This is going to be a short blog. Regardless of what platform you like, you should watch these videos:

http://video.allthingsd.com/d5

This is classic and I think only once in our lifetime.

If you have been around computers for a long time (they talk about the Commodore PET and Radio Shack TRS 80….ah memories), then you will definitely enjoy these videos.

It makes you remember the good old days.

Enjoy!

- Marcelo
The Digital Media Dude
http://www.thedigitalmediadude.com/

Since this Memorial weekend was a bit warm where we live, I took the family (wife and kids) to Santa Monica Beach to spend the day there. After a gorgeous day at the beach, we decided to go to dinner at the Third Street Promenade. It’s a gorgeous place. We ate at El Gaucho Grill. After that I told my wife that I wanted to stop by the Apple Store in on Third Street Promonade to check out the iMac 24” vs. the MacBook Pro 17”. She said ok.

We went in there and after I sat the kids down by the 17” iMacs (which, by the way, you can say goodbye to them since their days are numbered) so they can play games, I went to check out the computers (my wife stayed with the kids, so don’t call the authorities on me ok?)

I approached one “Apple Genius” helper and asked him about the new Color app and the iMac. What transpired afterwards completely amazed me and at the same time disappointed me about Apple and it’s salespeople:

I finally got it! Thank you FedEx! My Final Cut Studio 2 came and I opened up the package like a little boy opening up his gifts during Christmas morning (or to be more accurate in my case, Hanukkah).

First of all, the box; it looks and feels really cool. Still same black color with the silver Apple logo on the side, but it feels heavier, better constructed then the previous version’s box. I hope I can say the same for the software too.

Inside the box you get 5 manuals, plus a software box containing 9 DVDs. Yes, I did not type the number incorrectly.

Four of the manuals are for Final Cut Pro 6 (Volume I, II, III, IV). The 5th manual is for Color (the set up guide).

You get the following DVDs:
Final Cut Studio Install
Audio Content 1
Audio Content 2
Audio Content 3
LiveType Media 1
LiveType Media 2
Motion Content
DVD Studio Pro Content
Apple Pro Training Final Cut Studio DVD Tutorial

There is a great new learning resource covering everything Adobe CS3 and it comes from Adobe itself.

Check out the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Video Workshop located at http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

Currently, they offer eLearning videos on 13 of their products including Acrobat 8, Bridge, Contribute, Device Central, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Stock Photos and Version Cue.

You start out by selecting which product you are interested in, then select from a variety of topics for that product and finally you select what title you want to see.

For any of you that are not aware, there is a magazine called “Website Magazine” that covers the Website industry pretty well.

The May 2007 issue is out in digital format and covers everything SEO. A must read for any of you managing your site or helping others manage their site.

Read it here:
http://www.websitemagazine.com/scripts/sub/digital.aspx?issue=7

Cheers!
- Marcelo

So I was asked by our eMarkeging team to go ahead and implement a 301 redirect for sheahomes.com to redirect to www.sheahomes.com. Why would you want to do this? The basic and quick answer is because the more “domains” you have, the more your presence is diluted on the web.

So if a customer searches for Shea Homes, they should immediately (and hopefully within the first page), get www.sheahomes.com. Some search engines will think of sheahomes.com and www.sheahomes.com as 2 separate sites and that can dilute the search results.

Anyhow, so I did some research on Google and found a quick an easy way to implement this. Since we are a Microsoft Windows 2003, IIS 6 back end, I found out how to implement this 301 redirect at the IIS level (web server level). You can easily do this if you have access to your server, or you can contact your web host and ask them to do this for you.

First things first. After you log into your web server, bring up IIS either by going to “Start–>Programs–>Administrative Tools–>Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager” or by going to “Start–>Run–>Typing inetmgr and hitting enter”.

As a company, you need to think of your online marketing efforts (aka emarketing) as “expanding the reach of your web presence” beyond your website. In order to do this, you, as a business owner, marketing person, or whatever your title is, need to see the entire Internet “as your web site” and need to start crafting and forming your message wherever you are mentioned online.There are many avenues that you can use on the Web to “craft” that message and help extend the reach beyond your web site. Below is just a sample of ideas that you can use to help bring in more traffic to your site, but think of this is as just the “tip of the iceberg”. I’m sure there are plenty of ideas / sites I neglected to mention here due to time, space and/or not knowing about it.

Google is your best friend. Research, research, research and read lots!

Good luck on your eMarketing endeavors.

BLOGS:
Blogs are extremely hot and are great for building trust with your prospects and customers. There are many companies that have blogs that talk about their products, tips and tricks, etc. You can start an “expert blog”, that is, experts within your organization that would like to blog about your industry, be it commentary, news, tips and tricks, etc. All of this information would be indexed by search engines and make your company and website come up in the rankings. All the blogs could end up pointing to your company web sites.

If you create training videos, software training materials, or any other kind of eLearning, you should sign up for the eLearning industry overview webminar sponsored by Adobe.

I found this seminar in the following Blog entry by Silke Fleischer of Adobe:
http://blogs.adobe.com/silke.fleischer/2007/05/elearning_industry_overview_tr.html

The seminar will be this Tuesday may 22, 2007 at 9am PST and will last 1 hour.

I can’t believe this. I heard this morning that Apple is already shipping Final Cut Studio 2.0 ONLY if you purchase a new copy. If you purchased an upgrade, those are delayed 2 weeks and won’t ship until the end of the month.

What’s the deal with that Apple? So you penalize your loyal following that keeps purchasing your products?

I know that it’s only a 2 week delay, no big deal, but the point is that I have been purchasing Final Cut Pro since 4 and have been a loyal customer and I would expect to be one of the first ones to be able to get it, not the last ones.

Ok, so I found one big “gotcha” in Adobe Lightroom tonight while I was fixing my photographs.

Here is the deal. I imported all of my 400 photographs into Lightroom, created some collections and separated them by collections (audience, comedians and bands). That all worked great.

After that, I went through each collection and flagged my “pick” photographs (using the P shortcut) and that went well.

I then filtered my grid view in the library by “Pick” photographs only.

Everything cool up until this point. So now, I’m working on a photograph and decide to make virtual copies of it so that I can test out different effects. However, every time I made a virtual copy of it, it was not there. I kept making virtual copies and they never showed up.

I researched everywhere why there are not showing up and everything pointing to them having to be there, but they were not.

So after bitching at my wife telling her how messed up of Lightroom it is to have a big bug light this, the light inside my own lighroom (my brain) went off.

Ok, so I think Apple makes some pretty cool computers. But here is my one great beef I have with Apple; they never tell me when they are coming out with a new machine.

I know what you are thinking. “Well, if Apple would tell you that they are coming out with a new machine, then you would never purchase their old inventory.” I understand that argument. But still, I hate Apple for screwing me all the time like that.

Last time, I purchased my iMac G5 and the salesmen told me that it was the latest version of the iMac and that I was going to love it.

Ok, so I did love it, but 3 weeks later my “new iMac” became “my old iMac” due to the new Intel Dual Core versions and a 24″ on top of that (I have the 20″).

So I was thinking of getting the MacBook Pro last month and spoke with a sales person and he told me that he didn’t know about any new laptop coming out pretty soon. I didn’t trust him and decided to wait and see.

Ok, so I had my first official photography “concert” gig. It wasn’t the Stones or Madonna, but it was still pretty cool. Mampalooza was put together to raise money for the Motherhood Foundation. There were 3 comedians and 5 bands performing (thought I had to bail when the 4th band was done since we had another party to go to).

PC:
Hi…I’m PC…I do spreadsheets and I do accounting.

MAC:
Hi…I’m Mac…I’m hip. I do Videos and music and keep you connected to your family.

PC:
But wait…I can do video, photography and websites and if you hook up a camera, I can let your connect with your family too.

MAC:
Yeah, well, I can do accounting too with Quicken and Excel. I can even do MS Word.

PC:
So why do you say you are better then me?

MAC:
Ah…I look better then you. My outer shell is nicer.

PC:
Did you see the Dell XPS machines? They look nice too, especially with the 30” screens.

MAC:
Oh yeah! But I cost more then you do. Oh wait. That’s not good. I mean, I don’t get the “blue screen of death” like you do. When I crash, I show my user a beautiful black see-through screen that says in a friendly manner “Please restart your system”. I even say that in 7 other languages.

Social Networks are taking off and I’m not just talking about MySpace, Facebook and the 10 billion other that are out there.

Oh no, I’m talking about businesses realizing the power of social networks, both as a marketing tool, as an SEO helper and also as a brand extension.

What’s more powerful then your own customers talking about your product, both good and bad. So NBC.com is jumping on the Social Networking bandwagon.

Check out www.nbc.com/Social_Networking/

They are centralizing all “user generated” content into this area, including blogs, groups, message boards, etc.

Ladies and gentelmen, this is the future of YOUR marketing in YOUR company. Embrace it now. Jump on it now. Or you will be left behind and then you’ll have to play catch up.

I just upgraded (well, about 3 months ago) to IE 7 and I was just getting comfortable with it when I read a blog entry at http://internetexplorer8.net/ that Microsoft will release version 8 by the end of the year and will start doing upgrades to its browser every 12 to 18 months.