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This one will be short & sweet.

Are you the CEO /CFO / Director of Some Department?  Then read on.

Last night, I talked with some bigwigs who had questions about “The Google” and “twittering”.  It occurred to me that these were people that were bigshots in business, but absolute Luddites in the world of tech.  These individuals are often responsible for making the final call on the web strategy for their corporations.  Why?  Because nobody dares tell them the truth:  (sir) you don’t understand this.

The best advice I had for these guys, especially in dicey economic times, was to stand the *bleep* back.  It takes a big man to realize that his opinion, though tremendously powerful in certain scenarios, is damaging in areas in which he is ignorant.  Yeah, your dumb ego could put you out of business — hence the picture.

I think I shocked one guy when I told him (a little too enthusiastically) “You don’t HAVE to have an opinion!”  Sometimes you just need to put the trust in the developers and marketing people.  Hell, you’re paying them to do the job.  They live & breathe this stuff.  Trust your experts.  These are the people that really know how to get the job done and they will.

When project milestones are delivered to your desk, feel free to give direction, but don’t let your opinion be mistaken as an order.  LISTEN to the WHY certain decisions were made on the project.  If the presenter is too wary to offer you the WHY, then maybe you’ve fostered an environment that is more of an dictatorship than a presidency.  So guess what, big man?  You need to ask these people WHY they made the decisions they did on the project.  Asking questions can even make you seem smarter than delivering orders.  Analyze, consider, and then offer your opinion if you think it will help.  Otherwise, nod quietly.

The stand back and be amazed at some of these people’s innovative genius.

A client recently needed some help on setting up video tutorials on her website. I realized that this info is probably of value to just about everybody, so here it is. Disclaimer: these are my opinions as to what constitutes an effective tutorial and this is by no means authoritative.

• Initial capture:
  1. Script out the mouse clicks and screens that you want to hit in order (sometimes I do this in PowerPoint)
  2. Capture that workflow in a video with Camtasia or Captivate (possibly run the PowerPoint in another window for visual queues OR just print it out)
  3. Edit LIBERALLY to get tutorial down to final runtime
  4. Play video and record VERY rough voice over to get the basic structure down
  5. Replay voiceover and transcribe into a script, editing for brevity
  6. Read your script while the final video is playing and capture audio
  7. In Captivate or Camtasia, marry the audio with the video
• Stay away from the post-it style popups that are so popular in Captivate … people are way too impatient to read in a video, so these are not effective (example: subtitled films don’t do well)
• Instead, to highlight content or actions, perform a ZOOM in the video editing software
• When doing the VO, keep a consistent distance from the mic. I’d say 12 – 14 inches if you have a standalone mic. If it’s clip on or headset, then ignore this.
• I like audible clicks and typing sound effects in tutorials.  In Camtasia, this is one click box.
• Make sure the volume is fairly loud, but not blaring on the final version … people always have their speakers wayyy too low
• If this is an intro-style of video, it should be really fast, like 30 – 45 seconds (you are telling your audience that your service or product is as easy as 1-2-3 … so REALLY make it as easy as 1-2-3)
• Unless you have an insanely complex form (and if you do, you might consider redeveloping it), when demoing a form being filled out, show the beginning of filling out a form, then do a blur transition to “fast-forward” to the completed form.  If you must, fast-forward blur to the challenging parts of the form and in your voiceover, give users clear, concise direction.  Or, like I said, redevelop.
• Break non-intro tutorials into 1 minute to 1:30 chunks
• Use an SEO-friendly player like Longtail

That’s a messy, incomplete set of guidelines to making an effective tutorial.

I may have figured out how  Lala works their licensing mystery.  When synching your music collection, the service somehow matches mp3 tags like artist, album, and song title.  I think song length may also have something to do with it.  If it finds an “approximate” match AND the song is licensed for Lala’s use, the song gets dropped into your online music collection.  I bet this is somewhere in the FAQ on their web site, but I never read that nonsense … do you?

Why did I only find this out 6 months after I started using Lala?  Very good question … glad I asked it.  It takes forever to upload songs, so I only uploaded the first 20 gigs of my music collection.  I never processed the whole collection because I have 500+ gigs of music.  Because of how I originally converted all my CDs, my music collection is organized in an odd manner.  It’s very complex, but let’s just say I uploaded the most mainstream music first.  All my music matched and so I blissfully used Lala for 6 months.  Now that I am so enamored of Lala, I’ve decided to upload the rest.   Much of this current music that I am uploading is eclectic and indie.  So it’s not really matching.  See, I may be uploading a live or demo or rare version, and Lala mismatches it with the production studio version of the tune!  If it doesn’t match, Lala omits it from the album entirely.  This isn’t so bad, except you don’t know until you go to play an album and the last track isn’t there or track 5 is not what you’d expect or way too loud compared to the rest of the album.  I’m obsessive about music and my spidey sense tingles when something is out of whack.  However, I breathe deeply. count to 10, and then move on.  Oh … the other issue is that on CDs with unnamed hidden tracks, I’ve edited out the silence and re-saved the track under a new name.  Green Day’s “Dookie” has that with the “All By Myself” song.  Lala doesn’t recognize this sort of thing.  Bummer.

So consequently, my Lala collection is incomplete and mismatched.  Probably 10% of my Lala collection is askew.  I have an enormous quantity of weird music, however.  So although my OCD has been tweaked a bit, I am willing to overlook the slight problems in favor of the enormous convenience.  For the great majority of the population for whom Meatloaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell 2″ (you know “I’d do anything for love, but I won’t do that!” … you have it on your iPod and you LOVE it) is the weirdest thing in their iTunes, this won’t matter.  All the Kanye West, Christina Aguilera, and Black Eyed Peas that you need is covered with Lala’s library.  Enjoy it!

Aviary has an impressive suite of web-based software that is free to use.  They have built scaled-down versions of Photoshop, ImageReady, and Illustrator that run within a web browser in Flash (not Air, for the techies).  In addition, they have a multi-track sound editor that has the same core functionality as Apple’s Garage Band.  Although Aviary is pushing the limits of what Flash is capable of, their execution is outstanding.  This software suite works and works WELL!

Although these apps are lighter in features than their desktop counterparts, they are some of the most advanced web apps I’ve yet used.  All are incredible models of how web-based software should work.  These are the prefect tools if you have to do a little photo editing on an underpowered laptop or netbook.  If you’ve ever had to edit some photos when you’ve been on vacation with your old junky laptop, I’ve got the solution to your pain.  Photoshop on a crappy laptop just grinds your productivity to asnail’s pace.  But these apps fire up in about 30 seconds and you’re ready to go.  Working with large graphics files is nearly instantaneous because all the heavy lifting is being done on Aviary’s servers.

I highly, highly recommended Aviary as both a top-notch tool and an example of how to build web-based software.  Check it out here.

There’s a great music website called Lala which I have been using for about 6 months now.  It allows you to upload your music collection and listen to it anywhere that you have a computer (or iPhone) and an internet connection.  You can set up playlists and share them.  And, of course, you can sort your music collection any way you want.  [ Example:  Show me just the Heavy Metal albums ... yay!]   The web application is absolutely phenomenal.  It’s drag & drop and very, very visual — a model of “complex simplicity”.  It’s more or less a web-based iTunes before iTunes tried to do everything.  I’ve stopped liking iTunes because it’s doing too much — Genius, video, and now Facebook integration … why oh why?  Call me a curmudgeon, but I kinda tolerated it about 2 or 3 years ago when all it did was organize and play music.  It did that well.  Lala reminds me of the happy, friendly iTunes of 2006.

I’m not going to sit here and describe every aspect of Lala because honestly you should be using it right now.  I have not a single complaint after 6 months of daily use.  Normally I am very critical, but this just kicks ass.  Seriously, stop reading this crappy blog post and just sign up at http://www.lala.com.  Download the tiny desktop application.  Pick three or four albums to upload.  Although the upload process is automated, it takes a long time to upload all your albums (I have 180 gigs of music!!).  So at first, limit yourself to those few albums.  It took about a day to upload 9 gigs / 1800 songs, but it did all that nonsense in the background.  Anyway, if you like it, then endure the lengthy upload for the rest of your music.

One of the coolest features that I cannot get over is that I can be listening to some ridiculously long playlist here at work.  Then I turn off my computer at work, go home, boot up the home system (workaholics, unite!), and pick up the playlist right where I left off.  It’s awesome.  I giggle to myself every time I get to do that.

The big mystery that lingers over this whole utopian system is how Lala gets around licensing.  Will the RIAA axe fall as heavily as  it did with Pandora?  — By the way, Pandora, awesome bounce-back.  Y’all have a godlike CEO over there. –  Apparently, Lala gets around licensing issues by comparing your music files with albums that they already have legally in their library.  Then Lala uploads only the music that they don’t have.  Yeah, I know, if you do the math, it doesn’t really add up.  Shhhhh!

I’ve been using this FREE tool, DropBox, for about a year now (since they were in beta).  I use it on a daily basis and, at this point, could not live without it.  Whenever anything gets to that stage, I cannot help myself, I get a little excited about it, so bear with me.

DropBox is a web service for synching up files across one or more machines.  At it’s simplest, it’s a web-based service for backing up files.  There’s been tons of these services over the years (X-Drive, AllMyData, Mozy, and Box.net come to mind).  But DropBox takes this to a whole new level by adding a program that runs on your desktop, PC or Mac.  This creates a folder on your computer that is automatically synchronized with your web folder that is hosted by DropBox.  The service even allows you to roll back to previous versions of your documents.  Everything can be done from the web interface or, amazingly, right from the program that is running on your desktop.  How many web services have that level of desktop accessibility?  Only a handful.

Ok, cool, now you’ve got a backed-up versions of important files that you can access through the web from any computer.  But if you add the desktop app to another PC, then you’ve got AUTOMATED synching going on 24/7.  Next, you can set up a shared folder with any other DropBox user.  You drop files into it and they show up in the user’s folder on their desktop.  The other user even gets a popup alert after the synch completes.  No more fooling around with FTP just to get somebody a file that is too big for email attachments.  It’s also nice for dropping 500 megs of files into before I leave work, having them synch during the commute home, then having them all ready when I arrive home. Now I don’t have to shuffle through my man-purse for the USB memory stick, wait 10 min to copy files, work on files at home that night, and then forget the USB stick at home the next day .. ugh!  I just work directly off of the files in my local DropBox folder all the time.  Every PC I work has a copy.

DropBox has a couple of extremely minor issues.  I have limited experience with the Mac client, but from the 10 minutes that I played with it, it does not seem as polished.  However, with the rate at which DropBox is improving their features, I’m sure this will be addressed in short order.  Also, I’ve experimented with running my huge Outlook PST file from DropBox to get automated Outlook backups.  No dice.  But that is really pushing the envelope and nobody provides a good system for that yet.

DropBox keeps their site and application VERY simple.  Like crazy, google-level simple.  That makes it easy for the rushed, imaptient crowd and the oft-ignored low-tech crowd like my parents (who absolutely love it).  In fact, for a second, I just want to elaborate on my parents’ experience with DropBox.  My mom uses it to synch files between her laptop at work and her laptop in the house.  My dad, the single-finger typist, used to have a terrible time getting photos to me.  He used to Kodak’s fairly complex photo-sharing service … a good service, but lacking in ease of use for non-tech-savvy peeps.  Now we have a shared folder into which he can throw his photos and I get a little popup when they arrive OR even get updated.  Smooth.

All this for free!  It’s 3 gigs free, with paid options for up to 100 gigs … beautiful.  I’ve been using the free version without issue.

Use this link to signup and you’ll get an extra 250 megs of space for free.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961

Into the mosh… Everyone’s doing it: Email. Word Processing. Calendaring. Spreadsheets. Presentation slides.

But everyone’s doing it in a different pit: The office. The conference room. On a plane. In a hotel. Out in the field…

• Can’t access that blinkin !@#$%! email because it’s back on the desktop.
• Can’t pull up that stinking proposal because Word isn’t installed on the conference room PC.
• Can’t get a quick answer from a colleague because the Mac has Yahoo! Messenger and you need Windows IM.

Whaddaya use when you’re users are moshed all over the place?

In 2008, one smart answer is Google Apps for business. Available anywhere - online or off* - Google Apps lets companies achieve levels of office app sophistication previously available only to the very big guys. (*offline functions are limited as of now)

It provides collaborative access to documents in ways that PC office suites can’t - and takes care of all the attendant housekeeping and security so you don’t have to.

Businesses and employees will want the Premier Edition for $50 per user per year. This gives you branded, ad free screens - and enormous storage quotas that defy even the most neurotic email hoarders amongst us. Users get emails branded with @yourDomainName.com not @gmail.com, and 25gb of storage each. When you add up the annual cost of maintaining Word Processing, Calendaring, Spreadsheet, Presentation, and Email Apps for each user’s PC (desktop and laptop in some cases), $50 is a complete steal.

And just when you’re thinking this sounds cool, it gets better: Teams can collaborate on documents across the web, eliminating the need for emailing large attachments to each other and playing the “can you name the latest version” game. (Okay, we’re jumping up on stage now)

But in case this isn’t enough to get you downloading Google Apps right this instant, recently announced integration with SalesForce and the Google Apps Engine will surely stoke the fire.

Here it is. Check it out.

Now we’re on the stage, arms up over our heads, looking down at the undulating mosh, smiling wide… and now we’re diving in…

Hi! I’m a recovering .MP3aholic!

Endless gigagbytes later, I was buried like a collector with just too much damn stuff … then along came internet radio.

Originally it was MusicMatch, until Yahoo bought and buried them, now it’s all about Pandora.

A browser based, web 2.0 and absolutely FREE internet radio app, Pandora allows you to create a radio station and teach it preferences by selecting “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” Then, over time, these preferences kick in and Pandora plays more of what you want to hear.

To quote the company “Pandora has a single mission: To play music you’ll love - and nothing else!”

www.Pandora.com

Used to be easier to be a pretender on the web. Just take the visitor counter off your site and voilà!: pretend you’re a “General” like Motors or Electric. Google Benchmarking bodes a new day.

Today it’s all about transparency. Smart companies from Google to Zillow to Kelly Blue Book are making - what used to be insider only - information readily available in the browser of your choice. Instead of hiding their nuts, the winners are working hard to lay them out in the open.

Google Analytics Benchmarking (in beta) is optional and free. Benchmarking shows how your stats compare with other industry verticals. Yours or another.

It’s not the total transparency that TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington wants to see, but it’s a step in the right direction. (psst, Michael, pass the cashews)

We’re not talking about the Carl’s Jr. chili burger mess on that guys face. We’re talking about how your visitors are going to find what they’re looking for on your web site.

Google offers a very low cost - $100 a year - custom edition search engine called the “Business Edition“. (50,000 page sites cost more).

The coolest thing is that you can fit Google Search Business Edition seamlessly into your site - sans the “Powered by Google” logo - and with no results page ads. To completely customize the look and feel around your core branding instead of theirs, Google offers an XML API.

So the topLingo tip for today is: Google Custom Search Business Edition with the XML API is the way to go if your site needs a commercial grade search that won’t detract from your core branding.

Now you got it. Now you’re good.

How many people are searching for iPhones versus Blackberries? IBM versus HP? Real Estate versus Jobs?

What if you could track how many people searched for your goods or services last month versus last year and the year before that? What if you could see how frequently your search topics showed up in Google News articles?

Google Trends does that. Free.

With Google Trends, you can compare up to five topics at a time and see how often they’ve been Googled over time… globally, nationally, or by state and region. It also shows you which geographic regions searched these terms the most.

Want to see the top 100 fastest-rising search queries in the U.S.? They’re updated hourly.

In topLingo fashion, here’s another “tool you can use”.

Cool. Free. Useful.

Try it!

Web agencies like topLingo - working five, ten, twenty projects at a time - need a cheap, easy, secure and online way to manage tasks and milestones. They also need a way to collaborate with internal and external team members (including clients), set varying authorization levels, and provide an accessible repository for project related files.

Basecamp from 37signals does all that.

What’s the buzz about Basecamp? It’s intuitive, affordable, highly functional, secure, web hosted and accessible. It comes with impossible to miss tutorials on screens that the user hasn’t yet added content to, putting help resources where and when they’re needed most.

Basecamp is priced on a monthly subscription basis. It’s worth checking out. Learn more.

With great fanfare, Steve Jobs told the world the one of the biggest innovations of the iphone was bringing the “real” internet to a mobile device for the first time. No more junior, stripped down websites, with the iPhone you can view entire original websites as they were intended to be viewed.

Because the iPhone did not ship with the ability to run third party native applications, Jobs boldly told the development community they should build web 2.0 applications that would be just as good as native applications. Than Apple release development guidelines detailing how developers could build custom web applications formatted perfectly for the iPhone.

Thousands of web applications have sprung up for the iPhone, many of them very useful and well done. But these are custom applications that only run on the iPhone. What about the rest of the mobile market? What ever happened to the “real” internet? The point that you didn’t need to develop any kind of special or stripped down version of a site just to view it on a mobile phone? Apple has fallen into its own bear trap. I’m not complaining too much, being an iPhone user myself, but the rest of the mobile world is getting a little bit of a rip off with more development time being put into iphone specific web applications.

If you’re a business and you are looking to make some noise in the mobile market, should you create an iPhone custom web app? Probably, especially if you believe your target customer is likely to own an iPhone, but  don’t forget about the rest of the mobile universe. It’s still a great deal bigger than the iPhone market, at least for now.

The hot buzzword in 2008 will be social platform. Rising social network star Facebook got the ball rolling this year when they announced their open development platform which allowed software developers to create custom applications to run inside Facebook. This has turned out to be wildly popular and other social network sites are following the leader. Myspace has been working on a platform and more recently, news that LinkedIn, the popular social network for business professionals is also creating an application platform.

Social networks will become much more than networks in 2008 as more social platforms arrive, allowing users access to more features and marketers access to more of the so-called “social graph“.

San Jose based Adobe Systems is a legend in Silicon Valley, most famous for their dominant Photoshop application. Adobe is also a leader in desktop publishing and has a strong competitor in online video editing as well. Now Adobe is stepping into a whole new world, the world of online Web 2.0 applications. Adobe has purchased Virtual Ubiquity and their online word processor Buzzword. This puts Adobe in direct competition with Google and Zoho for the online office productivity market.

Traditionally a master of the desktop, it shows a great deal of savvy and guts for Adobe to move into the online market. What makes this even more interesting in the Buzzword word processor is based on Adobe’s Flash technology. Adobe is playing up the benefits of Flash, saying it is more flexible and powerful than Ajax, which is the current favorite web 2.0 technology. Adobe’s AIR allows Flash applications to run offline or online, which will prove to be a critical factor as most web 2.0 apps do not work offline yet. The Zoho word processor does work offline but Google Docs does not.

A question everyone should be asking is, where is Microsoft in all this? As of yet, nowhere to be found. Microsoft clings to their venerable Office suite, continuing to bet on the desktop. It may be a long time before web 2.0 supplants the desktop application, but I am surprised to not see Microsoft at least put a toe into this water.