How to: Feathering in Pixelmator

Feathering in Pixelmator is very much off regular topics. However nobody seems to have explained how you do this so here goes.

Step 1: Use the Wand tool or a Selection tool to select the image you wish to feather

Step 2: Click Edit => Refine Selection

Step 3: Choose the amount which you would like to feather by & click OK

Step 4: Click Edit => Invert Selection

Step 5: Click Edit => Clear OR Hit backspace

That’s it really very simple. I stumbled across this and couldn’t find any resources or guides feathering in Pixelmator hence this quick post.

Free WiFi in Brussels

Free WiFi in Brussels, This is perhaps a little off topic to what I’d usually post.. I needed somewhere to keep a record of the free wifi points in Brussels and this seemed like a good place to put the list as any.

All of these locations are places where you can hang out happily without being hassled.

Please submit any good places you find and I’ll update the map.

View Free WiFi in Brussels in a full screen map

MRS against social media listening without consent

The source of the contention is
The Market Research Association (MRS), who, in a recent discussion paper have said that social media listening should only be conducted with the explicit permission of users.

I found this following a conversation and a blog Leonard Murphy from Greenbook blog on market research, his article and thoughts can be found here, mine are below:

There are a number of inconsistencies with the information reported

In particular it selectively quotes the FB T&Cs:
If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it

This refers to applications which sit within Facebook and which deal with opt-in consent for applications not for publically available data. It does not reference the rest of their terms and conditions or their privacy policy.

Facebook is clear that:
“Everyone” Information. Information set to “everyone” is publicly available information, just like your name, profile picture, and connections. Such information may, for example, be accessed by everyone on the Internet (including people not logged into Facebook), be indexed by third party search engines, and be imported, exported, distributed, and redistributed by us and others without privacy limitations.
Such information may also be associated with you, including your name and profile picture, even outside of Facebook, such as on public search engines and when you visit other sites on the internet. The default privacy setting for certain types of information you post on Facebook is set to “everyone.” You can review and change the default settings in your privacy settings. If you delete “everyone” content that you posted on Facebook, we will remove it from your Facebook profile, but have no control over its use outside of Facebook.

Twitter is even more explicit
Our Services are primarily designed to help you share information with the world. Most of the information you provide to us is information you are asking us to make public.
and continues

Your public information is broadly and instantly disseminated. For example, your public Tweets are searchable by many search engines and are immediately delivered via SMS and our APIs (http://dev.twitter.com/pages/api_faq) to a wide range of users and services. You should be careful about all information that will be made public by Twitter, not just your Tweets.

National Constitutions
The references to the national constitutions are implicitly relative to tapping into communications which are assumed to be private e.g. telephones. Not to conversations which by definition the user has made public or has agreed should be public. Users already have the right to be private, services like twitter and blogs simply give everyone a public voice.

Where there may be an argument, forums
Perhaps online forums could be constituted as private or public meetings which could arguably be deemed as inappropriate to monitor without consent. Again the T&Cs of these sites would need to be checked on a case by case basis.

Overall I personally feel that this white paper is poorly researched and biased.

These views are my personal views and not those of any current or past employer or affiliated organisation.

Sales: Telling your friends what you do

We’ve been doing some training down @ Techlightenment and there are quite a few key things that have come out of it. One of the keys being that what you & your organisation do needs to be easy to understand and memorable.

It tends to be that we over complicate what we do and what the companies we run/work for do when talking to prospects, clients, friends & family. This leads to them forgetting what you do and means that you’re potentially missing out on referrals and risk not properly communicating what you do to your clients & prospects.

So I’ll start with an example which doesn’t really need much explaining as it’s implicit in the title what the roles are and pretty common knowledge.

Obvious
F1 Team: We race to be the beat all the other teams
F1 Mechanic: I keep the car running and help it go faster

If we look at most service based industries however it is not quite as simple.

Less obvious
Managed Hosting Company
We run cutting edge data centers where we keep our lastest technology servers on behalf of our clients. Our system administrators maintain servers, their operating systems, applications and keep them correctly configured.

A better way might be:
We keep some of the biggest and most complicated websites in the world online for [market name here]

Managed Hosting Engineer
I maintain linux servers for our clients and troubleshoot them and help deal with customer support issues.

A better way might be
I help keep very complicated websites stay online 24/7 and tweak them to make them load faster.

There are two key differences here:

• The corrected statements are in terms of clear end client benefit vs what is actually being done
• They are in plain english and and memorable, enough that a friend/prospect could then explain it to their boss..

So if you’re wondering what I’m doing
I help organisations tap into users on social networks and help them get those users as clients, in particular I specialise in social research and client acquisition.

What do you do?

Cloud Productivity War: Microsoft goes down and Google releases two new killer features

There is a war on and it’s clear who the two main players are at the moment. Microsoft is the incumbent and Google is the cheeky contender. I thought I’d add a little coverage to this as it’s quite interesting to watch.

Quick disclosure: I currently work promoting both of these products and these views are my own not my employers..

Microsoft BPOS goes down
According to Infoworld Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Suite) soon to become O365 went down on Tuesday 18th for anything between 6-9 hours depending on who you are.

This is not ideal since their launch of the beta for Office 365, a rebaked BPOS, has been going so well with 17,000 companies signed up. The industry at both the selling and buying end have been sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for this launch, which is if you believe the marketing going to change everything and it might for these reasons:

• Companies will be able to easily deploy familiar tools
• IT managers on the whole like Microsoft
• This will probably open the door for other vendors such as Google

There is no doubt that the licensing model that is offered is revolutionary in Microsoft terms and will save alot of companies money and make their lives significantly less complicated.

Google drops in two key features
I quite like Google Apps, I use the web based mail client daily but until now haven’t been drawn into the docs side. The main reason is I mostly work with spreadsheets and they were missing the two key features needed:

• Autofilter: So that you can select a subsection from all of your rows of data
• PivotTables: To make sense of everything

Now they’re in I can’t see why I won’t use it beyond habit of using desktop based spreadsheet apps. From an overall strategic perspective these two releases show that Google really are aiming to create an Office suite replacement. I look forwards to more releases..

Conclusion so far
Both of these products are big contenders, the market at large feel that this is new stuff. In tech world we use them everyday but penetration into the SMB and Enterprise world is relatively slow vs consumer adoption of new tech like tablets. That said as everyone warms to the idea I expect there to be a cloud rush coming over the next 12-18 months..

Three good Cloud Computing Podcasts

These guys have some good commentary on cloud computing, worth adding to your podcaster/itunes.

Cloud Computing Podcast
Good commentary on cloud news and events and key topics. This is a really good one if you’re at any level of an organisation looking for a ‘no-hype’ look at cloud.
RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CloudComputingPodcast

Cloud Cafe
Interviews with cloud industry thought leaders
RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CloudCafe

Overcast: Conversations on Cloud Computing
A podcast series on cloud computing.
RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/overcast

Google wants to kill the IT Manager?

I was going to write an article about how IT departments need to change and embrace cloud, sadly I accidentally deleted the post, then Google announced chromebooks.

Chromebooks
Chromebooks are easily managed estates of laptops, Googles dream being that everything runs through a browsers.

Pros: On the face of it they seem very easy to manage
Cons: Companies still run quite a few non-browser based applications, d I’m sure these could be run through a terminal window on the chromebook..

IT Managers
From experience over the last four years, I’ve found that there are two breeds of IT manager, these are extreme poles so there is a happy medium here as well..
Type A
-Focussed on delivering new technology to the business, software..
-Sees commodity IT as a pain and risk

Type B
-Majority of time is spent maintaining desktops, network, file server, email & other systems
-Very averse to any thing new

Accenture ran a study last week which showed that Cloud is being driven not by IT but by management, the promise of lower cost and more flexible IT is very appealing.

Given that IT historically IT has always demanded bigger budgets to deliver innovation within business, why the sudden shyness to cloud, undoubtedly the concern around potentially lower headcounts.

Conclusion
So what does all this mean? Well a whole lot of change if Google gets its way, historically they’ve done ok, they’re Google Apps products are pretty punchy and based on the rate of new features they release their Chromebooks could do pretty well but this will be a long play.

Google are also furiously hiring, LinkedIn brings up 140 open positions with a very clear, we want to hire lots of people strategy vs. the likes of Microsoft who seem to have flattened out.

What does it mean for our IT manager, the ‘Type A’ is pretty safe they now potentially will have another tool in their armory to help innovate further. Our ‘Type B’ really needs to prove their worth and transform their role into an enabler and aid to the business.

If I was hiring an IT manager today I would definitely want some cloud experience. A quick look at the IT job boards shows that not everyone feels the same way with only a handful ‘IT Manager’ roles with the the keyword Cloud’.

One thing is sure, change and disruption is going to start kicking around very soon..

Who are you selling to?

While doing a little bit of research for images for some sales training I’m doing today I came across an article this morning which I felt was particularly worthy of a quick post.

The article is here and what I like about it in particular is that it goes into granular detail around what you should be looking for within the sphere’s of influence and the attributes of the individuals involved..

In particular I like:
Who has a great track record?
Who has a spotty track record?
Who has a solid reputation in the company or community?
Who has a past history with other people here?

It’s really critical to understand who you’re talking to in an organisation and not only their position but also how appreciated they are. These are all things which you can find out by talking to your lead or others within the organisation you’re trying to break into.

Good luck listening and replying to Email & Text while driving

I was on my way back from Henley yesterday with a friend. I suggested the idea that I should be able to listen and reply to my emails by voice in the car using a smartphone. She was pretty surprised and thought I was probably pushing the limits of what’s out there.

A morning of Googleing has revealed a complete lack of anything really decent in this area. I found this article which was a good step forwards in finding someone else on the same quest, they too however feel a little short changed in the world of ‘advanced’ handsets..

Here’s what I’ve found:
-Text’n'drive, Free/Paid, iPhone/Blackberry/Android (soon): This looked promising, you give it your IMAP/Pop settings and it will read out your email, however replies which is only available in the pro version is via mp3 which is pretty useless for most people. This would be a great app if integrated with SpinVox, as it stands, not awesome.

-DriveSafe.ly, Free/Paid, iPhone (soon)/Blackberry/Android: These guys look like they’re nailed the reading of emails as well, they even have a version that will plug into your BES server. Still no replying by voice though.

Dragon Dictation
These guys seem to be the leaders of the field. So far they have a dictation app for the iPhone/Android that works really well but doesn’t natively integrate with an email account and doesn’t read back email. They also have an app for Blackberry which allegedly lets you read and reply to emails using normal speech. Finally these guys are working quite heavily with Android, if you check the link below there is an article around a recent android phone that does text reading and reply, just missing the elusive email reply..

More links:
Android phone with Dragon: http://www.cnet.com/8301-19736_1-20003883-251.html
Bluetooth headset that reads your texts: http://www.myblueant.com/q1/features.php

That’s all so far, I’ll post anything interesting I find along the way..

Pitching/Cold Calling Introduction Checklist

I won’t take credit for writing this as I didn’t, but if you’re approaching anyone be it an investor or a potential lead you should consider all the points.

Try and make sure that the first two sentences that come out cover off a couple if not all of the points below.

Before you make any contact, your prospect is in this situation

• I don’t know who you are
• I don’t know your company
• I don’t know your company’s product
• I don’t know what your company stands for
• I don’t know your company’s customers
• I don’t know your company’s record
• I don’t know your company’s reputation
• Now… What was it you wanted to sell me?

From: http://www.salesdnaltd.com/blog/what-was-it-you-wanted-to-sell-me/#more-388

It would be great to read your pitches in the comments below..

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