If you’ve ever been annoyed by irritating telesales callers that just don’t get the hint, just like I get daily, then you’ll be happy to know there’s now a fun solution!

Get your own back!

I have joined forces with iCandi Apps to create an iPhone app that allows you to get your own back on these telesales callers who don’t understand ‘no’.

For just 59p (UK) or 99 cents (USA) You can download the Telesales Annoyer app, to get your own back every time they won’t get off your phone, and you can just simply place them ‘on hold’!

For more info, please click here.

For the direct link to iTunes, please click here

Scan Me for Direct iTunes Link

This is a short advert/corporate video that I voiced for an iPhone app, based around the motoring industry, produced by Lambda Films.

I really didn’t pay any attention to it. I mean, why would you? We all get them daily, “Attention, your site has been compromised”, “Warning, you may have illegal access on your server” etc etc. I get very few into my actual inbox, as my spam filter picks them all up automatically. This one for some reason came to my inbox.

No problem, I thought, had a quick scan of it with my eyes, just to check, but no – all looked quite spammy to me. So, I did what I normally do and just hit delete. It was written in the style of making it look professional to make people read it, (which is why I did), but it all seemed too unlikely that I paid it no attention.

However, being cautious, I loaded up my site straight away and went through every page, just to see if there were any potential changes that I didn’t make, and wording out of place, weird formatting changes etc. Nope, all looked fine. Phew. False alarm, as predicted.

That is, until I received a text message on Sunday night from the guy that hosts my site, saying that it’s been hacked and has been shut down! ‘Oh dear’, I thought, or words similar in meaning. This isn’t good. He said he’d been contacted by the technical team at my hosts, they’ve detected things that shouldn’t be on there, and for safety, have shut down my site so nothing else could be done.

For most of Monday, I was on skype with my host and my web guy, in a three-way chat window, whilst we were trying to figure out what things had been uploaded to my server, and how quickly we could get rid of it. It took him some digging, but found 3 or 4 pages that had been uploaded last Friday which were made too look like bank login pages. The cheeky scamps. I’ve no idea if they were indeed successful for the hackers in question, but they were removed immediately, as well as some dodgy ‘scripts’ that were causing more trouble, including an additional Trojan horse virus in one of the parts of my site.

That last bit was quite scary to me, as horses are quite sinister at the best of times. Luckily my web guy, Mick, managed to remove everything malicious, de-bug everything, protect the place where they managed to gain entry from, and updated everything that needed updating.

Absolute lesson learned, to make sure everything in the back end of your site is as up to date as can possibly be. My CMS was apparently a version behind, and that was enough for this canny hacker to find the weakness and gain entry. So, if you’re not sure if your site is as secure as can be, I highly recommend you check, or get your web person to do it on your behalf.

So, by around 3pm on Monday, everything was back to normal and my site was back online. It had been down for approximately 16 hours, but that could have been a lot worse, or meant building it again from scratch. My now-learned advice – back up everything, and keep it all up to date. Big Brother is apparently always watching!

Richard Heathcote

Voice Over Artist

Just a message to you all. Simple.

There are many times in life, examples of misheard communications. Your manager told you to do something but you do something else, Ordering the wrong stock as you were too busy concentrating on Facebook friend requests at the time. Well, if this sounds like you, then you’ll like this video. A tribute to those of you who hear something else entirely!

Richard Heathcote

Voice Over Artist

The fantastic team at Dice Productions recently asked me to voice a spoof advert for a fictitious cruelty to animals charity. I assure you no animals were harmed in the making of this production!

The end result certainly makes very entertaining viewing!

If you have a similar project which you require a voice for. Then get in touch for a quote…..

Richard Heathcote

Voice Over Artist

There are always periods in anyone’s personal or professional life where things can be a bit of a challenge, and it can feel like things are moving nowhere. We are told time and time again that you should just persist and strive through adversity, which I do completely agree with. Eventually, you will hit your target if you work for it.

I think this video demonstrates perfectly how persistence pays off!

Play Episode 7

Episode 7 of my podcasts is now released. This month we’re talking to Paul Dean from Crimson leaf, about the importance and the many applications of good copywriting. Also discussing the latest Apple announcements, the controversy surrounding Autotuning-gate, and could the popular iPhone (and now Android) game Angry Birds be coming to a cinema near you?

Or is it?

As most businesses have commonly agreed, August is typically the quiet month of the year, with everyone on holiday and not spending money. The thing is, for the bulk of the people I’ve been talking to recently, it’s quite the opposite; including me.

So far this past 4 weeks, I’ve had lots of enquiries, certainly no fewer than a regular month, and several placed orders, some of the work which has already happened this month, and a few sessions already booked for September. Not bad going for ‘the quiet month’!

This month has also seen me upgrade some of my audio kit, so I’m very pleased about that. I’m now the proud owner of a Neumann TLM 103, a common standard amongst many of us VO’s. Having used it quite a bit over the last few days, I have to say, I’m extremely pleased with the quality…..which naturally continues on to create a better overall product for the client.

So, here’s to the beginning, in a few days, of September, and may it continue to be busy for us all!

Richard Heathcote

Voice Over Artist & Audio Marketing

There are many things, as singular business people, that we can do ourselves, to save time and money. We do our own marketing, sales, answering phones, doing the actual job we do, as well as all the other stuff. There are other things though, that paying a professional to do, really pays off far better in the long run.

Recently, I’d decided that my blog was simply too bland in design, so needed some imagery on the background. Naturally, my first port of call was my designer chappie, Gareth Coxon from Dot Design; he’s THE guy I go to for design, after he did a superb job on my logo (on my main site, click here), and my pop-up banner I use at networking events and exhibitions, plus other online digital signature items he’s created for me. He understands me, my brand, what I do, and knows exactly how to capture it. He’s created this fab background image that is on this blog, which certainly jazzes it up a bit from being plain white! So, kudos to Gareth, top bloke. Highly recommend him.

Secondly, I found it a tad confusing to install into WordPress, so I tweeted about it, and a friend and colleague of mine I know through 4Networking popped up on Skype, and mentioned that he could sort it out for me, as it needed a bit of code tweaking. It took mere moments for him to put it right, and get it all set correctly…….so, many thanks indeed go to Ant Hodges from ToInfinity!

See, if I had been left to my own devices, things would have gone very wrong indeed. There are times where we can do stuff ourselves. When it comes to the material you push out into the big wide world, I would only ever use professionals.

Gareth’s website – http://www.dot-design.co.uk/

Ant’s website – http://www.toinfinity.co.uk/

Richard Heathcote

Voice Over Artist