Where do you stand where quality counts?
Oxford suits is the only company left in america today that still makes its suits by hand. Seriously by hand. No machines. Can you imagine the hours to sew a single suit?
Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlX9pcBOqT0
Quality, attention to detail, pride in your work. they all matter.
This morning I went to the high school track closest to where I live to put in some speed work as I train for my first marathon. I arrived very early only to find that the track was in complete lock down. Every gate closed, every opening shut, chained and padlocked. Not one soul running. It was frustrating and more so, it was very confusing… I began to ask myself questions like, “Why aren’t any of the school’s athletes out there? Why aren’t other area runners training? What is going on?” So I drove a few more miles down the road to check the next high school. The track was wide open, and sure enough it was packed. There were 50-100 student athletes getting in their before-school training. Area runners were doing speed work. The track was even humming along with a few house moms getting in some circuit training.
So who sets the tone for your desire and drive? Is it the security guard who unlocks the gates? Is it head of the athletic department? Is it the conditioning coach? Or is it the athlete who gets up early to train? You know the answer… each of them do, but the driven athlete will always find a way to train, just like the driven leader will over come obstacles to achieve his goals.
* It shouldn’t surprise you to know that the high school with the closed track was only has a few state titles in it’s history. However, the high school with the open track has many and is considered by some to be the premier academic AND athletic school in the entire state.
All media is not easy, clear, crisp, straight to the point, on message and delivered with a ‘next step’ in mind… some of it is geared for the soul and meant to be enjoyed in a specific moment and place. It is ‘right now’ sort of stuff. Connect or Disconnect. There isn’t room for a middle ground.
I am sitting in an independent cliche beach-side coffee shop. The speakers have been just been cranked up a little by the dj waitress… some sort of reggae hip-hop with a powerful, catchy, smooth beat. It is the brand of tune that clicks my positive personal energy up a notch or two… The kind that gets me working with a happy hum. It is begging me to get excited to do the next cool, great thing. The dj waitress is loving it. I am enjoying it. Others are walking out. It’s too loud and not their style.
Message. Vibe. Ambiance. Presentation. Environment. Web. People.
Be daring. Unashamedly, strike a distinct style of communication and media. Quite trying so hard to do what everyone else is doing. Present yourself well. Have some fun. Enjoy the process. Bring others on the journey. Think it through, but don’t over think it. Don’t fake yourself into being something that you are not. And don’t worry so much about those who aren’t coming along with your pursuit… focus on who is coming with you because you have staked your claim on a unique position in the market.
Yep, I was on the radio. KQCKlive.com is a digital station based here in AZ, but reaches an average of 70 – 80 thousand listers nation wide. Yes, almost 100 thousand people heard yours truly tonight on Lamar Johnson’s ‘Secrets of social media revealed’ weekly show. We talked a bit about web, SEO, and primarily facebook & twitter.
Check out the archives of the hour long show below.
(player not loading? may need to hit the website here: http://www.kqcklive.com/, and look in the media players archives for the July 21 6pm show)
Tell me one thing you took away from watching, and we’ll give you free hosting on your next web project!
Thanks to Lamar & Angie for inviting me to their show, and Joe for running and producing it.
Everyone wants the biggest bang for their buck. Im as frugal as I possibly can be, and find ways to be more frugal each year.
On a pretty regular basis, we find customers who refuse to pay real money for hosting. Sure they just spent thousands on a nice website, but $3 a month hosting is in their sights.
We have a customer, who I wont name, who uses one of the “best rated” hosts for cheap. Unlimited storage for $6 a month. Guess what. in 2 years we have had to fix their site at least 2 times because of massive server failures. Most recently, because the entire server security was compromised, and a hacker fiddled with almost every account and file they could. Nothing too terrible, but hours of work to undo.
On top of the issues and time needed to fix the issue, this client spent hours on hold trying to have tech support reset the password, and a request to secure the server.
Lets do the math. In this clients case, they save about $10 a month in hosting vs what we would charge for dedicated server space. one year =$120. Our bill for fixing this latest issue. $350. their 1 – 2 hours of time on the phone with their host support: $100 – $200 (guessing what their time is worth). Ohh and the site was down for 3 days. Lost sales: $500 – $1000.
So to save $120, they spent $450 – $1550.
Cheap hosts fail. its not if, but when.
Cheap cars, shoes, couches, plumbing, brochures, laptops, cell phones, etc. they all fail. And the bigger picture here, those failures all come at a price.
Suck it up, and buy the best service level you can afford. It may cost you a bit more each month, but when your site runs smoothly you wont regret it.
yes, factor1 hosting has rock solid dedicated servers with great support, backups and uptime. But we wont host just anyone. Interested in hosting with us. Call or email, and we’ll think about letting you in. We have strict rules about what you can do, for the sake of our other customers.
HTML5 is going to be the new norm here soon. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, dont worry about it too much. Its the background structure / protocol running web pages. Firefox, Safari, Opera & Google Chrome are all HTML5 ready on some level. IE 6, 7, 8 are not. Rumor is the IE 9 will be. But I’m not holding my breath.
One of the big new laws in html 5 is the way a website can interact with video. We can now use a more native video format, that streams better on browsers and mobile devices. YES ipad & iphone (and other mobiles) can use the new HTML5 video.
HTML5 video will eliminate the need for flash on most devices.
So lets create a smooth video splash page for a product or service promotion. We’ll start with a simple design, and then move onto the video part.
Sticking with a simple design. We want to center our video, and give it a nice frame.
The Base Html:
<html>
<head>
<title>Video demo</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<h2>Video Demo</h2>
<div id="video">
</div>
<h2>Enter site</h2>
</div>
</body>
</html>
and our basic css:
body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Sans-serif;
background: #111;
color: #ccc;}
#wrapper {
width:680px;
margin: 0 auto;
padding: 20px;
text-align: center;}
#video {
width: 640px;
height: 400px;
}
a, a:visited {
color: #22daff;}
a:hover {
color: #d1d1d1;}Here is my biggest gripe against html5 video. Each browser has their own video type. Safari: mp4, Firefox, OGV, and Chrome: WebM. Kind of a pain to convert your video to 3 formats, but in general it is a better experience for the end user right? so we’ll suck it up and deal with it.
So whats the easiest way to convert to these file types? I have tried a few ways, and thus far has been Miro Video Converter. Works on both mac and PC. mirovideoconverter.com. And best of all, its free. I used this to convert all of my videos.
Sure html5 can take the new video symantic tag. But it doesnt leave the most consistent user experience. Then what about those lowly IE users? we can’t ignore them. We may want to, but we can’t.
There are a handful of opensource javascript and css players. They players make it nice and easy to auto detect the browser type, and deliver the best video possible. Some even offer a flash drop out for the worst case IE users.
Some options include:
Video for everybody: http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody
Video JS: http://videojs.com
Sublime: http://jilion.com/sublime/video
Projekktor: http://www.projekktor.com/
Each essentially adds a layer of functionality and style to the html5 video tag. I liked Video JS for this use.
This is a super important step. Not all server will recognize the mime types of videos. Using a simple htaccess file, we can add these three simple lines to indicate the file mime types.
AddType video/ogg .ogv
AddType video/mp4 .mp4
AddType video/webm .webm
1. Download the Video JS codes, and upload the files to your server.
2. Insert the necessary codes for the CSS and JS into your files head tag.
3. insert their player codes into your video div
4. Modify the file paths to your videos for each file type.
5. update the flash var source for the back up video, making sure you use a absolute full url.
Here is my final result, http://proofs.factor1studios.com/mediasalt/video/ with the videos playing in native formats for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, with IE dropping to a flash swf fall back.
So now you don’t have an excuse to not be producing great video splash pages or video on your site, with full support for all browsers, and mobile devises.
In almost every industry you will find a premium product, and several tiers of brands or services falling in rank there after. Their order doesn’t matter. What matters is the premium, and the non premium.
Here is what I like. Premium sets the bar, the gold standard, and the price. The market and industry of that premium product depends on these factors, for the smaller fish to survive.
But here is the catch. You can’t expect to compete with the big dogs, yet offer value on one of the key factors (quality, price, service, etc). An amazing car, but at sacrifice on service wont work. Ask the 1996 Car and Driver best luxury car of the year Mazda Millennia. Rated better than the lexus, mercedes and BMW in the class, but failed to deliver the customer service. And it did poor in sales. Mazda stunk at pampering its customers.
There are other similar stories I’m sure, but here is my point. If you cant compete on all levels, and win at the expectations placed on the premium, then dont. Find a way to better compete with the smaller fish.
Nothing wrong with being the biggest medium fish possible. Let the big fish pay for infrastructure, R&D, market research, and so on. You keep up, push the limits where you can, and focus on the ways you are different. There are a lot of cars sold in the middle to low range. Far more volume than the top cars.
Most artists make their money on concert sales and add ons. T-shirts, stickers, collectibles, etc. Not CD sales. But is this the future of music in a world of digital delivery?
http://modlife.com/angelsandairwaves/love
A free CD, with the request of ANY payment? Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have also tried their hand at the same thing. The Radiohead CD In Rainbows pulled an average of $2.12 per download. 3/5ths of 1.2 million users downloaded the CD for free. The remaining 2/5th paid an average of $6.
So is this the future of music sales? Will this be the future for other industries? books? magazines? Video games? I doubt it, but its worth thinking outside the box on.
How can you do what you enjoy, provide it to as many people as possible, and make up for it on the items that make you the most money?
A great article from Small biz trends on the 5 fatal mistakes that will hold back your business from its true potential. Have a great idea, product, or service? This article is for you.
5 Fatal Mistakes That Hold Back Start-up Business Owners
The 5 key things:
Do go read the article. its a short, yet vital read.
Did you know factor1 can help help you navigate all 5 of these? We’ll we dont sell or manage number 5, we do have some links we can share to sweet services to make getting a real phone easier.
Seth Godin call’s it the Dip. Others call it “knowing when to lay down your bet”. However, it shouldn’t take just a losing proposition to stop doing something that is ‘good’ in pursuit of doing something that is great.
In meeting with a successful leader the other day, I was challenged to not always think in terms of “life long time lines”. What if projects had shorter life spans? What if we had clear, short-term, small budget, in-n-out approaches to some of our objectives? What if new products, established teams, marketing budgets, fund-raising efforts, et-al didn’t always go on forever?
In WWII the U.S. Marines spent over a year preparing to take just one key island – Iwo Jima. It was a hotly contested conflict with thousands of lives laid at the alter of freedom, but they knew when and what victory looked like and it wasn’t about being in the marines forever or engaged in war in perpetuity.
The challenge before us for the greatest gains does not always have to include “doing this forever”. Don’t be afraid to cancel things that aren’t meeting you goals or your values or your stated outcomes. Just because you started something does not mean that you should always finish. See more of what you do as “experimental” and don’t get down when it doesn’t work out. Just try something else.