Converting iphone videos

I recently made a 45 minute iPhone video that resulted in a 600 mb file size. My friend, Bob Smith, recommended trying Handbrake, an open source file conversion and compression package. Voilà, it saved with web friendly settings, in an mp4 format, and is now a reasonable 100k in size.

Thoughts on Marketing

I think marketers do their clients a disservice when they put together a big TV and print ad campaign, and haven’t done a lick of research on the client’s reputation on the web. Recently I was working with a client on a website and did a Google search on the client’s name. I found several bad reviews on the client’s products, on Yelp and elsewhere. These are the first things that come up! So what good is all that expensive TV and print exposure, when potential clients will see these reviews and run the other way?

There is a simple way to counteract these bad reviews. Mainly, when you sell something to a retail customer and you know they are highly satisfied, encourage them to share their experience on Yelp.com or whatever forum is typical for that industry. As the positive and more recent reviews start to outweigh those from the disgruntled, it will give a fuller and more positive picture to the potential buyer. I would not bother with a full-on paid ad campaign until I had worked on internet reputation. Because a good ad campaign will inspire people to do more research on the company prior to buying an item, and those bad reviews will drive the buyer to the competition. Better not to stimulate the buyer until this issue of reputation is taken care of.

Can Buildings Be Trademarked?

I saw a tweet the other day, complaining about the UT Clock Tower being trademarked. I looked it up, and it looks like it’s true. It would be illegal to take a picture of what UT calls the “tower design” and then sell it. So it looks like this building is trademarked. Look here for their trademark policy: UT Trademark Policies. I know the image of the Eiffel Tower illuminated at night is also trademarked. What the owners of these buildings are trying to do is to preserve the value of their “marks” and also the right to sell those very popular images.

Working on new presentation

My friend Bob Nichols called the other day to ask me to present on social media at “Expo 2010″, which I understand is a conference for all the trainers of Texas state agencies. This will be in Austin on Feb. 12. I am excited about this opportunity. I am putting myself in the shoes of a trainer at a Texas state agency and thinking about what they would need to know about social media. Where would they start? Who would be tugging at them? I can imagine there would be pressure from constituent groups asking “When are you going to get onto Twitter and Facebook?” Maybe even, “Where’s your blog?” Yet, internally, any state agency IT department is going to be putting the brakes on. “What about security? What if a virus gets onto the network and…” you can imagine the rest. My presentation will take them through the steps they need to take prior to setting up those new sites. There is preparation to be done! There are questions to be asked. There is research–research on what’s out there already. Take a look at other agencies and how they are using these tools. That’s a start.

Transferring large video files from iPhone to PC

I tried to copy some very large video files from my iPhone to my PC this week. They were 45 minute long videos, over a gig in size. I tried to use Windows Explorer to do it, but the copy kept failing. So I surfed around and found a free product that worked great, and I wanted to share it with you. It’s called Copy Trans. It copied all these big files into iTunes for me.

Trying out an e-learning site!

Tasked with finding a way to deliver courses via the web for the Texas Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus, I surfed around and pretty quickly landed on a product called Digital Chalk . I like what I see so far. They have a “free” version (no setup fee, no monthly fee, just an $8 per person transaction fee) that I am trying out. When I signed up for an account, they asked for my phone number, which I supplied. Within a few hours they called me to set up a webinar.   I have already begun setting up a course and the product so far is pretty easy to use.

Social Media for Municipalities, revisited

From Social Media Today, Brandon Prebynski has kindly pulled together examples of social media policies from 113 organizations, including non-profits, businesses, and even a couple of municipalities. Most of them are repetitive, with common sense rules, but it’s great to have this pool of thought available. Here’s the link: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/155843.

iPhone and Video

Am working hard to master working with iPhone videos for the web.  Thanks to advice from Troy Shaw, I used MPEG Streamclip to convert the iPhone .mov format to .avi, then pulled the movie into Windows Movie Maker and from there it’s pretty trivial to add title slides and anything else needed. Then upload to YouTube, and you’re done! However, I need to learn the best way to convert these to Flash format. I might try Zamzar.com next. Any ideas from my readers?

iPhone and video

Ok, I’ve even filmed a video on the iPhone, and the quality is not half bad. I have explored various software packages to allow me to edit it, and it looks like Apple is going to force me to purchase QuickTime Pro for $30. There’s tons of free software out there to edit other formats, but Apple has a proprietary format. Imagine that. *Sigh* I have a love-hate relationship with this product. I really like the iPhone, but I still hate Apple for its controlling nature. iTunes feels invasive to me, but at least I’ve finally figured out how to transfer photos and videos from my iPhone without iTunes taking over.

Facebook Privacy Settings

I’m reading a lot in the blogosphere about the new Facebook privacy settings. The jist of it is that unless you really know how to tweak your settings, Facebook will be publishing a lot more of what you write and what you’ve posted (your photos, profile info, etc.) I recommend you treat Facebook as a public website or blog, and do not post anything on it that you wouldn’t want the world to read. I’ve always treated it that way. Take some time to learn about the settings because the default they’ve set up for you is not very private.