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

So recently, Google announced that it’s going to be launching Google Instant; a new version of it’s search engine that will provide real-time results, as you type. No longer will you have to type the whole search word or phrase, results will, as you type, display results it thinks you may want.

Some have credited it being fairly loopy and pointless, whilst others have said that it could be a whole new way of searching for things. Others have even said that they fear it will cripple their already successful pay-per-click campaigns if results are going to be generated in an all-new way. They feared are they now going to have to optimise their strategies to incorporate the 1st and 2nd letter of their search terms, so ‘v’ and ‘vo’ for someone searching ‘voice over artist’, for instance!

I’ve since been told by techies that this will not be the case at all, and the new instant search will far from kill off traditional SEO, it will merely enhance and refine it. Honestly, the techiness of this topic is far more than what my head can cope with, so these are merely my findings with it. My own stance is that I imagine it will make a difference, for the better, and make searching quicker if you find things that are relevant by clicking fewer keys.

I’ll just have to try it on my favourite search term…..Scarlett Johansson…..

/3,2,1, back in the room.

Go and try it for yourself, and have a look at Google Instant.

Richard Heathcote

Voice Over Artist & Audio Marketing

**PRICING UPDATE** – o2 have now finally released all their pricing for the new unit, as of today at 14:15.

As any Apple follower will know by now, we have the imminent release (June 24th) of the much-anticipated iPhone 4, the fourth generation iPhone (not 4G as many people have been stating, as it still runs on 3G technology, carriers can’t currently handle 4G).

I, for those that know me, will know that I’ll without question be buying my iPhone4 on launch day (not that I’m counting down the days!) With the new hardware and software included in this new unit, it’s a phenomenal device. As Steve Jobs in his keynote speech said, this is the biggest leap in technology since the original iPhone.

However, I have a bit of a quibble. Apple today have released the price of the sim-free device, £499 for the 16GB and £599 for the 32GB version. That’s all fine, and it’s the pricing for people that want a sim-free unit to use on whatever network they want, especially if they’re already in a contract they can’t get out of.

I’m not one of these people. I’ve been a customer of o2 since the launch of the original iPhone. I’ve always had good service from them, and overall have no complaints. I’m one of those people that want the new iPhone as an upgrade unit, therefore I’ll just start a new 18 month contract with o2, and get the unit for a lower price as it’s part subsidised by the carrier. I remember when I had the new iPhone 3G, I had the free upgrade to the 8GB unit, or I could have paid for the 16GB model. I’m more than happy to pay for the new unit, given the amount of technology packed within it – the trouble is, the pricing hasn’t been released yet. How will I know what to do? Whether to change providers? To see what pricing all the networks are offering.

Back at the point of the 3GS release, all the figures I seem to remember were all released at the same time, giving people all the information, all the options available. I still don’t know how much I’m going to have to fork out on June 24th. I like to know these things in advance! Is it just all the carriers holding on seeing what the competition are going to offer it for?

Am I the only one that’s infuriated by this? Please say I’m not! Come on o2/Orange/Vodafone et al, give us a clue what the pricing will be so we’re all informed in good time!

Come on o2, your comments here would be much appreciated!

Richard Heathcote, Voice Over Artist

Recently I watched the BBC series “The Virtual Revolution”. Being a bit of a techie geek on the quiet, it’s stuff that very much interests me, all things internet, social media and beyond.

I have to say, it was an absolutely fantastic series that explored the origins of the internet and how it’s changed our lives whether we want it to or not, and the revolution of how it’s affected business globally too. For many of us who are small businesses, (and big businesses for that matter), the uses within the internet today for marketing ourselves is just inspiring; something we could never have imagined 20, 15, 10 or even 5 years ago. The revolution in social media networking for personal and business, blogging, video and audio multimedia on our websites and social networks, viral videos through YouTube – there really is no limit to what we can achieve. If you set your mind to it, and target it in the right way, your message can reach hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands or even potentially millions, for very little effort or money.

This, to me, is just staggering, and gives me so many ideas of what I can do to further market myself online, as currently, I don’t pay for any advertising whatsoever. I just don’t think it works at all well in my industry; all of my clients come through the web and word of mouth recommendation – and I know this is the case for many people I’ve been speaking to of recent.

So, to get your brain thinking about the virtual revolution, I suggest you check out their page on the BBC site, and look out for a repeat!

And, if you hadn’t guessed what my opinion is – the revolution is definitely GOOD!

Richard Heathcote, Voice Over Artist

I do at times stop and think about how far technology has come on in the last 10 years or so. Now we’re in 2010, being able to receive up to the minute news and information via mobile handsets seems perfectly normal, but certainly wasn’t the case with me using one of my old Nokia’s from 2000!

I remember when I had my first WAP enabled phone; it was desperately slow, but it kind of worked. It was I guess the Teletext equivalent for the mobile revolution. How far things have moved on with Blackberrys and iPhones. (You cannot understand how much I love my iPhone).

Here’s Patrick Stewart talking tech:

Wherever you are in the world, whenever you watch the news nowadays, you’ll very rarely find an article that is uplifting, or just something that makes you think ‘whoah, that’s quite impressive’. Well, certainly I don’t anyway. That’s why generally speaking, I try not to watch the news that much anymore; it’s just far too depressing.

Not that I spend my entire life living on YouTube either, but more often than not, on there I regularly find some incredible videos of great human achievement, perseverance, and effort, that you just know a lot of work has gone into getting them where they were when they filmed it. So, on that note, here’s a small selection for now of videos I just like, for various reasons, of people with great talents and achievements.

I’ll be bringing more of these sorts of videos on a regular basis, as and when I find them, as I think even if they just simply bring a smile to your face, it’s done it’s job.

So, no matter where you are in the world, find something that uplifts you, and pass it on.

Podcast 2 – August 09 - “Time Lords, Averting Backup Disaster In Business, & Google Chrome – The OS Killer?” (13m 11s)

This episode we’re talking about being a Time Lord, how backups are vitally important in businesses, plus I’m talking to Gavin Moorhouse from Lucid Computer Solutions who’s going to be talking us through the best of the bunch for backups, and Google Chrome – is it going to be the OS killer?

RIGHT CLICK TO DOWNLOAD

Rather exciting news was announced this week, with Google taking on the challenge of creating an operating system to rival Mac OS and Windows. They’ve stated that they will release an open source version later this year for developers to modify and play with it, and potentially improve it, with a finished version set to launch next year.

It’s planned that it’ll be designed for netbooks in its early stages, with plans to move it into the desktop world as well. Now, with me being a staunch supporter of all things Mac, you wouldn’t have thought I’d particularly welcome this news. But you’d be wrong. For one I’m very pleased that there’ll be another contender to hopefully bring down some of Microsoft’s dominance in the marketplace, and have the software arena back to being as fair game as possible. Maybe it will force Microsoft to stop being so sloppy in its developing and create a piece of software that isn’t bug-ridden and crash-happy.

The other reason is portability, when it comes to netbooks. As things stand right now, I wouldn’t dream of owning a netbook with Windows on it, as I totally dislike Windows and all it stands for. I do however like the functionality that some netbooks bring, size wise. So if there was the opportunity of having a low cost mini-laptop available that can run Google Chrome OS, I’d be tempted to have one as a secondary laptop.

Which leaves me to ask the questions – do you welcome this new addition to the OS market? Will you be running it yourself on your laptop/netbook? Do you think having a new contender is a good idea, or will it just fall on it’s face as a bit of a fad?

You decide….

Today I had a meeting with Gavin Price from CSCM.co.uk, they are a great computer/tech company based in Birmingham, and Gavin happens to be one of my team members for the Birmingham 4Networking group. He also recently supplied me with a Three Mobile Broadband dongle to replace my old Vodafone one….Now, you would think that, given the name ‘Vodafone’ they’d have the best coverage, being a long standing massive company? Well, I didn’t have much luck with my old Vodafone dongle, very patchy signal most places I went. The one place I wanted it to work was the place I always go in Cornwall…..however, I only got patchy GPRS signal at best, meaning for web use it was useless! (Granted, thorough research should have been done and wasn’t!)

So a few weeks ago Gavin supplied me with a shiny new dongle, at an exceptionally good price, and I have to say the signal strength everywhere I’ve been has been exceptional. Have always had broadband speed, at a good signal, even in Cornwall! No drop in connectivity at all, even though down there we’re fairly remote. So all in all, fantastic result!

And it got me thinking……

Do you think that using mobile dongles will end up being the future of internet connectivity? Or do you think ‘cloud’ computing will really take off as people are predicting? The benefit with cloud computing and nationwide wifi hotspot access means connectivity is theoretically flawless, fire up your laptop wherever you are, cafe, restaurant, airport, train, and continue to work away.

The benefit with the dongles is that you’re not really suffering any contention with other people sharing that line, like you do on wifi networks, where one person downloading a movie will scupper everyone else trying to simply check emails! Especially if you do a lot of sensitive working whilst on the road, using a dongle is also more secure, as no one can hack into your network connection; it’s a designated line from your computer to the cellular network.

So, over to you – do you own one? What network are you on? Do you have a need to regularly work out of the office on the road? Or do you own one purely for using it when the need arises?…

For some time now, our broadband has often lagged, making me feel that we’re not getting the kind of service which you would expect for an (up to) 10MB plan. For most people of course, in theory, 10MB broadband would be plenty quick enough to suit their needs. We decided to look into it, check out exactly we’re receiving down the line, and comparing our monthly bill to a few other providers, including our own, Virgin Media.

As we started the process, it suddenly hit me – we’re still using the same modem we’ve been using for the past 9 years, which was originally supplied by Telewest Broadband before Virgin took over! I had a chat with a techie friend of mine who works in telecoms, and he confirmed that those old modems aren’t cut out at all for the new speeds we’re now (meant to be) used to. The modem we are using, the original Telewest ‘Surfboard’, could really only handle pumping up to 5MB broadband through it. Therefore, it kind of makes us paying for 10MB broadband pointless!

We also found out that we’re paying over the odds for the package we’re on, as the same package on Virgin Broadband’s site was around £10 less than what we’re currently paying. That really is anger-making, as we’ve never been notified of price changes, and never been offered any deals to compensate for this. Heaven forbid they’d ring or write and inform you that you could be saving money!? The price we’d been paying was even more than what you would pay for 20MB broadband, making our package an absolute mockery! So, we decided to ring them direct this morning and make our feelings felt, and see what can be done about the service we’ve had.

In the end they saw our point of view, were very helpful and agreed to reduce our monthly fee by around £10, and also upgrade us to the 20MB service. They’re also sending out a brand new modem that will cope with the speeds properly. All in all, a great result. Having the greater speed now will make things far easier for me, given what I do for a living; uploading/downloading large audio files for clients etc.

The moral of this story isn’t to bash Virgin’s service, as they’re pretty much like any big company, they won’t ring you to tell you you can save money, it’s just a fact of life, same with the banks not telling you about changes to your interest rates! On the contrary, to date, I have to say we’ve had excellent broadband service from Virgin.

The moral of the story is to always be on the lookout to ensure you’re receiving the best service from your provider for the money you pay. Broadband packages change all the time, as do their pricing. You don’t want to be paying for an antiquated service when you could be receiving double the speed for the same price as you’re currently paying, like in our case. The easiest way to ensure that you’re doing all you can is to check your provider’s website regularly, for instance on a monthly basis, as I’ll be doing. Don’t be left out of pocket, make sure you receive value for money.

We all know that whatever service you have, they’ll always quote ‘up to’ 5Mb/10MB/20MB etc, you can’t ever be guaranteed to get the full speed as it depends how far away from the exchange you are. However, if you feel you’re not receiving the speed you think you should be, then there are plenty of online broadband speed checkers that will give you a good approximation of your actual service. Try this one to check your download & upload speeds:

www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/