DavidLewisMease.com

As I began preparing to relaunch this site I thought about all the articles I would be writing and how much I struggle writing so I decided to check into dictation software. A few years ago I had tried using Dragon Dictate along with many other types of automation programs. I found they had a hard time understanding my voice. I tend to mumble quite a bit so it didn’t recognize many words and I didn’t have the patience to train the software to match my voice.

I started looking for dictation software that is currently on the market I immediately saw that Dragon Dictate is still the top software on the market. I obtained a copy and began testing. The software is absolutely amazing! Not only does it dictate into your favorite programs like Word but it also can be used to launch other software and even control the mouse.

While chatting with a friend online this morning discussing the software, it occurred to me that I could easily dictate my messages into the chat session of Skype. At first I had some difficulty. Skype would only accept individual letter commands which are ‘press the key A, B, C, etc’. Other dictation commands such as ‘scratch that’ for delete didn’t work. After a few frustrating minutes, I restarted Skype and all was well. All of the dictation commands functioned fine.

That’s when I began to realize the real power of Dragon Dictate. It can create custom commands for any application. For Skype I used the commands found on the menu for moving between chat sessions, opening and closing the dial pad, and the online contacts menu. Then I created a text macro for a couple of phone numbers that I call regularly. Now I only need to issue the command ‘dial pad’, then say the custom command text that I defined for the individual number. Finally, I created one to hang up the call.

You can switch between applications by just stating the command ‘activated’ followed by the application name. Dragon created a list of applications it found on your computer and recognized everything I tried immediately. Their command editor already contains hundreds of commands for many programs such as for Safari browser on the Mac, Text Edit, iCal, and Mail.

Earlier I mentioned that the speech recognition of the version I tested many many years ago was not very good. I found after just a few minutes of setup this version works incredibly well. In fact, this article was dictated to the software and I only had to make a couple of punctuation changes that I actually missed during the dictation.

This program must be very valuable for people who are disabled or just plain old can’t type! I’m a pretty fast typist having been one of the only boys to take typing back in ninth grade knowing that I would be working as a computer nerd. I will use this quite often for dictating articles, reports, and video scripts. I’ll be testing this more over the next few weeks. Recording on the go on my iPhone and playing it back to the software seems like a good test to me. I’ll let you know how it worked.

Meanwhile, you might want to check it out yourself. The current Mac version is
Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0 and on the PC it’s known as Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 Home. There are versions that come packaged with a USB or bluetooth headset microphone but I found the Mac’s built-in microphone works fine. I did test with my Audio-Technica AT2020 USB Microphone which worked great. There are many versions available starting at around $99 and up to around $500 for professional versions used in the medical and legal fields.

The links contained in this post are affiliate links.

So you’re not a technical or audio/video whiz, or you’re so busy with your other business management tasks that you know you need to outsource your videos if it’s ever going to get done. It is possible to outsource your video successfully. But like any outsourcing you do, you need to prepare and be aware of who you are hiring.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind when hiring a freelancer for your video marketing:

Know What You Need: If you don’t know what you need from your assistant or your marketing, how can you expect anyone else to know? If you can describe exactly what you need from your assistant then you will have a great chance for getting just that back from them when the project is completed.

Check Their Video Portfolio: Check the abilities of the person you’re considering hiring to see if their style suits your needs. Ask for references and check them!

Prepare Materials and Logins: If there are specific materials and login information your assistant will need, it will save you a lot of time if you prepare everything ahead of time. If your assistant needs to email you every time they need something, you’ll hold up the process while they wait for you to respond.

Find Reference Examples: Locate a few videos with the look and feel you like and forward those to your assistant. This will help your assistant make sure they’re clear about what you’re looking for.

Ask For Referrals: Asking for referrals is a great way to find qualified contractors. If you see a video online that you particularly like, contact the site owner to ask who created it. You’ll know what kind of quality you’ll be getting when you hire this way.

Be Open to Suggestions: Your contractor is an expert, so be open to suggestions from him or her. Explain your high-level goals, and then let them do their stuff.

Having a great team member or even a full team to handle your videos can be a real load off your mind. Just remember that successful outsourcing requires a careful blend of preparation and clarity on your goals, and willingness to let go and let the experts take over. Once you hit that sweet spot, you can cross one more thing off your To-Do list.

You’ve heard that using video to market your business can bring incredible results. But do the benefits outweigh the effort it takes to put your video online? In a word, Yes! Shooting a video, editing and formatting it, uploading it to the internet with the right title and description takes a bit of time. But the payoff for video marketing can be tremendous. Here are seven real benefits of marketing with video:

1. Personal Connection – Especially for internet based businesses, the personal connection with your potential market is a huge selling factor. With video, your audience can truly get to know you, eye-to-eye. They get to see that you are indeed a real, live person. They start building a deeper relationship with you and feel as if they actually have met you.
2. Social Proof - There’s an old proverb: ìBelieve nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.î On the internet it’s so easy to be a fake and a fraud. People are skeptical about claims they read online, and rightfully so. But video puts a face to your words and makes you more believable and trustworthy.
3. Traffic – People are watching 2 BILLION videos per day on YouTube alone! That’s a whole lot of traffic you’re missing if you’re not marketing yourself with video. It’s free and easy to add your video to a large number of the video sites available online.
4. Emotional Influence – The classic horror movie is a great example of how the audio has an emotional effect on us. The creepy music comes in, immediately cluing you in that something bad is about to happen. Now, imagine combining that audio with powerful video cues to influence the emotions of the listener and create a much more compelling message than with just text alone.
5. Portability – Maybe even more so then articles and ebooks, video is portable. iPhones, Smartphones, iPads and all kinds of other devices allow video to be seen on the go. You can also allow people to download video easily so they can view it over and over again.
6. Demonstrations – Reviews, case studies and examples are great ways to sell products and services. It’s the reason why infomercials make millions of dollars. Now there’s no need for you to be as annoying as the Sham-Wow guy to make money with video; you just need to create videos that show and tell your potential customers why your product will be helpful for them.
7. Engagement - There are many reports available online to show that video boosts response and conversion rates. When someone is watching a video, you have their full attention ñ eyes and ears. Unlike with the written word, they’re not likely skip ahead or gloss over important information. Most people will watch a video from beginning to end, allowing you to clearly create a message and call to action that engages your audience.

Overall, video is an effective marketing strategy that is only growing in popularity. Since video is here to stay, it’s time to check out the options and see how quick and easy video marketing can be.

Many of you know that Steve Jobs and Apple are adamant about not supporting
Adobe’s Flash player on the iPhone/iPad. The claim by Apple is that Flash is a
proprietary technology and doesn’t perform well on their mobile hardware. In
it’s place Apple is supporting the new <video> tag in HTML 5 that is slowly
gaining support in browsers such as Firefox, Safari, etc.

Google has stated that it will support HTML 5 video over Flash eventually but YouTube which is owned by Google says it still prefers Flash because it has many more features.
Those include full screen mode, camera access and digital rights management among many others.

Google does say a limiting factor right now with HTML 5 is the lack of standard
video codecs supported by browsers. Google has offered support using the WebM
royalty free codec which it acquired from On2 Technologies. Apple and Microsoft
are supporting H.264 which is also used to encode videos uploaded to YouTube.

There is still a long time left before Flash goes away and HTML 5 becomes the standard. My opinion is that it will be at least a year before we begin to see things settle down and a clear direction emerge.

As far as your business is concerned, I’d keep a look out over my shoulder and at least keep HTML 5 on your radar by reading an article or two on it every few weeks to see what’s going on.

The only caveat is if you believe a large part of your customer base happen to use an Apple mobile product like the iPhone or iPad which don’t support Flash. Then you can look into some of the hybrid solutions that check to see if HTML 5 is supported and default to Flash if it isn’t available. I’ll be taking a look at some of those players over the next few weeks to see how they perform and the features they offer.

Last summer my daughter moved from California to Washington, DC to attend grad school. She decided to drive her car back there and hoped to have a friend along to share the ride. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find anyone to go with her so I decided to meet up with her in Denver and go along for the ride.

I came up with a brilliant idea which was to see if I could broadcast live from my car over UStream during the trip. With the use of my Sprint USB 3G card, my MacBook Pro and an extra Logitech USB camera I was able to pull off the stunt. The MacBook camera was focused on me and the Logitech was pointed facing the open road. I also used CamTwist which is a software switcher program that allows you to add all kinds of effects to your video. One effect is a picture in picture that allowed me to show both cameras live at the same time. One video fills the entire screen while the second video appears in an overlay box. The box has an adjustable size, position and even angle.

Fortunately, I had the Sprint device for some time and had an unlimited data plan. I’ve since upgraded to a new Sprint 3G/4G MyFi device that allows up to five concurrent users. New plans on those type services limit you to a couple of gigabytes of data before charging you extra. We’ve just seen AT&T change the iPhone/iPad plans to follow this model. I’m lucky to also have the unlimited plan there as well.

So off we went on a cross country adventure from Denver through Kansas City, St. Louis, Louisville, Richmond, Virginia Beach and to our final destination of Ocean City, MD. That’s where my daughter spent the summer before heading off to grad school in the Fall. I had a couple of friends and family members watching as we progressed uneventfully from city to city. The video was streamed live on my UStream page and I recorded the video occasionally. The whole process worked incredibly well and only dropped once we made it into the Blue Ridge Mountain area of Kentucky and into Virginia. Check out the end of our trip on this UStream video as we hit the beach in Ocean City, MD. Fast forward to about 12:45.

My two kids played a ton of sports growing up and my parents who live 3,000 miles away rarely were able to see any of it. I’ve always felt a little guilt as I know they would have enjoyed seeing more of their grandchildren. If only this type of service were around 5-10 years ago. I could have easily broadcast their soccer, swimming, softball, baseball, basketball, tennis, and volleyball matches through the years. But the kids are grown and off to college and now I’m hoping someday they’ll be able to make use of this type of setup so I can enjoy seeing their kids in action.

Look for a demo video soon of this whole setup. It’s quite simple to do once you know all of the parts and how they work together.

Over the past week we’ve seen the launch of one of the hottest gadgets ever in the Apple iPhone 4. Since I’m an absolute gadget freak mine was at my doorstep the first day they were available. The first thing I did once it was setup was to download the new Apple iMovie for iPhone app and make a quick video. As a software devloper I’m always intrigued to see if I can figure out programs without any previous insight or training into how it should work. Excellent user interfaces for these type of devices should be intuitive enough to figure out without reading a manual or watching a video.

Though I’ve used iMovie on the Mac for years the input device and screen real estate are dramatically different. I had confidence that Apple could pull off a great implementation of what is a relatively complicated application even on a PC or Mac. When you start the program it has a very minimal interface. A plus sign in the top right corner, a trash can in the right corner and and export menu in the bottom left. The plus sign allows you to create a new editing project where you can select from a variety of themes that wrap around your video, select videos and images to add to the project or add audio tracks.

Everything is drag and drop and incredibly easy to figure out with a little experimentation. The only issue I had at first was when my project was complete I wasn’t quite sure whether it was automatically saved or if I had to export it. It turns out the menu on the bottom left allows you to save in full 720p HD or lower formats suitable for YouTube or emailing.

Once exported the video appears in the camera roll. From the camera roll you can email, use MMS or send the video to YouTube. I have to admit I would prefer the export routine to save it to the camera roll and give you the option to send to the other resources without starting a separate application.

But for the money you certainly can’t beat the functionality in this little application. I’ll be posting a complete tutorial on the use of iMovie for iPhone in a few days and look for some videos created completely on the iPhone 4.

I’d like to find an iPhone app that allows you to create video posts to my WordPress blog. If you know of any or are interested in such an app add a comment below. I also write iPhone apps and maybe that could be a product for me to create.

Most of my professional career has been as a Software Engineer where perfection is the norm. If you don’t write an error free program then the software just won’t work. Years of that type of conditioning have carried over for me in the online world where I’m spending lots of time studying and beginning to market products and services. The engineer in me wants to spend more time on figuring out how to determine the open rates of email blasts and location, time and date of site visitors than creating compelling content for my readers. Thankfully, I’ve discovered there is another way.

I’m currently being mentored by Connie Ragen Green who has been a fantastic influence in the way I approach my business. Connie isn’t driven by the minutia of statistics and perfection that I am and it’s refreshing to see someone who is successful with that approach. That isn’t saying that Connie is not professional and providing very high quality information and services to her customers. Through Connie I see now that action is really the key to success. Therefore, I’m searching for that happy middle ground where I can fulfill my conditioned approach to perfection and following the plan that my mentor has provided.

Now with that said let’s discuss how that applies to the world of video creation for use in Internet Marketing. If you’ve been hiding under a rock or watching the World Cup you probably haven’t seen one of the greatest product launch machines in action. I’m referring to Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula 3.0 that is going live this morning. No, this isn’t a pitch to buy it! What Jeff has done over the past week or so is provide a half dozen videos describing the product launch process, his success at it and his upcoming product.

Jeff is a part of probably the highest profile internet guru clan on the planet with the likes of Frank Kern, Andy Jenkins and Eben Pagan. These guys primarily use videos in place of sales letters to promote products. Frank Kern seemed to be the originator of the practice with his Mass Control launches a couple of years ago. His original videos were essentially scenes of him speaking in his secret hideout and hanging out in his spectacular home area of San Diego.

Over the last couple of years and with the help of the Video Boss Andy Jenkins these guys have been raising the bar with the quality and approach of these launch sequence videos. Being the perfection addict I am I just love when people continue to raise the bar and provide better quality materials and products. I’ve had a long-time issue with the quality of most of the training delivered by Internet Marketers and I plan on offering a course in the near future that will help everyone learn more about professional computer based training. I want to be one of those people raising the bar and making an impact.

Jeff will be taking down his launch videos later today so if you haven’t already go take a look at the production values of his Product Launch Formula 3.0 videos now. I’ll be giving you my take on how to create similar videos soon.

There was a time when the internet was used only for research. As the popularity of the internet grew, so did the way that it was used. Today, millions, in fact billions, of individuals rely on the internet for entertainment.  If you are one of those individuals, there is a good chance that you have heard of YouTube before.  YouTube is an online video website that allows website visitors to view homemade videos and much more, but that is not all that you can do with YouTube.  If you wish, you could also make and share your own video.

So now you want to know how to make a YouTube video?  That sounds like fun doesn’t it?  A large number of internet users, ones of all different ages, are making the decision to make their own videos.  Many of these videos are used to share information with others, showcase a favorite scene from one of their favorite television shows, express their beliefs, or just make a comedy video.  If you are interested in making your own video, whatever the purpose of that video is, you are advised to start thinking about video ideas.

Start thinking about video ideas?  Yes. That is what you will need to do.  Unfortunately, too many individuals read too much into making online videos. This does not necessarily involve their video content, but how the video will be made and uploaded to the system.  If you are planning on making a video for YouTube, you can relax and worry about other things. This is because the uploading process, used by YouTube, is probably one of the easiest one that you will find online.

Of course, the first step will be how to make YouTube video. To do this, you will need a standard video recording device.  These devices most commonly include camcorders and webcams.  As previously mentioned, you can make just about any type of video that you want.  However, it is important to remember that your video will be seen by thousands of internet users, at the least.  Make sure your video will be appropriate.  If you plan on putting any graphic materials or foul language in your video it may be a good idea to make note of it in the videoís title.  Later on, you should be able to make this title.

When making your video, it is also important to note that YouTube has a number of limitations.  Those limitations include the length of your video and the size of your video’s file.  YouTube currently requires that your video be no more than ten minutes in length.  It is also required that your videos be less than 100MB, in size.  However, aside from their other rules, stipulated in their terms of use agreement, there are no other restrictions. This means that you can create as many videos as you want to.  In fact, if you would like to make a video that is longer than ten minutes, you can do so by making it a two part video.

With YouTube, you must be able to save your video using a moving making software program.  There are a number of different programs that you can use, such as MovieMaker and IMovie. These programs can easily be obtained, but most computers, especially newer ones, already have the software programs installed.  Once you open your video on your computer, with one of the previously mentioned software programs, you should be able to edit and save your video.  Of course, you do not have to edit if, if you do not want to.

To upload your video to YouTube, you must first sign up to be a member, if you haven’t already. It is free to sign up for a membership. The signup process is just used to attach your information to your videos and keep track of all of them, especially if you decide to upload more than one.  Once you signup for YouTube, you should see an option that will allow you to create or upload your own videos. You will need to follow those directions. Depending on the type of internet connection your have, your videos could be uploaded and ready for viewing in as little as a few minutes.