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

A video I came across recently, with their interpretation on what Twitter’s really for!

Definitely some truth in that!

Richard Heathcote

Voice Over Artist

It’s 6 days to go until the iPhone 4 will be in my hands. I’ve been thinking today about how it will change my existing user experience, new features that I will start to use, how it will change or enhance the functions I already enjoy using the iPhone for. Just how different is it likely to be?

I suppose really, the first question would be, when are you getting yours? I’ve seen today that o2 have stated that only existing o2 customers will be able to buy the new iPhone 4 at launch, as they have priority, with new customers coming to o2 not being able to purchase until at least the end of July. That’s great news for me, as I’m an existing customer; hopefully it means that they WILL have some handsets in my local o2 store next Thursday, so I can walk away a very happy customer!

With all the new features that Apple have crammed into this new unit, what do you think you will use the most? Has it really enhanced what you already use it for? I know I for one am looking forward to the built in HD camcorder, with the ability to publish immediately to youtube; instant video blogging! It doesn’t get much more powerful than that in my opinion!

Taking photos on my existing iPhone has always been a drag, with there only being a 2MP camera on the 3G unit. Pics are ok, but any movement, or anything less than bright sunshine and they look hideous. a 5MP camera is a very welcome addition for me.

Facetime, the video calling functionality between iPhone 4-iPhone 4 calls, is an absolute revolution. The picture quality seems much higher than anything I’ve seen with other 3G phones offering similar functionality. Of course, this is only enabled via a wifi network, but I’m sure as the carriers progress, we’ll be able to see it appear on 3G signals in the future. (Eventually). Of course, this isn’t anything that I’m expecting to utilise all the time, just a nice feature for when the need/want arrives.

The battery. Oh….the battery. Yes I’ve had some very long love affairs with my power cable of recent. I’ve been using it quite a bit, so have often had to top it up whilst I’ve been working at my Mac. I’m told by a friend of mine who has a 3GS currently, that the battery was significantly better in that unit – plus now in the new iPhone 4, allegedly 40% increase in battery storage, I should have a very nice surprise by the time I come to get mine! Hopefully I won’t have to spend as much time plugged in as I have been so far. The phone, that is.

So what about you? How will this change things for you? Bring on your specifics!

Richard Heathcote, Voice Over Artist

I’m fairly certain you can’t have escaped the news that Apple and Adobe are having a fairly big spat, over Apple’s refusal to incorporate Adobe’s Flash technology within their mobile devices, most notably the iPhone and new iPad, plus the iPod Touch. Currently, if you come across a Flash video on the iPhone or iPad, you’ll just get a little ‘can’t display this video’ icon where the video should be.

There’s lots of debate either side of this argument, a lot of it I barely understand. For the most part, I believe Apple refused it based on Flash’s processor needs, which are unrealistic in mobile devices, it’s just too hungry for processors and battery life etc. This is where things like HTML5 I imagine are improving things, making it a more even playing field when it comes to online video.

All that said, Adobe recently launched a campaign expressing how they feel. And here it is:

An Apple fan somewhere in the world has come back with their own rebuttal. Quite amusingly, this:

Nuff said!

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:

Last Friday was the global launch of Apple’s new operating system, ‘Snow Leopard’. This has already sparked controversy with the techie people I’ve been talking to. Responses like “Oh they’re just charging you for a service pack update” and “it’s not a full OS, it’s hardly an upgrade, but they charge you anyway”.

That’s the kind of response I’ve been hearing over the last week. Not from everyone, though, certainly not from people that actually know what this new release was all about.

For a start, Snow Leopard technically IS a whole new OS, as it can be installed on a Mac from fresh, not just upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard. What Apple have done, (from what I have read, and in my opinion) is exploiting the new technology that is around, and the new technology that they’ve invented to make it much better.

Leopard was already a fantastic OS that didn’t really need to be ‘fixed’ as such, as some techies have said that it’s just a “bug fix, and I didn’t think Macs needed bug fixes” (they said sarcastically.)

Snow Leopard has been totally reworked from the ground up, meaning that when you install it (through a regular upgrade, no wiping involved), instead of piling on lots more GB of information like many other OS’s, this actually gives you back around 7GB of hard disk space! (I’ve also known other people get more than that). To me, that is incredible for such a powerful operating system!

So, in my humble opinion, this isn’t a ‘fix’ as has been labelled, but an opportunity to install a much faster OS, with lots more features, that gives you back hard disk space which is all too important, because Apple have made use of new technology to make it happen. And would I pay £25 to have that? Yes I would, and yes I did!

I’ve been running it now since last Friday, and I have to say I’ve been exceptionally pleased with the new updates. My systems, a 2 year old iMac (white) and 1.5 year old MacBook Pro run even faster than before, (and MBP was running very quick anyway as earlier in the year it had a RAM upgrade to 4GB). With Snow Leopard, it’s turbo charged both my Macs even further, meaning productivity increases, programs load much quicker, and all in all, I think that’s a very good thing.

To anyone thinking about upgrading to Snow Leopard, just make sure you back up everything on your computer beforehand, as you can never be too careful, plus check your printers etc have the right drivers to operate as normal after the upgrade. All mine were perfectly fine but my sister’s printer, which is about 2 years old, doesn’t yet work under SL as HP haven’t released the update yet. (Although I think in HP’s case it has only affected a very small number of models). So if you have important things you need, and don’t want to wait until the manufacturer releases the driver update (which could be a month or so) then hold off installing until you know you’re ok.

Try Snow Leopard, I don’t think you’re going to be disappointed….

On this hot and sunny afternoon, I thought it was time to show you the wizard behind the curtain who’s helped me a lot with this blog, and he goes by the name of Mick Davies from MAD Computer Solutions. He’s the kind of guy who whenever I have an issue, he’s always there on the end of a phone, email or Skype when I’ve buggered something up! He’s helped massively with my main site as well, richardheathcote.co.uk – and most recently helped me sort meta content out on this blog, editing the php files etc, all very techie! I’ve even impressed myself at times!

So yes, if you ever need assistance with web/IT related stuff, then Mick is your man…..Here’s his website:

http://www.madcomputersolutions.co.uk/

Apple have recently released the latest version of Safari, version 4.0, which I have downloaded very happily! It was also announced recently that Mozilla are releasing the next update in their popular FireFox browser, version 3.5. It got me thinking, (albeit slightly), because of the fact that there are so many different web browsers out there, which do you feel are the most popular, what do you use most often, what’s your personal favourite, and do you ‘have to’ use certain browsers for different functions?

For me, Safari is my browser of choice, mainly because of it’s synching capability with MobileMe, so both my iMac and MacBook Pro are fully up to date with the same bookmarks. I also favour it because it’s the sleekest browser I’ve ever used, giving you, I think, the most screen real-estate. Also, as has been tested, Safari is now officially the world’s speediest browser, giving a highly efficient browsing experience.

However, there are a couple of sites I use very regularly that aren’t optimised for Safari, disabling things like text formatting buttons on forums etc, so I have to use Firefox instead. This naturally infuriates me, as even though I don’t hate Firefox by any means, it’s actually a really good browser in my opinion, for me it’s just not as good as Safari.

So with a multitude of options out there, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera and more – what do you use, and why?