Amazon’s Freemium Music Cloud
If nothing else, we now know for sure that server space and bandwidth has gotten cheap. So cheap, in fact, that they can’t give it away fast enough.
Amazon just announced their new music digital locker service, appropriately named Amazon Cloud Drive. If you already use Amazon, you get 5Gb of free storage space. And it’s not just storage space, you can actually upload your own personal music files and stream music to your device or desktop.
Are there other places where you can upload files for free? Sure, Dropbox.com and Google Docs have offered this kind of solution for a while. Services like these allow you ample space to FTP files to yourself or other people. It prettymuch eliminates the need for USB keys, which always seem to get lost or stolen.
Amazon goes one step further by adding a terrific music player and upload app that works on Mac and PC. If you don’t have it already, Amazon automatically downloads and installs Adobe Air, which is free and is useful for apps like TweetDeck. Best of all, it’s incredibly easy and fun, even for people who are fairly low tech.
Nokia N8 – Two Week Photography Review
Nokia N8 includes a 12 megapixel camera and Ziess lens
For a phone, the Nokia N8 offers an incredibly powerful camera and video package in a smartphone about the same size as an Apple iPhone. And for two weeks, I shot several hundred photos and dozens of videos on the smartphone’s 16 Gb of internal memory.
But let me jump back for a moment. About a month ago, a person named Chris reached out to me from WOMWorld.com and offered me the opportunity to try out the Nokia N8. The Nokia N8 boasts a 12 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, so I jumped at the chance to do a test and review.
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Cross Channel Book Marketing
Creating Comics book by Buddy Scalera
My new book Creating Comics from Start to Finish is just beginning to hit stores now. And despite the fact that I do this marketing thing every day for my clients, I’ve found it to be challenging to apply the same principals at home for my own projects. Crazy, right?
There’s an old saying, “the shoemaker’s children go barefoot.” That pretty much means the stuff you do at work is not the stuff you want to do when you get home. But a book being published is a timely event, and that time will soon pass, so I need to take the opportunity to market my book while I still can.
Initially, I was spending most of my efforts on my Facebook Fan Page, which had around 700+ followers and is now over 800. This group has been supporting my photo reference books, so they were most receptive of the new book. A good start.
Then I did a little bit of content seeding. I created a video flip through of my book, which I placed on the Facebook Fan Page, YouTube, Flickr, and even Amazon. I’m monitoring all of the channels through Google Analytics to see which drives the most qualified traffic.
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Google Doodles Will Eisner
Google Doodle Will Eisner
In a pleasant surprise this morning, Google‘s logo was changed to celebrate the birthday of Will Eisner.
For those of you not familiar with the name Will Eisner or the Eisner Awards ceremony, it’s worth noting that Eisner is considered one of the original giants in the comic book industry. He was a prolific and influential comic book writer/artist who pushed the boundaries of the medium.
Eisner is credited with coining the term “graphic novel” as he published one of the first major self-contained, long-form comic book stories. He was the creator of the classic comic “The Spirit,” which still holds up today, unlike many other early comic book stories. Even by today’s modern standards, “The Spirit” is mature and intelligent, both in story and art.
Eisner was a passionate educator, who published multiple books on the topic of creating comic books, including Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative. These books treated comics like a legitimate medium, providing much-needed respect for the craft of sequential art.
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Charlie Sheen, Guinness & Marketing
Guinness World Records
Charlie Sheen — the current celebrity obsession — has broken a world record for “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers.” And it was validated by the official Guinness World Records. (Is it even a “book” anymore?)
Through all of the hype and the amusing posts by @CharlieSheen, it’s easy to miss the marketing angle here. Specifically, Guinness saw a media storm and used it as an opportunity to promote their own brand. Not only that, they did it in a way that actually was relevant to their own brand. They validated a record. As of this writing, @CharlieSheen has only 30 actual tweets and 1,640,427 followers.
Seriously, when was the last time you actually thought about who held the record for anything? When was the last time (I’m assuming that you’re out of grammar school) you held the Guinness Book? Probably not recently.
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Nokia N8 Unboxing – Two Week Test
Nokia N8
As a marketer, I am often trying to find ways to connect with key opinion leaders online. We identify them, figure out how to share our brand message, and try to engage with them.
Little did I know that someone was targeting me.
It sounds a little sinister, but it really isn’t. A few weeks ago, I was contacted by someone at Nokia’s WOMWorld, who explained, “We are a Nokia sponsored community resource that, amongst other things, looks to get Nokia devices into the hands of creative types and tech enthusiasts.” Reading a little further, I realized he was talking about ME.
Anyway, I filled out some paperwork and yesterday a Nokia N8 camera phone appeared at my house. So for two weeks, I get to play with someone else’s camera. How cool is that?
The video here is the unboxing of the Nokia N8. Sorry for the blurry video. I am using an old Flip video camera. (Maybe Flip will loan me a better camera, so that my videos don’t look so grainy? I could get used to this!)
Anyway, check back and go to my Flickr to see what kinds of photos I take with the Nokia. I’ll be reopening my photo studio, so I will use the camera to document that.
iPad 2 Video Mirroring to Televisions
iPad 2 with Mirroring
Apple just announced the iPad 2, which is another insanely great device. Powerful, sexy, and affordable. (Just like me.)
One of the best features has to be the Video Mirroring capability. In my line of work, we use iPads for demonstration purposes. That’s all well and good for intimate conversations, but only so many people can huddle around an iPad. Not anymore.
This Video Mirroring allows you to plug your iPad directly into the television and display the entire iPad on screen. And some initial reports suggest that this will be backwards compatible to original iPads and then others contradict that. We’ll know in the next few days. I’m sure.
Imagine how powerful Video Mirroring on iPads will be in the hands of a trained speaker in a business presentation. This is the kind of flexibility we dream about in client pitches and presentations. You want hardware that has a wow factor.
I want to present from an iPad running Keynote, rather than a Windows PC running PowerPoint. It has nothing to do with quality of presentation and everything to do with the coolness factor. iPads are cool.
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