iPad First Impressions: Point Counterpoint

The purpose of the majority of new devices is to replace or revolutionize a pre-existing object. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly the iPad is replacing.

Let's look at some of the highlights Apple gives and compare them to what's already out there.

LED Backlit Display: Currently on all Apple Products, including the iPod Touch and iPhone. The iPod sports a 9.7", larger than the iPod Touch and iPhone, smaller than any Apple computer. Nothing new.

Multitouch: Currently on the Macbook Pro track pad, Macbook Air track pad, Apple Magic Mouse, iPod Touch, and iPhone. Also nothing new.

A thin and light computer: Macbook Air, iPod Touch, iPhone. Nothing new.

10 hours of battery life: An improvement! One hour more than the average Apple Product.

Wireless: Available on all Apple computers, the iPod Touch, and the iPhone.

3G Network: Available on the iPhone.

Apps: Available on the iPhone and iPod Touch


Those are all the major design highlights given on Apple's site for the iPad. Notice something very important: the only thing the iPad has that no other Apple product has is a better battery.

Right now the iPad seems to occupy a technology space somewhere between a laptop and an iPhone. That's nice and all, but it's like having an 18" long ruler. It can measure as well as a 12" ruler with some additional inches, but it's a pain to carry and it'll never be able to effectively measure as much as a tape measure can.

Another major problem (granted, this exists on all Apple hand-helds at the moment) is the lack of Flash Player thanks to Apple's fight with Adobe. Apple likes to tote the iPad's video playing capabilities on that wonderful LED Backlit Display. Great, so you've got YouTube and any movies you might have hacked for iTunes or downloaded. What about the millions of non-YouTube videos like Hulu? That's another topic entirely, but you get my drift.

Bottom line: overpriced, oversized iPhone that can't make calls and would rather be a laptop but it can't because it can only run one app at a time.

Video in the Virtual

The ongoing drive to the ubiquity of video communications is often seen as a technology play. User based services such as You Tube and UStream; the technologies of industry leaders such as Cisco and Polycom’s TelepPresence; and, the eventual video access of the iPad certainly have the WOW that piques our interest.

The real driver though lies not in the picture but in the very human need to remove barriers to understanding – it is the never ending quest to approach the reality of same space interaction.

Video – in ways audio alone cannot provide – allows us to duplicate more closely the visceral experience that drives our emotions which in turn moves our perception and ultimately our decision making.

The video genie is out and as the world’s infrastructure continues to evolve visual communications will change, in unforeseen ways, how we see the world and our roles in it.

~ Rich Scorza, Executive Vice President of Sales

Microsoft vs Apple, Round 2

Microsoft is, once again, trying to break into a market a little too late. They have a new phone in development with the project code-name "Pink." The purpose of this phone? To allow fast, efficient access to social media. This would have been a good idea around three years ago when the iPhone was released to allow some kind of competition, but right now it seems to be Zune vs iPod again. There are millions of consumers who know exactly what an iPod is, but have never heard the word "Zune" in their lives. Why? Because Microsoft tried to break into a market Apple already had locked down.

The iPhone, the iTouch, and the iPad all have apps that allow the same kind of access to social media Microsoft is talking about. Apple has three years of product development on them, and that's even mentioning the plethora of smart phones out there offered by other giants (Google's Nexus One, for example) Microsoft has to compete with. It's true that the Zune already offers social media support, but that's not the same as integrating it into a phone.

Microsoft seems to be continually looking at what other companies are doing and simply re-packaging their products (Windows 7 feels very much like Snow Leopard, for example). They need to start innovating or they're going to be taken over very quickly, if it's not too late already.

Virtual Integration Part I

A new definition of team work and a pathway to new opportunities.

In Michael Hammer’s authoritative work – The Agenda: What Every Business Must Do to Dominate the Decade – he puts forth the concept of Virtual Integration. He suggests that for a company to succeed it must embrace his “radical” vision of virtual integration which includes doing the following:

1. See your business not as a self-contained company, but as part of an extended enterprise of companies that work together to create customer value.

2. Define your company in terms of the processes you perform, not the products or services you create.

3. Identify and strengthen the key processes at which you excel.

4. Outsource everything else to someone better equipped to do it.

5. Learn to work closely with others, not just on your own.

6. Be prepared to rethink your company’s identity and strategy in fundamental ways.

Now, in the spring of 2010, the way we strive to outsource non-core processes is a standard practice. We run our companies around our core competencies and off-load the rest in order to grow more quickly and profitably. When we see an opportunity to offer new, complementary and innovative services to our customers, we form a “strategic partnership” so that our customers can access these new services. This enables our customer to receive more value, while maintaining a relationship with a team of people that is very familiar with their business needs.

Virtual Integration also enables our team to grow and learn from others. As Keith MacFarland states in his book The Breakthrough Company :

Breakthrough companies seek to integrate new tools, processes, and ideas to help them better manage the growing complexity of their worlds, without, at the same time, losing the firm’s unique aspects that inspire people to give their best efforts.

We are always looking to prepare for the future, anticipate where our industry is going and how we can gain a competitive edge against our competitors. Most organizations look to a “product” or specific “tool” to help them succeed in their future endeavors. And, traditional planning processes assume we can predict the future. Neither of these premises hold true in today’s economy.

What companies that want to succeed must do today is to create a more “agile” organization that is responsive to customer needs and adaptable to market changes.

Internet For World Peace

CNN has an article up concerning the nomination of the internet for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Because the internet is inanimate, I think the chances of it winning are extremely small. Also on that list of nominees are many of the great minds responsible for the creation of the internet, I find it more likely that one of them will get it instead if the internet is deemed worthy of such a prize.

That said, let's entertain the scenario where the internet does win. Why would the internet win? What would that mean?

Let's think about all the good things the internet is currently responsible for. Instant access to worldwide news, shopping for anything from any location, video chat, keeping in contact with friends, spreading ideas across the world, sending aid to countries/organizations/people located anywhere, job searching, online gaming, having music and videos from anywhere in front of you in seconds, the list could go on for a very long time.

Now what about the bad? Child pornography, software/entertainment piracy, easy identity theft, easy stalking, degradation of face-to-face social interaction, increased laziness, false information proliferation, easy access to material unsuitable for minors...this list too could go on for a long time.

The internet is neutral to everything. Summed up, it's purpose is to allow worldwide interaction for better or for worse. We're talking about a technology that has single handedly connected one out of every 4 people in the world, and that's only growing. Even if it can be used for bad just as easily as for good, surely that single accomplishment is worthy of the award.

What would that mean for us if a technology won an award historically, with no exceptions, given to human beings? Maybe nothing. Perhaps we accept that, at this point in humanity, technology is just as prevalent in securing world peace as any person can be.

Technology Today

Over the last few days I've been working in a program called Adobe Flash CS4 to create a corporate video introduction. After completing the video I intended to turn it into a standard Quicktime video, like most things you view on the internet. When I tried to export it, however, the video looked terrible. Parts of it were missing entirely. So I looked it up to find some help, and as it turns out there's a problem in the program that happens with Macs. It's been like this since its release, and Adobe is showing no intent to change it.

Whenever I purchase a product these days, particularly concerning electronics or programs, I more or less expect something to not work properly. I expect to have issues connecting to the internet, or not having a touch pad work all the time, or having a program auto-quit on me in the middle of working. These are things commonly accepted in today's world of technology...they're bugs, they happen. My question is, why is it accepted?

Why is it acceptable for a company to put out what is, essentially, a defective product? The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. If my grandparents bought a product a mere thirty years ago and it didn't work exactly as intended they returned it, no questions asked. With electronics, for the most part, we don't. We suffer through the technical problems by trying to find the solutions ourselves or listening to a support line. What happened between then and now that allowed developers to get away with releasing products unfinished?

My gut reaction is that we're dealing with products far more complicated than ever before. One coding mistake, one misplaced wire, among the millions of code lines and thousands of circuits, can cause a slew of problems. It must be extremely difficult and time consuming to make sure all those parts are in order. That said, isn't it the developer's and manufacturer's jobs to make sure they are? I find it difficult to excuse those mistakes knowing someone gets paid to ensure it.

Is it about the rush to get the product out, do we have to blame ourselves for some of this? Not only for becoming okay with shoddy work to begin with, but for needing everything on demand so badly that it pushes companies to rush out their products? I look forward to the day when I can purchase an electronic product and not only expect it to work as reliably as a swiss army knife, but hold it to those expectations instead of letting its failures slide simply because it's electronic.

The Smart Phone

For the last decade there has been one major center for cell phone innovation: Japan. I recently read an article on the Japanese "smart phones" on the New York Times discussing why these phones haven't made it overseas yet. The Japanese are calling it "Galápagos syndrome." Their cell phones have evolved well past the point most of us use, which makes it difficult for Japanese companies to break into foreign markets when we think we have the "latest technology" in the iPhone. Truth be told, what the iPhone can do has been done by the Japanese for awhile now, the only difference being the lack of a touch screen (they tend to enjoy flip phones instead).

A few features not typically seen on phones anywhere else:
E-money (using the cell phone instead of a debit or credit card)
Tickets for public transportation
User identification via facial recognition and fingerprints.
Bar code scanning/advertisement scanning.
Television streaming (not Hulu or YouTube style, actual television)
Movie viewing
Video calling
AM/FM Radio
GPS
Live streaming video

There, it's more common to surf the internet with a cell phone instead of a computer. In the US, we frequently hear about how great it would be to have one device for everything. In Japan, there are few things they need any other device for. Once you start reaching past entertainment value with a cell phone to things that could be considered "necessity," the cell phone loses its status as a novelty item and becomes an essential. Why buy a nice computer for $1500 when you can buy a cell phone that does everything a computer can and then some (minus graphically intensive games) for $300? For me that answer is easy, I need a bigger screen for design work. But I think the average computer user who's not in front of one for 8 hours a day or just using word processing probably doesn't need a big screen.

Think of what this would mean for advertising, even for conferencing. For YouTube ads, for Facebook, Twitter, and blog interaction, internet needs to be available. For most people, that means a computer. In Japan, 100 million people have access to the internet at all times because their phones are with them. That's 100 million people you could connect with 24/7. Maybe we should start taking the hint over here.

The Marketing Director’s Webinar Problem

I had coffee this morning with a marketing director at a rapidly growing med-tech company. She has a webinar problem. Here is an excerpt of our conversation:

“We set it (webinar) up and get lots of people to attend, but the presentation is a disaster. There is constant beeping on the phone lines and no one wants to “own” the delivery because they always mess it up and are embarrassed. Then, the responsibility is passed along to somebody new and they don’t want to do it because they are scared of screwing up. And, with our doctors’ time being so precious, the importance of delivering a well-run presentation just adds to the pressure. Ugh.”
~ Anonymous Marketing Director

The Internet and associated web-based social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In, are making webinars commonplace. The technical and economic justifications are clear, but executing a professional webinar is still beyond the grasp of many marketing organizations.

Execution – the elusive Holy Grail for marketing directors –keeps them up at night. Her primary concern is focused on her team’s ability (or lack thereof) to present its value proposition in a clear, concise package. Information needs to be conveyed in a “clean technological wrapper” in order to deliver the desired impact and credibility in our tech-savvy culture.

Get Ready For The Google Wave (The Other One)

I like Google but they scare the daylights out of me.

They pretty much run my computer, my phone, and seemingly the future of technology as a whole. Want to find something on the internet? Google it. Buy it? Google Checkout. Run your business? Google Apps. Want to consolidate phone numbers? Google Voice. Go somewhere? Google Maps.

Arguably this type of command of my virtual life should be reason enough to be afraid but something happened the other day that is far more terrifying. Just take a peek at the stock prices of Garmin (GRMN) and TomTom (TOM2.NX) after October 28th, the same day Google announced Google Maps Navigation.

Now, I have nothing particularly profound to say about the nature of business or, even more, about how this is a wonderful example of a free market based economy and how it helps consumers or how this is some cautionary tale of a big company unfairly flexing its muscles that should be government regulated.

What I will say is that today's business, especially technology based ones, should be aware of where Google is going. And the short answer is everywhere. Businesses that are still hoping to thrive as this happens need to figure out where value is defined outside of the technology itself.

Either that or don't be surprised if the next Google Wave wipes you out.

Gaming & Conference Marriage

There's a new kind of conferencing method that's been gaining steam over the last couple of years that involves 3D avatars in a virtual environment.

A lot of people can't see the draw to this. They would much rather meet at a conference in person than in a fake conference room because it's more personal. You can physically shake hands, trade business cards, and hold a conversation. You can also physically get on a cramped plane, wait for luggage, find a taxi, find a hotel, find decent food, report your expenses to corporate, and hope you get refunded in a reasonable amount of time. Some people enjoy those things, I know I enjoy traveling, but there are many who do not. Some people are just much more comfortable sitting at home or in the office. That's who this service is targeting.

There's a genre of games out there called Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs, usually shortened to MMOs). These are games where thousands of people gather in one place in 3D avatar form in complete various challenges. The most popular of those games, and you've probably heard of it, is World of Warcraft. Some of you may be thinking, "Now hang on, aren't these games typically played by 40-somethings in their parents' basement? What role could they possibly have in our business?" That stereotype couldn't be more inaccurate now. People of every kind are playing these games, and if the 12 million current players of World of Warcraft alone are any indication of the playerbase, it's not those kind of people anymore. To give you a more concrete idea of how many people that is, it's over twice the population of our humble Minnesota. Granted, we're certainly not the most populated state in the US, but the point is the gaming community of World of Warcraft would be a formidably sized state. That's not including the huge playerbase of the other big MMOs: EVE Online (which actually targets CEOs for their playerbase), Guild Wars, Lineage, Aion, Final Fantasy XI, and Ragnarok Online.

A lot of the players from these rapidly growing games are between the ages of 14 and 30, and you can bet they would be perfectly willing to spend time in that 3D virtual conference space. It's something worth looking into, because in the future when most of your employees are made up of those people you might be able to save yourself the huge head-aches from organizing venues and transportation for guest speakers.

An Open Note To Self

As a football fan and a perceived idiot by marketers, I saw the Motorola Droid commercial a good half dozen times this weekend. For people who aren't agoraphobes...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPYM-XTqcec

HOLY MOLY! MY LIFE IS GOING TO BE MADE COMPLETE WITH THE ABILITY TO RUN MULTIPLE WIDGETS SIMULTANEOUSLY IN THE DARK!!!

OK, of course I'm excited and of course I'm checking out every tech blog I know of to get a better look at the phone that took 2.33 major companies (Google, Verizon, and Motorola) three iterations of the iPhone to make.

But here's a little note to Apple, Google, AT&T, Verizon, Motorola, and pretty much everyone in the profiteering off the 21st Century Digital Boy age, start with probably the most important functionality that a communication device should have. Functionality.

Before everyone goes Double Live Gonzo! about new tech specs, hardware, software, shareware, Andre Ware...Give me a phone that makes calls from my basement so I can call my brother and ask him if I can borrow his tent to camp out for the new phone that will completely change my life.

There are a few technologies that have revolutionized life on this planet. Inventions like the automobile, the airplane, and the internet have changed the way humans live. At 3D, we adapt to the technological curve; therefore, we can provide our customers an award winning experience. We are constantly testing new and different approaches that have become available with the latest technological advances.

Recently I have been introduced to a new technology. This revolutionary idea has solidified itself amongst the greatest intellectual achievements of man-kind. The minds at 3D have been working together tirelessly to bring together state-of-the-art audio and the highest quality video to produce a top notch demonstration. Below you will find the future of conferencing which actually allows attendees to join the virtual environment.

So without further ado, I give you, JibJab:



Life as we know it may never be the same…

~ Kyle Jackson

The Joys of Video Editing

Recently I was assigned to produce ‘something’ that demonstrates to customers the value and capabilities of 3dve. Like a bolt of lightning, inspiration hit me in the middle of the night. For two hours I couldn’t stop writing as I planned my new bouncing baby… video.

I worked tirelessly for the next week to try and give some sort of tangible figure to my idea. And finally I stood proud (ok so maybe I was a sitting) as I demonstrated my new ‘baby’ to the team at 3dve. It was a smash hit, but certain things needed to be changed.

“It’s too long” “It’s too fast” “It’s a little overwhelming” “The colors are wrong” “You’re using the wrong type face” “Outro is too wordy” “The graphics aren’t updated” And my favorite: “Can you chop it up so I don’t have to watch the whole thing?”

WHAT?! You want me to chop up my baby?! It’s only 3 minutes long!! (That’s 15 inches in Camtasia)

Anyways, I continued to work on my baby, and produced several version only to find out that something else wasn’t quite right, the opening shots were confusing, then the transitions were a little choppy… But I pushed towards perfection, and it gives me great pleasure to present it to you here.

But please be gentle, I don’t want to ruin that new baby smell.

- Kyle Jackson

Multiple Presenters

Got more than one presenter? Get thee hence to separate locations where you can each use a land line phone with a headset. If that’s the only thing you get from this blog, then my work here is done.

Since you paid attention, you are now co-presenting with someone in a different physical location. Get together and check each other's audio quality as you practice your presentation. Then, just before the event starts, have a third party give input on your sound levels. You want both voices to be at similar volume. Maybe one of you backs off your microphone a wee bit to keep the levels balanced. Then stay put.

If you must sit in a conference room together, do your sound checks for volume levels. Not everyone talks at the same volume and level of projection. Move the speaker phone so you get similar levels from each speaker while still maintaining quality sound. This is easier to accomplish around a round table instead of an oblong table unless you have a sophisticated conferencing room with precision setups that will accommodate multiple conferencing requirements.

You might have to snuggle up a bit to make sure that everyone is heard or consider playing musical chairs moving the louder speakers further away from the speakerphone. Keep the speakerphone as far away from the overhead projector as you can. I understand, that is sometimes impossible when you are trying to keep the speaker phone in the middle of a table and once again I say unto you...Get thee hence to separate locations where you can each use an old reliable land line phone with a headset. Who knew this could be a subject that would wax biblical? The beauty of web conferencing technology is that we don't have to be all in the same location. So enjoy that freedom.

Speakerphone Cons

Avoid using a speaker phone if you can when you are speaking over a web conference. I've heard many presenters claim that they must use their speaker phone so they can keep their hands free to run their computer in the web conference...please read my previsous blog on using a headset.

If you must use a speaker phone, you will have to be very careful as ambient room noise can be picked up by a speaker phone and magnified for your listeners 10-fold. Do a sound level check with your body location in relation to the speaker phone and then don't move the phone. If you slide the phone, or even bump it, your listeners will get a rude noise. Turn your cell phone off. I was recently on a conference where the speaker turned his cell phone to vibrate and then sat it on the table next to his speaker phone. You guessed it, the cell phone went off and although the speaker only heard his normal vibrate noise, we thought we were being buzzed into a high rise apartment building.

There are as many old speaker phones in use today as there are contestants who don't make it to Hollywood at the American Idol auditions. If it ain't broken, don't have to buy a new one, right? Not true in this case. Speaker phone technology gets better every year and old technology gets older every year. Small single microphones that don't pick up audio evenly from all directions which transmit low fidelity sound can dull what was otherwise a shining presentation.

Are your presentation notes sitting right in front of you with a nice staple in the upper left corner and as you go from slide to slide, you are going to flip the top page over to the back? Be careful. That particular action is frequently picked up by the speaker phone. Here’s how you avoid this: First, don't staple your stack of papers. Then slide the top sheet noiselessly off to the left. If you’ve read my previous blogs you’ll know that I also want you to sit with good posture in your chair, holding your head upright and speak in a relaxed professional but conversational manner which mean you shouldn’t be reading a script right off your notes anyway but if you absolutely have to have notes, use the above method of moving through your papers.

Presentation Tips

Look around where you are presenting from and pay attention to the background noise. Is there any chance that some of that background noise might erupt into something loud close by that will transmit over your conference? Doorbells, overhead announcements, laughing co-workers, barking Schnauzers? Have you turned off your Call-Waiting? If another call comes in while you are speaking, will your phone make a beep or emit a short ring?

We’ve talked about sitting while you present but you should also try to maintain good posture while you are presenting. I know it sounds crazy, but sitting in a lazy position encourages you voice to be lazy. You will slur your words more if you slump. Sit with your back straight but be comfortable so you can also sound relaxed. You want to be able to speak in a normal conversational business-like manner, just as if you were sitting at a conference table. Notice I said “conversational”. The most frequent follow-up comment that I field from post-event surveys is: The speaker sounded like he was reading a script he had never read before. Are you reading a script that you have never read before? We’ll discuss this in more detail in a later blog but for now, make sure you have water accessible. Speaking while nervous increases dry mouth and you want to be prepared if you really need to take a drink.

Try to arrive in your web conference 15 minutes early so you don’t feel rushed, thus increasing any nervousness you might feel. I’ve read articles that suggest that fear of public speaking ranks right up there with fear of death. I’m not a psychologist but I’ve sat in on literally hundreds of web conferences and more than 60% of the time, I can hear nervousness in the voice of the speaker.
In a web conference, the speaker is usually sitting in a familiar location with familiar equipment talking to the air. Why are you nervous? I would love to hear back from anyone who wants to tell me why they are nervous. Click here to send me a note and I’ll review some of your comments in a future blog.

While I'm Not For Bigger Government...

I think someone needs to start regulating corporate usage of the term Customer Service.

Two issues in 24 hours.

1. I upgraded from an old Playstation 3 to the a Playstation 3 Slim. As someone who has bought computers and switched purchased content like iTunes from the old computer to the new one, I was stunned to learn that it is darn near impossible to transfer purchases between consoles. After hours searching the internet for answers, I found one that put me directly into Sony's customer service cross-hairs. After being told numerous times that there was nothing they could do and that they couldn't wait for my system to update because they had "other people to help", I was defacto hung up on and am now determined that I will simply return the new system to the store.

2. I needed to replace an optical drive for a company computer because the one that was sold with the computer was D.O.P. (dead on purchase). Kyle, our tech support, started a service file and simply needed my to call to authorize the credit card deposit (don't get me started on why I have to put a deposit on a new drive that they will hold until they get the defective one back).

To refocus, they needed a credit card authorization and a ship to address for an existing service file.

20 MINUTES.

Customer service is tough from a management perspective. You can invest heavily in great people who take pride in helping customers find the right answer or you can see it as an obligation with low ROI and accept that miserable service is equally miserable to that of your competition.

I feel very fortunate to work with customer service people like Shelly and Kyle. Unlike Sony or Lenovo, they take pride in helping people, not just answering the phone.

Getting Quality Audio

What's the best practice? In my opinion, get yourself on a land line. I know, I know, I love technology too. I work for a technology company and when other girls were sleeping with stuffed animals I was sleeping with my Atari but the analog telephone line it is still the most affordable, best quality audio for presenting over the Internet. It is widely and easily available in every remote part of this country and most countries of the world. If you don't have Alexander Graham Bell's brain child sitting at your conference location, go to a place where you can use one.

Then get yourself a good quality headset. In fact, round up a couple and test them to see which has the clearest sound. Borrow one from a friend who sounds really good when they call you. If you can't find a wireless headset with good quality, there is no shame in using one with a wire. It's not sexy and you don't get to walk around but that's actually a good thing. Wait, let me rephrase that, it's good to be sexy but it's not good to walk around while you are presenting.

Walking around encourages head movement which causes static on the line. Sometimes it's slight, most times it's noticeable. Waking also increases the chance that you will pick up odd and various room noises. As you walk closer to an air conditioner, ceiling fan, desk lamp, overhead projector, you pick up room noise and it may be slight but as it goes in and out with your walking action, it can be distracting. Find a comfortable chair that doesn't squeak in a quiet location and sit down to present.

Ever lost your headset in mid-sentence? You know, you are walking around, wildly gesturing with your hands, really into telling a great story and all of the sudden your headset goes flying off? For me, it’s the twisting in my chair. I use a wired headset because I prefer the consistent sound quality and sometimes when I turn my chair, the arm rest catches the cord and rips the device right off my head. See, when I tell you about things that can go wrong, I speak with a lot of experience.

The Brand

It's a heavy word, "brand," and it should be. It's a very involved subject. For most people, however, it's a nebulous one. The two most common associations with branding are the company logo and the company slogan or tagline. Now, while these are very important parts of the brand it's really only the tip of the iceberg. A brand is not the print collateral, it's not the website, it's not the products. It encompasses all those things, it uses those as vehicles to spread the brand, but they're not the brand itself.

A brand is an idea, a feeling, that is produced through the look, behavior, and level of product quality a company has. The brand lets customers know what kind of entity they're dealing with; is it a large corporate entity or a grassroots company? Does it take itself really seriously, or is it more casual? These decisions are made by identifying the target market. A successful brand immediately caters to the target market with every piece of identity the company outputs. It's not something that grows into the market over time, it entrenches itself in the middle and spreads. Nothing makes that more clear than the marketing shift to web 2.0 over the last seven years.

The purpose of web 2.0 on the advertising level is much the same as it is on a personal level. It's meant to connect with other people. The company that wants to annoy their potential customers will take this as an opportunity to spam them with offers and information across all social sites, damaging their brand identity's reputation. The intelligent company will make available, not necessarily send out, information that other people want to have. After potential customers have been hooked in by that information and are actively following the company, it can start sending out more information on their actual services because the customers become curious enough to ask for it. This ensures the brand stays healthly because the company has more to offer than products and services, it becomes a valuable part of the web 2.0 community.

Importance of Audio

How much do you think about audio when you are planning a conferencing event? You might spend days working on the PowerPoint and fine tuning dancing animations that introduce key points with movement and flair. You might type your whole script into the PowerPoint Notes field and do a spell and sentence check to make sure you have conveyed your text in a grammatically correct manner. You might read your speech to yourself, to your cat or to a co-worker that owes you a favor to try different phrasing techniques. You might practice in a conference room with co-presenters fine tuning details of who is going to speak when so it appears that you are bouncing things off one another in a natural manner. But did you do a sound check with the audio equipment you will use for your conference?

Phones are ubiquitous and we always assume when we turn the thing on, we are going to hear that, oh so familiar, dial tone. We love the phone because POTS always worked. It worked when you couldn't find your Mom after school, it worked when you were hungry and there was no pizza in the refrigerator and it even worked when the electricity went out. Even after we all got cell phones and experienced cell signals that cut out during very important communication moments, that didn't lessen our love affair.

And because love is blind, we have become very accepting of poor cell phone signals, cheap Bluetooth devices, dusty old speakerphones and soft phones that produce delays because our computer resources can't do VoIP and receive a fax at the same time. It's one thing to be accepting of this when we are having a casual conversation but when you are making a professional presentation you should tie that package up in a bow of the best sounding audio you can arrange.