Don Andrews and George Golla live in concert 2009

It’s been more than a year since they performed together but tonight Don Andrews and George Golla will be on stage again at the Central Coast Conservatorium.
I got a preview of the set list a few days ago and I can’t wait. All standards from the 40s & 50s and a variety of tempos. It is sure to be a great night. I hope they record it again. Last years album is a regular in my iTunes play list.

First I produced a video tutorial explaining how to get started with the MyPhotoFun application. Using Camtasia Studio to record the step-by-step process then performing some post production in Adobe Premiere to iron out the blithering. I have to say for the first time out of the gate the results are quite pleasing, although it does feel weird to listen to my own voice on a recording and I could definitely do with some practice on the microphone. Still, after showing a few friends and colleagues, I am assured there is nothing to be ashamed about.

Building a FaceBook Page

While all this was going on I also set about establishing a page for MyPhotoFun on FaceBook. The learning curve for this was quite exhilarating and I may have made some fundamental errors but only time will tell. I added some marketing text and product shots and, of course, my tutorial video. I also started a couple of budget pay-per-click FaceBook ads which I have to say, after only four days, have brought in a decent number of “Fans”.

My next step was to import some existing customers from our MyPhotoFun database into the FaceBook system. This was quite nerve racking. I don’t want to upset anyone, and with a customer list of currently 10,000 plus I don’t want to make any mistakes. I decided to use a small selection as a test and collected 100 recent respondents to our customer satisfaction survey. Pleasantly, I found that of the 100 names 67 were existing FaceBook users so my hopes are high. We have an email campaign planned for later this week for our Fathers Day promotion. This will go out to the entire database so I’ll include a link to FaceBook see what comes back from that.

I also started a Twitter account for MyPhotoFun. I haven’t done much with it at the moment – simply not enough time to formulate a strategy. But it’s there and it’s active so we’ll see.

Over the coming days I have plans for a couple of follow up tutorial videos and I will be writinfg some posts for the MyPhotoFun blog to encourage some take up on the FaceBook page. It’s going to be interesting to see where this all takes us, I’ll let you know.

I’m remembering back to my travel experiences as a regular commuter. I carried a laptop in a backpack with a selection of audio CD’s, headphones and a spare battery pack. Later I would occasionally have DVD’s hired from the video store near my local train station to watch. I would sit crammed in my seat, with my backpack in front of my feet, the laptop across my knees tethered by my headphones.

More often than not I also juggled a job folder from work so I could complete a few extra tasks or work on a freelance project. Very uncomfortable and extremely clumsy.

It was always a struggle balancing everything and quite difficult when the passenger next to me leaped up at the last minute as the train pulled into their stop. I’m sure those who have experienced this routine will understand.

So, comparing that to today’s experience.

Armed with nothing but my trusty BlackBerry. I have so far managed to listen to 20 minutes of my favourite Jazz guitar hero, Joe Pass, checked my FaceBook account, read half a dozen articles on LinkedIn and updated my task list. I have received a number of emails to which I have replied and I’m half way through writing this post.

My headphones are replaced with BlueTooth ear buds, extremely light and you forget you’re wearing them. My backpack is in the cupboard at home and a spare battery for my phone is in my pocket.

I don’t have movies on the phone but if I wanted I could have brought my iPod. I have a number of movies burned with iTunes and while the screen doesn’t compare to a 17 inch laptop its perfectly adequate for personal entertainment. That would of course require me to carry another gadget with me, but like the phone it hangs off my belt so it’s not a big inconvenience.

I have a number of tasks yet to complete and with almost an hour left of travel time I might have time for another blog post.

Most of the tasks I can complete like this are admittedly administrative but they’re done now and when I get back to the office I can focus on my production jobs.

I could publish this post straight to my blog but I like to leave new posts for a few hours and re-read them first, just to make sure I don’t say something stupid.

It has been a difficult few weeks for the organisers at Dads in Education. They had been promised federal funding for the 2009 program which, whilst it is still available on paper, looks like it will be held back indefinitely especially in light of the recent federal budget announcement this week. They had also secured a major sponsorship with the NRL who were going to inject a massive amount of money in return for prominent branding throughout the program. This was also pulled a couple of weeks ago, maybe in light of the current scandal involving players from the Sharks football team?

This left Dads with no option, so close to the launch of the event, than to defer until next year and hope for stronger support in 2010. Unfortunate but a reality in these hard times.

Earlier this week principles of the Dads Breakfast met with long term supporters, the Erina Fair Shopping Center and were offered a life line. The shopping centre management would underwrite the event on the Central Coast this year. Whilst this limits it to only the one region – as opposed to the state wide event that had been planned – it none the less maintains the continuity of the Fathers Day Breakfast and demonstrates the value percieved by it’s major sponsors.

There’s a long road to travel yet for the organisers but indications are that the event will be a success again this year and hopefully the team will be able to launch the program state wide as was the intention for 2009.

Social networking site Facebook has now begun to censor private messages sent between users.

If a user posts a link to a website in a private message that is deemed unacceptable by the site’s administrators, a message appears that reads “this message contains blocked content. Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.”

It has reportedly blocked links within file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, which is currently in a Swedish court over the legality of providing users access to copyrighted material.

Facebook chief privacy officer Chris Kelly told News.com.au that the site has a legal right to censor private messages, as users agree to terms of use that they will not send “spammy, illegal, threatening or harassing” messages or content.

via Facebook censors private messages – Business news, business advice and information for Australian SMEs | SmartCompany.

As a parent I think this is a good thing. I find it hard enough trying to manage what the boys are doing on the net without having to trace their steps through social sites like MySpace and FaceBook.

For more information see their website at www.dads.org.au

I have a fairly good parental control in place so I can trust them pretty well to keep within the bounds of decency and not get up to any moral mischief however, with the two of them downloading video files of their favourite band, stupid home made cartoon or whatever (often the same one over and over again) I have noticed my DSL usage limit is quite rapidly approaching.

Over the past five days my usage has climbed from 20% to 80% and I still have 7 days to go in this billing cycle. I have asked the boys to regulate themselves but that doesn’t seem to be working. I can see I will be spending a good portion of my weekend working out how to block YouTube on my router.

I of course thought it was something I had done – I’m still fiddling with my new toy – but after an hour waiting for tech support I found out that the local coverage was down for an unspecified time and I should keep resetting the phone every twelve hours.

Don’t you love technology.

Having had a BlackBerry Pearl for the last couple of years I’m familiar with the operating system on the BlackBerry. I’ve grown used to being able to send and receive emails, sync my address book with my iMac, manage my calendar and generally organise my life on my phone. I still use a Day-Timer diary but its no more than an expensive note book now. Everything is on the phone.

So back to the Bold. Having done absolutely no research on this phone outside of confirming it was free, I am discovering new things all the time. And my smile just keeps getting broader.

Wi-Fi network connection

The biggest unexpected bonuses I discovered as soon as I started playing with the phone. Even Before i had slipped my SIM card in I was browsing web sites and collecting email thanks to the phones ability to connect to my office Wi – Fi  network. This alone is an incredible feature that just gets better and better as I use it. It means that while I am within range of my office network, any data calls like email or websites are delivered through my broadband and not via my phone data plan. It’s incredibly fast and I don’t pay the hefty data charges on the phone plan. Even better, it connects automatically! When I get back to the office the phone discovers the network and simply switches over!  I haven’t tested it yet but according to the manual it will also connect to open Wi-Fi hot spots while I’m out of the office. As if I need a reason to spend more time at McDonalds.

Improved Signal strength

For the first time ever, at least for the ten years I have been working from home, I have decent signal strength in my office. This has been the biggest surprise for me as I specifically asked the Optus rep if there would be an improvement on the Pearl and was told a resounding “no”. Signal on the Bold is always at full strength which means I no longer have to drop everything and dash outside to talk with clients and suppliers. A lot more professional and a lot less stressful.

Bigger, Bolder, Better

The Bold is significantly bigger than I expected and I have to stretch a bit to type one handed. I’ll probably switch to two hands for messaging but the full QWERTY keyboard is solid and easy to use and I don’t have to think about the Pearl’s SureType dictionary any more – again a stress saver.

The battery seems to be holding up OK even with the constant fiddling I’ve subjected it to over the last day or two. The screen is huge in comparison to the Pearl and very easy to read. I have pushed up the type size a bit to accommodate my failing eyesight but this still leaves plenty of room to allow messages to be easily read.

I haven’t tested out all the gadgets and applications yet so I’ll probably be posting about this phone again soon. The camera however does seem to take better pics but I don’t use it much anyway.

All in all I must say I’m blown away by this new toy. I haven’t compared it to the iPhone yet. I’ve got a couple of mate using those so it will be interesting to see how they measure up.