Apple’s free publicity

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Posted on 10 January 2007 blogging Marketing Raves Reviews

iPhoneIf you have not heard about the latest release from Apple, the iPhone, you’d better crawl out from under your rock. This thing is a beauty. Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at MacWorld – the yearly “check out our new toys” Apple conference.

Apple fan boys around the world are hailing the iPhone as the solution to the worlds problems. Hell it can even cure aids, some have said. Whether it can or cannot do these aforementioned things, one thing stands out. Free Publicity. Microsoft tried to buy that with their Acer Ferrari laptop “giveaway-to-bloggers”, but it backfired because of the way they handled the situation. (requesting reviews, disclosing that they received the laptops, play poker etc.)

Me, a fanboy?

I got my very first Apple product for Christmas – an iPod nano. Apple build some seriously sweet hardware, not to mention iTunes, which is by far the best Mp3 organiser on the planet. So, am I a fanboy? Well not quite. Maybe if I was given an Apple macbook to test, I’m might fall in love like the rest. What I do really love, is the way that thousands of bloggers – some of whom I read daily, will not touch any Computer related thing, unless its made by Apple.

Back to the free publicity thing

The world might not be littered with Apple macs and macbooks like PC’s are, but every single person that owns or uses Apple products, loves the company. You cannot say that for many (if any?) computer related companies out there. Whatever Apple has done, and I think Steve Jobs has a huge part to play in their success, know how to hype and then deliver on those products.

So I’ll leave you with the free publicity I read this morning in my RSS reader. Enjoy.

My Netgear Router and ADSL

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Posted on 5 January 2007 ADSL Reviews

I’ve had ADSL at home for just under 3 months now so I thought I’d post a review on my ADSL experience so far, as well as the tools that allow me to be connected to broadband internet.

The speed of my ADSL

I took the cheapest as well as the slowest ADSL connection that Telkom offers – 384kb/s. When I’m downloading a file using Free Download Manager, I get around 35-50 kb/s download speeds. It isn’t the fastest connection around, but for personal and small business use, this connection speed is optimal.

When browsing the web, I can hardly notice the difference between my connection and the 4mb/s connection I have at work. You really only feel a difference when downloading large files.

I have also experienced 0% downtime, so for those of you using iBurst and the likes – eat your heart out. ;-)

My Internet Service Provider

WebAfricaI’m sharing an internet connection with my office, which is one of the really awesome features that WebAfrica offers us. You can simultaneously connect from 4 different locations, allowing you to work from the office and at home using 1 account.

Their DSL management console contains all your stats and reports, not to mention the interface is really well designed. You can view your account status real time, which for those using Telkom as an ISP cannot do. On top of our 10GB cap, we have the option of purchasing pre-paid bandwidth, that in the event of running out of our monthly allowance, our prepaid bandwidth will save our asses cover us. The prepaid bandwidth carries over from month to month.

We also have had no problems in the 6 months or so that we have been using WebAfrica. I have never phoned them for anything as of yet, not even to signup! It just works.

My Netgear Modem

I purchased my ADSL router through Digital Planet – who gave me a free Netgear wireless dongle to go with my Netgear Router. Pretty sweet I say.

The specs:
I purchased a Netgear Super Wireless ADSL Modem Router with 4-port 10/100 Mbps switch DG834GT. Quite a mouthful. This router combines 5 products in 1. ADSL 2+ modem, router, firewall, 802.11g access point and 4-port Ethernet switch. It has a double firewall in that it uses both NAT + SPI – which I don’t have a clue about, but just that I know it does a damn good job of protecting my connection. My router is also a 108Mbps wireless access point.

The routers interface is also feature packed. The most important thing I’ve configured is to not broadcast my wireless access point, as well as block all network cards except mine from connecting to it. I really don’t need random people knowing I have an ADSL connection – which to some folks also means I just might possess some expensive toys at home. ;-)

The final byte

In conclusion, my home ADSL experience has only been positive. I’m currently paying exactly R344.92 per month for my ADSL connection – bear in mind that this excludes my ISP fees, which my awesome company covers.
The R344.92 is broken up into R99.92 telephone line rental and R245 Home ADSL 384 rental.

It did take around 6 weeks from the ordering of my telephone line to the installation of my ADSL. So that is probably the only negative thing I have to say regarding my ADSL but other than that, having ADSL has completely changed the way I work. I just cannot recommend it enough.

Here’s a pic of my router and free wireless dongle for those interested.

Netgear Wireless ADSL Modem Router

I’m off to go use up our bandwidth cap. Someone has to do it. ;-)

South African Compact Calendar 2007

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Posted on 28 December 2006 Productivity South Africa

I found this really neat Calendar for 2007. It provides a compact view of the entire year, with space to make notes, scribble or do with whatever you need. David Seah – who also created The Printable CEO, another productivity tool – created this calendar. I’ve gone ahead and created a South African version for us folks back at home.

The calendar will help you see the flow of days into weeks, so that when you are jotting down deadlines at a client, you can spot those weekends and plan accordingly. So print it one out, and see if it will help aid you in your productivity. :-)

Download the South African Compact Calendar 2007 Excel version.

Download the South African Compact Calendar 2007 PDF version.

Compact Calendar 2007

For more info on this awesome little calendar visit David Seah’s post on the Compact Calendar.

Christmas 2006

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Posted on 26 December 2006 Marketing Personal

I had a wonderful Christmas this year. It wasn’t the usual massive Christmas that includes all of my girlfriend’s uncle’s, aunt’s, cousins, nieces and nephews (around 30+ people). This year we had a Christmas lunch with just her home family – parents, sisters and their families. It really was a wonderful and intimate Christmas lunch.

Secondly, I am now officially an Apple boy. My wonderful girlfriend bought me a silver iPod nano. :-) I’m really smilling from hear to hear. Apple make some seriously sweet hardware. They just so beautiful. Now on to digging out all my MP3′s that are scattered all over the place and organising them to fit into iTunes.

On a side note, the first thing I did listen to on my iPod was a brand-new podcast that was launched – Amplitude.

Despite growing skepticism to advertising, new communications technologies are making it possible for marketers to be more effective than ever before. Mike Stopforth and Dave Duarte discuss the best and the worst of new marketing in South Africa each week.

The first episode was pretty interesting. It’s really great to hear about things happening in the blogosphere and the marketing world that I’m following, from two okes that have quite a reputation on the internet in SA. They definitely have a great angle on things and I’ll be following the podcast with great interest.

Wishing you well

So I just want to wish my 5½ readers a really awesome Christmas and New Year. Have a good one, and if not, have a great one.

For those religious folk like myself, I read something that really hit home yesterday. “Throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” Hebrews (12:1). Take a big “box” and put those things that are hindering you from getting closer to God in it, and throw it out with the trash.

Saving digital photographs

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Posted on 17 December 2006 Reviews Tutorials

I read a very interesting article in a book I had bought for my dad, regarding file formats and how to save digital photographs. Most web-savvy folks think they know what file formats you should save your images in, but you’ll be pretty surprised that just by using a different file format, you’ll be saving your photos in an even higher quality than you were previously.

So here is the lowdown on the different file formats and where you should be using them:

JPEG Or .JPG Format

JPEG is a file format that uses a compression technology that looks for similar colour pixels and removes those that are not needed. Then when you open the file, it make a ”best guess” in order to put the file back together. The loss in quality is normally a result of the compression algorithm getting those “guesses” wrong or it creates unwanted blocks of pixels that are out of place. JPEG is usually the standard image format that most people use as it retains most of the picture quality and saves on disk space.
When to use JPEG: Use it when you want to send photos via email, when the image quality will be retained but the file size is kept to a minimum.

TIFF Format

TIFF is a “lossless” format in that it retains the best quality of the image but also uses up the most disk space. TIFF stands for Tagged Image File Format, which means it stores a tag with the image that contains information about the colour and dimensions.
When to use TIFF: Use it for printing digital photos as it contains the highest image quality of all image formats.

GIF Format

GIF is another compressed format that was originally designed for the internet. It uses a very limited set of colours (256), and is perfect for graphics that have large even amounts of colour. When gradients and shading is introduced, the GIF format handles these situations very poorly. It makes gradients look “stepped”.
When to use GIF: Not recommended for digital photos, but perfect for graphics used on the internet that have large expanses of the same colours.

RAW Format

This is the file format that your digital camera uses before any camera processing is involved. It stores information about the camera used, the colours, size and dimensions. Usually the software the ships with your camera is able to edit these type of files. Not for the amateur!

PNG Format

PNG is another lossless file format that was created mostly to replace the GIF format. These days most designers use this format for graphics used in web design, as the quality is a lot better than the GIF format as well as it also supports transparency. There are also different types of PNG file format, which also increases or decreases the file size.
When to Use PNG: Ideal for internet use and has a better image quality than GIF.

What formats do I use?

I have mostly been saving my digital photos as high quality JPEG’s which I find works pretty well. Graphics on the other hand, I tend to jump between GIF and PNG, depending on what graphics I have created. Nonetheless, I’m sure this information will help you make a better choice when it comes to saving your digital photos or when creating graphics.

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