski down it, fly over it, and scream across it.
Beautiful things will still be made in the future. Someone is going to buy them.
Someone’s going to walk it. Someone is going to ride it.
And at the end of the day, someone’s going to watch it.
And there’s no reason why that someone can’t be you.
Since 1849, AMP has helped more Australians own their tomorrows.
Own tomorrow. AMP.
Emotive as it was, it is also, of course, absolute hogwash — GFC or no!
Someone once told this story:
A rich man once thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’
He decided, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’
But God said to the man, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
You don’t own your tomorrow. It’s not even yours today. The Bible says there is one good kind of storing up to be done – I can “store up God’s word in my heart, that I might not sin against Him.” (Ps 119:11) – yet I still fail and need to fall upon His mercy.
The man who told that story was Jesus. (Luke 12:16-20) He promises peace and a greater security than all the riches of the world.
Own eternal life. Jesus.
24 Feb 2010
We recently refreshed one of our core product websites, Equip Schools. It hits a fairly complex mix of schools, parents/carers and individual students and we spent a lot of time trying to best articulate how the programme speaks to the varied concerns of each of these groups.
The product has three curriculum-driven strands in the form of workshops, publications and software.
The software strand is certainly the most distinct of the three in terms of conventional expectations of life-skills / personal management programmes that schools already run – and we’re still coming to terms with the best way to articulate that within the website. We’ve developed a brief (16 minute) training DVD that accompanies the product – however, this is obviously too long for initial contact and, while being highly explanatory, doesn’t really articulate the thousands of hours of educational psychology research and student mentoring that inform the product as it stands today.
Distilling that down to a 10 minute package is a tall ask, but it’s also something near on the horizon as we seek to make this available to individuals beyond the school context.
23 Feb 2010
This weekend Evening Church from St Matthias went away to the Northern Beaches together on a weekend entitled “Division Not Peace”, examining Jesus’ teachings from Luke’s account of his life.
The teachings of Jesus were clearly divisive in the Gospels and continue to be so today. Light illuminates darkness. Christ reveals sin.
He also pays for it. And is worth following. The unsweetened reality of the end of Luke 9 is at once immensely painful and wholly true.
Our speaker, David Ould, faithfully preached Jesus’ words without coating them in false comfort or apologising for their truth and goodness. The hard truth of the gospel is such that, though we find great joy in the King who pays sin’s great price, we wept and prayed for those who do not yet acknowledge Him.
We fail as much as any fallen, sinful people do. Pray for us that we would love like Jesus, which rightly includes declaring the reality of division as sin is exposed by the gospel.