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EBooks are the coming wave of publishing, if in fact that wave isn’t already upon us, so I was eager to get hold of a really promising tutorial book I had heard about, “EPub Straight to the Point: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders” by Elizabeth Castro. Unfortunately after reading it I have some mixed feelings. I would still recommend the book to those interested in self-publishing ebooks, but I do have a few hesitations.
My biggest issue with the book, and not that there is any actually problem – the book isn’t bad or is wrong or anything like that, is that the book just doesn’t go far enough. A couple of examples of this: first we will start with the title. The title states, “creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders.” What doesn’t make sense to me about that is the fact that the iPad is not the number one ebook reader. That honor belongs to Amazon’s Kindle. I am truthfully not sure where the iPad ranks after that, but regardless, as eBook readers go, the iPad isn’t the most targeted platform. So, you would think that you would want a how-to book that was aimed at publishing ePub books to the dominant platform. Instead it seems that the book, and the title, were designed to grab key word searches.
The other example of this is that the book is designed around teaching you how to use Microsoft Word to generate your ePub. Now I will make no claims that Word isn’t the number one wordprocessing program and tool for writers, but it isn’t the necessarily the main tool for creating ePubs. Castro also covers using Adobe’s InDesign software for eBook creation, but she even admits that the software is costly and cumbersome. But other software that is freely available, such as Calibre, that is much more adept at creating ebooks and is much more frequently used aren’t discussed. Calibre doesn’t get any mention in the book – not even a footnote! This is a glaring omission that can’t be overlooked.
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Tags: Books, eBooks, ePub, iPad, Kindle
Next week I will be participating on the panel for the first in Lowcountry Local First‘s 3 part series “Redefining Business As Usual: Customers for Keeps How to WOW the Lowcountry“.
The workshop takes place from 8:30 to 1:00 on November 3rd at the Lowcountry Innovation Center. The tickets are $25 for LLF members and $30 for non-members and include coffee and lunch. The session will start with introductions and need assessment followed by a presentation by Katie Wells, the panel discussion and then round table talks during lunch.
For those of you who don’t know Katie, she is is the owner of the nationally recognized customer service training company, Kewsolutions, Inc. In the Lowcountry, a few of her clients include Planters Inn, the Historic Doubletree Guest Suites and PDA – Production Design Associates. Katie is a nationwide expert and speaker on customer service, hospitality and social media. In 2009, Wells was the trainer for the G20 international economic summit in Pittsburgh, PA. Wells is also a weekly columnist for two community newspapers – WestOf and the James Island Messenger.
And, just to get you thinking ahead of time, here’s a great article that was in Business Week on customer service – folks are willing to pay more for great customer service but even in the current economy many businesses are not delivering.
Tags: Customer Service, Lowcountry Local
I was recently interviewed by David Allen of Answer 20 Questions for his Mac20Q podcast.
In the interview we cover subjects from iPads and iMacs to mind mapping software and video and podcast recording. David is a great guy and simply fun to talk to. Give the show a listen and let me know what you think. Soon I will be doing similar podcasts of social media folk for The Social Media Monster podcasts.
Tags: interviews, Mac20Q, podcasts
What do you see when you see the name “therapists”? Well, depending on the context, you may see the profession “Therapists” or you may see the more dangerous and derogatory “TheRapists”. This is one of the things you need to think about when choosing a web identity such as a Twitter name.
Too often we get caught up in the excitement of a new name discovery or something we think is cute without considering the long term ramifications. We will hold a personal example until last, but lets next consider a friend of mine who came up with a great social media identity – Social Sass. But wait, when we put those words together as a domain name or Twitter ID, that great title can quickly become “SocialsAss”. Most likely not what the selector had in mind.
In addition to the odd double meanings of names, you also need to beware of names that are either hard to spell or confusing. This applies to plurals, multiple words that repeat letters, and the odd spelling form. Think about this – if your Twitter name is read on a radio program or podcast, would people be able to find it without doing a search or having it spelled out for them? The word “skool” may seem cooler to you that “school”, but how many prospects are you going to lose because they can’t find you.
And if your name is Tess, and your run a school, how many people would be able to find “TesssSkool” or even “TesssSchool”? How many “S”s are in that? And remember you can’t put in the apostrophe, so what are you going to do? Even if you don’t make it possesive, you get “tessschool”. Again, how many people would put in the correct number of “S”s?
On a mechanical note, beware of easily lost characters. The underscore for exacmpe, “_”, can easily be lost on forms with underlines. And not just lost in print, but lost on devices. What that means is beware of any character that is hard to enter on a cellphone’s keyboard. The more mobile platforms become a part of everyday life, the more we need to be aware of how hard it can be to enter special characters on those devices.
Finally, lets just look at my own example. Palmettobug. That was my business name. I was enamored of it. Little did I know that lots of people, especially women find the reference to bugs “icky”. So, after having that brought to my attention, and then having to come to grips with it, I am rebranding myself – as myself.
So, choose your name carefully. And for more on this subject, check out my colleague Cheryl Smithem’s post on the rest of this subject. Her post, Social Media Names, speaks to the heart of branding and is the partner post to this post.
Tags: identity, names, twitter
Here it is, the big secret. Shut up and listen.
Tags: feedback, listening, marketing
OK, the winners in the Daniusoft DVD Ripper contest have been chosen by the random number generator at Random.Org. So, if you don’t like the results, please blame them and not me. I hate not being able to pick you all!
And the winners are….
Tom Sliker – Shawshank Redemption
Heidi Jeffers Thibodeau – No Way Out
Walter Rashley – Cool Hand Luke & Mad Max
Ashley T. Caldwell – Gangs of New York
I will need to hear from each of you to know whether you want Windows or Mac and what the registration email should be.
Thanks to all of you who entered, and stay tuned. I should have another contest in the next week or so.
Tags: Contest, DVD Ripper, free, winners
This is the presentation I gave at the Type-A Mommy Bloggers conference in Asheville, NC, last month. Unfortunately I only had about 45 minutes as I would have loved to have gone into a lot more detail. Additionally, the conversations around these issues with those who attended the session were fantastic. So, please don’t hesitate to leave comments and ask further questions. And always feel free to email me.
Also, the presentation got a little garbled in places when it uploaded to SlideShare. So, here is a link to the PDF of the full Building Blocks of Better Blogs presentation. Enjoy!
Tags: #blogchat, backup, Blogging, blogs, Security, WordPress
How often have you wanted to take a DVD that you own and move the contents to your laptop, iPod, iPad or, shudder, Android phone to take on a trip. Or maybe you just want to make a backup copy of that DVD for when the original gets lost or scratched. Well there are a number of tools to let you do so, but I was recently given the opportunity to try out one of the easiest. 
Daniusoft DVD Ripper for Windows and DVD Ripper for Mac OS X are basically the same program, just for the different platforms. DVD Ripper not only allows you to extract whatever movie it may be on your DVD, but will also convert it into MP4, AVI, WMV, MOV, FLV, MPEG or other formats for playback on almost any device. Additionally, you can use DVD Ripper to extract just the audio from a DVD and save that out to MP3, WMA, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG or AC3 formats. In other words, there are an abundance of options for how to save out the files.
And that is why I said this is one of the easiest tools. DVD Ripper comes with many presets already established so that you don’t have to know the video size, frame-rate, or format of the output you want. Simply select your target device and DVD Ripper will take care of all of this for you. While not as fast in the copying process as some of the other products I have tried, such a the freeware HandBrake or MacTheRipper for the Mac, the pure ease of use wins hands down. Additionally, since DVD Ripper is developed by a commercial entity I would hope that they will keep up with technology. Unfortunately many free products, such as those I mentioned, have been left to languish with no updates. This sometimes makes those products finicky to use on newer operating systems or with new hardware. I have had no such problems at all with Daniusoft’s DVD Ripper.
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Tags: CD, Contest, copy, Daniusoft Ripper, DVD
I wanted to take a moment to thank David Allen of the Mac 20 Questions podcast. First, of course, I would like to thank David for an informative podcast. Not a show goes by that I don’t learn something new or pick up a new tip. If you are looking for a source from interesting and practical Mac and iOS info, give the Mac 20 Questions podcast a listen.
Beyond that I would like to that David for his recent contest and my win of the superb mindmapping software MindNode Pro for Mac OS X and its counterpart product MindNode Touch for the iPad. Both of these software packages were provided to David by Markus Müller – the developer.
I had been using the free version of MindNode for a few months, but was thrilled to be given the opportunity to use the Pro version as well. Among other features, the Pro version adds such things as embedded hyperlinks, wi-fi sharing of the mind maps to the Touch version and enhanced printing. I find Markus’s software intuitive, easy to use, and of the highest quality. That goes for the free version too, so you should definitely give it a try.
Mind mapping isn’t for everyone, but I started using the process recently to map out website designs, the flow of training presentations, and even the features of software development. Not only has this helped me visualize my own tasks, but I am then better equipped to explain those tasks to my clients and partners. For a lot of people, the graphical representation of a mind map conveys a great deal more information than a simple outline or flowchart.
The Mind Node products are all designed for the Apple platforms of Mac OS X and iOS, but there is plenty of software out there for the Windows user as well. Additionally FreeMind is written Java so there are version of it for many different platforms and MindMeister is web-based. And don’t forget, you can also do mind mapping with a simple pencil and piece of paper.
If you are doing any mind mapping, either paper or software, I would love to hear your experience. I am a newbie at the practice so am very open to any tips or tricks. And if you have a favorite program for creating mind maps, would welcome a review of it too.
Tags: Mind mapping, mindmap, mindnode
No slight of hand or shifty footwork involved, I am just going to be doing business more under my own name instead of the “Palmettobug Digital” monicker. Why? Well first of all most people know my business and work by my own name anyway, so the company name was just confusing things a bit.
Second, some people don’t know what a palmettobug is or have bad feelings about them, so that identity wasn’t working. In truth, a lot of folks visit the site looking for exterminators! This showed me that I needed to take a dose of my own medicine and clarify my identity. I preach this all the time to other people and organizations, I just had to follow my own advice.
Finally, I really just need my work to be more identifiable as mine. When I teach a class or do a social media consultation for someone, it is me, Michael Carnell, doing that. That is the name people know and trust, so that is the face I needed to put on my work. I will also be bringing this site together with The Social Media Monster site in the very near future to further reduce the multiple personalities.
It doesn’t hurt either that if you do a search for Michael Carnell on Google, Bing or Yahoo the entire first page is me. If you search on any of those other terms I am there, but not as strong. I want to be where the people are!
I hope this doesn’t confuse anyone, and I would love to get your feedback. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think of me dropping the separate identities of “Palmettobug” and “The Social Media Monster” and going by “Michael Carnell”.
Tags: identity, Michael Carnell, name change, palmettobug
