Archive for the ‘Make IT Work for You’ Category
eriksr on August 13th, 2008
I’m not gonna pull any punches today: Communicators fail at technology. Hard.
Whether you’re an account manager who desperately needs to email a large file or a senior partner who doesn’t know how to post to their blog, just face facts: You’re doing a crappy job of taking advantage of all that computing power.
I bring this up because, without fail, I regularly found myself to be the one person in firm after firm that knows technology best. I was the one who knew how to edit a PowerPoint presentation in just such a way as to achieve a desired result. I was the one who knew how to quickly and easily find information on the labyrinthine network storage space, or find a specific email lost in a sea of tens of thousands. I built impressive looking blogs within the space of a couple of hours — complete with digital images I made by hand. And of course I know a lot about all the wonderful social media technology out there, too.
I shudder to think what marketing and public relations professionals could do if they had all this knowledge and experience. Yes, I’m certainly an exception — I was raised by a Commodore 64 (suckah!) and am self-taught until I reach proficient or expert status on anything technology related — but I really shouldn’t be.
The secret to getting to my level
If you cannot muster the enthusiasm for learning about some new piece of software, or how to operate some new gadget, don’t fret — you don’t need that, though it certainly helps.
What you need to do is to take thirty minutes alone in a quiet room away from everything else, and you need to start fiddling. Whenever you don’t understand something, Google it. Look around in the options settings of your application or gadget, see what else the technology is capable of.
There’s no need to overextend yourself — there’s no need to learn how something works in great detail, try to focus on learning only what something is capable of. When the time comes, you’ll know exactly what tool you’ll need for the job and you can learn as you go thanks to the power of Google.
eriksr on July 22nd, 2008
Purely at random I found myself at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business (henceforth referred to as Haas) site and, browsing about, came across something truly delightful amidst their faculty pages — iPhone wallpaper!.
I’m flabbergasted. Someone even provided a link to a .pdf of the user guide. Bravo to Haas for being relatively progressive!
eriksr on September 4th, 2007
How many times have you had to stop and puzzle something out on your computer today? This week? How 
much billable time are you losing out on because you need to format something just right but can’t find the button to do so?
Since getting a Mac, I’ve had such a smooth computing experience I sometimes find myself at a loss for something to do. With my windows computers there was always something to fix, a program to update, virus scan to run, and so on. The experience has opened my eyes to two concepts: User interface and willingness to learn.
Read the rest of this entry »
eriksr on May 8th, 2007
If you’ve ever found yourself in cut’n'paste land, know that you are not 
alone. Every day trillions of people toil away at the CRTL+X, CRTL+V keys (or the event less fortunate, who click “EDIT” and “CUT” then “PASTE) in an effort to get information from one place to another.
Thankfully, for some of you, Ditto has come to your rescue. Click the screenshot to see what it looks like, by the way!
So, how is this going to change my life?
Let’s say you’re constantly cutting/copying and pasting the same group of things. You have to go to your source, copy/cut, go to your destination, select your point, and paste. Ditto actually stores everything you’ve copied and kept on your clipboard so you don’t have to keep going back to your source — you just open Ditto and paste what you want from there.
Ditto can be launched quickly by hitting CRTL+` (it’s the rarely used button to the left of the number 1 on most keyboards).
Even better, Ditto hangs onto data for a long time, even after you turn your computer off, so you can access things you worked with days ago. Heck, you can keep whole tables in there!
eriksr on May 3rd, 2007
I’ve had a few people ask me about this in the past couple of days, so it seems like now would be a good time to direct everyone to my older entry on the subject. Click here to find out how you can access a computer remotely using your web browser. It is free and absolutely painless. 
eriksr on April 11th, 2007
Note: The posting schedule has been moved around a tad, so here’s part two of Podcasting 101 — look for the digital media resource collection Friday
In my last entry, you learned what a podcast was is, how it works, and how it can be of use in PR. Today, we will look at how you go about developing your podcast, software to help you create your podcast, and directories to help you promote your podcast. 
Five key steps to creating podcasts
1. Revisit your PR plan
Does a podcast fit in with your messaging strategy? Do you have the time and resources to do this? No strategic fit, no resources = no podcast. Good strategic fit + resources = podcast.
2. Plan to succeed
Figure out your tactics. What is your key message? How often will you podcast? How will you arrange for podcast production? Who is responsible for what, both client-side and firm-side? What will be the format? What content will you have? How long will the podcast be? And so on.
3. Differentiate
What competing podcasts are out there? Visit the podcast directories, listed below, and see who your competition is. Then figure out how you will differentiate.
4. Play nicely with others
Want to use content, including interviews and music, from another source? Get approval. Want guests on your podcast, such as guest speakers or people you will interview? Contact them and book time.
5. Produce
Have at least 5 podcasts in the bag before you go live. This gives you a chance to deal with the inevitable first time errors before you commit to a schedule.
I pod, you pod, we all pod
Now that you know how to create a podcast, you need software to help you do so. Three worth looking into are:
Podcast shout
Of course, your podcast won’t do you any good if no one know it exists. The solution? List it on podcast directories. Here are three to get you started:
- Podcast Bunker. They limit their list only to those that they believe are the very best, so it is of some value to make it to this list.
- Podcasting Station. This directory allows visitors to perform handy podcast topic searches.
- Podcasting News. More extensive than Podcasting Station, podcasts are also sorted by topic.
