Not All Clients Are Tech Savvy
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Spending time with friends and family, there can be a sudden realisation that you are not like them.
What do you mean you don’t know what twitter is?
You DON’T use a feed reader?!
Spending time online, or with fellow ‘techies’ (hi Ian!) 
, means that you can become very blase in terms of technology.
Most people don’t use twitter. Most people don’t blog. Most people don’t have mulitple websites, and most people think that twitter is something Bill Oddie does.
This scenario is exactly the same with most clients, heck, that is why they are employing me in the first place! However, it is easy to assume that they are up to speed on technology and web applications that we take for granted.
Working with clients in 2009
Something I am very concious of, having started working with a new client recently is ways of working, and using web applications with them. I’ve come up with a few guidelines for helping the working relationship start smoothly, and improve over time: (I hope this helps other web workers / consultants and also help clients)
- Important! - Assume nothing - they are often paying me to help them with their online activities, including social media, and possibly business practices like contact management systems
- Understand what level they are at, from an online virgin to a web app ninja. I now have a couple of short, simple surveys I send clients to assess where they are on this scale
- Ask them how they currently work with providers and also internally
- Gently introduce them to any new forms of working, and make sure you point out that this is not a deal breaker / compulsory
- Show the BENEFITS to them, not just the features - talk about time saving, clarity of communication and ease of access for example if explaining about Basecamp
- Offer to provide a little training
- Be patient!
- If you don’t get immediate buy in, leave it and perhaps try again a little bit further into the project
- If it is going to really hamper your working style, then consider telling the client in a friendly manner with proper reasoning
- Don’t be afraid to listen to their point of view, as you could potentially learn something from them!
The only thing I would be completely firm about is with proposals and contracts. If a client is not happy signing something or giving written approval, this is something to take seriously, and you could be opening yourself up to risk. Just be tactful and always consider the option of walking away.
If you have any thoughts about this or anything you recommend, then please get typing in the comments!
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Tim’s Digital Crib
Mr Ferriss has been featured on a new advertising website for Cisco systems. It shows his SF apartment and gives a small insight into how it works.
I really like the tropical ‘rainforest’, but I do think he could get a new MBP 
Click here to take a look - tried to embed the movie but not working correctly.
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SLIM ipod nano pouch
SLIM ipod nano pouch, originally uploaded by www.hard-graft.com.
Loving the Hard Graft stuff from Austria - iPod Nano case and Pull Laptop case for me
Climate Cars
Climate Cars, originally uploaded by JonnyMoss.
Climate Cars has struck me as a great company for 3 reasons. Number one - great concept of environmentally friendly, well-branded cars, focusing on great service and value. Number two - nicely designed website giving you all the information you could possibly want and online account registration. Thirdly, they are making great us eof technology with GPS tracking, GPS-enabled fares so mileage is accurately calculated.
It is nice to see, that something as “mundane” as a taxi service, can be well branded, bringing innovative service and design to their offering.
I am sure there are similar offerings in London, but this is the one that I have seen first (actually from a tweet from Melalicious). If anyone else know of companies who are doing something similar, perhaps in different cities, please let me know in the comments.
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Diggnation Live
First stor-ay…, originally uploaded by iancleary.
Well, I’m home and just about back to normal after a long, but superb week.
The photo is from Mr Cleary, and shows the Diggnation guys enjoying themselves. The place was PACKED and having never actually seen any episode, I was a little surprised.
However, it was seriously funny and entertaining, and I can now see why the show is watched by over 3 million people each week!
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New Adobe Photoshop CS4 Branding
Adobe have just announced their new Creative Suite Products and have significantly changed the branding / design, and I think it looks superb - really clean and modern.
I’m a firm believer that packaging can make a huge difference to the experience you can have and of course people’s perception. If you are a packaging lover, then do check out The Dieline, a superb blog with great photos of cool packaging.
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Pc vs Mac (for a change)
After the rather poor (and bizarre) Seinfeld and Bill Gates adverts were cancelled this week, Microsoft have launched a new “I’m a PC” series of adverts, which are, actually pretty good.
It is very different to what they normally do, and yes, they are having a little bit of fun with Apple too, which cannot be a bad thing (lets face it, Apple have ripped Microsoft for a long time, and with good reason).
Here’s another of the new ads:
They certainly seem to have recruited a few A list stars, and they do a good job of getting a message across. Except, I think the message could be “don’t be so embarrassed saying you use a PC”. What do you think? Fundamentally, with marketing, you need a remarkable and damn right hot product from the off. And Microsoft just doesn’t have that. Windows Vista(ster) and XP are just too middle of the road right now.
Far from remarkable.
OSX is better, more stable, more secure, better to use and looks amazing. That is at one end of the road. At the other end, is the likes of the new Netbooks, offering tiny computers, which people only need to run Firefox on. Ok, you CAN run XP, but quite a few people immediately change to a version of Linux. Firefox is all you need to access your cloud, and this is undoubtedly the way it is going.
Hardware, design, battery life and wireless connectivity are going to be the features that people demand. It is not going to be about software. This is a BIG scary fact that Microsoft are very, very worried about.
Next Generation GPS
Josh has a great post today on augmented VR vs virtual VR. The latter is great for games, but not so much for real life. Make sure you check out the TED video at the bottom of the post - can you believe that is possible with a wii remote? (I didn’t either).
Someone has left a comment on the post and linked to this firm - the next generation of GPS. This is truly staggering - makes TomTom look a bit basic!
Piclens - you need to check this out
It’s not often that I say ‘wow’ out loud, but I did yesterday when my friend Anand told me about Piclens and went to check it out.
I had heard about it last year and had taken a look, forgotten about it and that was that. The good news is that they have been working hard on making it better. Much better. How about getting a full screen 3D display of photos like this below?
Put simply, you can get a PicLens plugin / browser add on for a number of the most popular browsers as shown here:
(I’ve installed the FireFox one which was a doddle). Once you have done that and restarted your browser, you then see a PicLens logo appear top right in the browser, and if it is illuminated blue, it is a site that supports PicLens. Here you go:
When you see this, you can click on the logo and PicLens launches giving an amazing 3D scrolling media experience! There are many sites that now support it, so have a look! (flickr pictures look incredible when you activate PicLens - easily the best way to see your photostream!).
There’s one more great feature ……..
Wordpress Plugin! - You should see a small PicLens prompt under this post, so if you click on this, you should launch PicLens Lite and see the photos within the post in a slick slideshow. Your readers will need to have Adobe Flash Player 9 or the PicLens browser add on.
So, what are you waiting for, click below and check it out!
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The power of media - on display at the Hancock Premiere
Having seen Mr Will Smith at Hancock premiere last night in London, what really struck me was the instant media broadcasting and capturing which was going on. There were two distinct camps here:
The fans:
And the pros:
There a number of things which really stood out for me:
- The massive amount of digital cameras being used by the public to both take pics and video the stars
- The massive amount of phones being used to record the event, both video and pics
- The pro photographers taking shots and instantly sending them from their laptops via 3G to their editors or news agencies / showbiz agencies.
In fact, all this technology is available to anyone right now, and not for huge money. Even I, with my trusty iPhone, took a picture of Will Smith and emailed it to my flickr account, so that it instantly posted it on my blog. User generated content at its finest. The first major event where people recorded live footage using cameras happened during the horrific day when London came under attack from terrorists. Live footage was shot from camera phones. It is not a fact, that if a major news event happens, it is very, very likely that a member of the public will capture it in some form of digital format and not a professional. This was unheard of 10 years ago, and even 5 years, it was still very rare.
With the take up of 3G services, offering fast data transfer and better mobile video, the world is ready to be broadcast at a moment’s notice, and this can be from just about every corner of our planet. Pretty incredible.
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BBC News- You may like to read this...
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