Archive for the ‘Off Topic’ Category

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What to Get the Geek In Your Life

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Gifts for Geeks SegmentWhat are the best gifts to get the geek in your life?

This week I answered that question on my 207 segment. Of course, it all depends on what type of geek you need to get a gift for.

We took a look at gifts for different types of geeks: technology geeks, video game geeks, comic geeks and social media geeks.

You can watch the video at the 207 website or down below:

 

And here’s the links to all those goodies:

And if you need my mailing address so you know where to send it, you can just send it to flyte.

BTW, do you want to see something geeky under your Christmas Tree or next to the Menorah this year? What is it?

Rich Brooks
Beware Geeks Bearing Gifts

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99 Movies for the 99%

Monday, November 7th, 2011

Wall StreetOccupying Wall Street? Here are 99 movies to occupy your time.

Here are ninety-nine movies about unfair labor practices, corporate malfeasance and feel good small business tales to get you through. Just make sure you rent or buy local.

And don’t worry, I’m planning a follow up list: 1 movie for the 1%. It will be Atlas Shrugged as soon as they finish making it.

  1. Wall Street (1987) – Set in the 1980’s on Wall Street, Bud Fox, a stockbroker with strong desire to be successful falls into the belief that “greed is good” Fox learns this philosophy he learned from Gordon Gekko, an incredibly powerful, successful, greedy, broker. Working side by side with Gekko, Fox is easily and quickly swept up into the the world of corporate greed.
  2. The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron (2003) – Based on a true story of an Enron employee, Brian Cruver who landed a job at Enron. Cruver quickly accepted enrons corporate greed strategy until Enron filed for bankruptcy and Cruver realized he was just one of the company’s pawns to get the higher ups richer while no one else benefited.
  3. Boiler Room (2000) – A story about a young college dropout who gets hired as a broker at a corrupt, money hungry investment firm setting him up to fulfill his dreams of becoming successful. He soon learns that his job isn’t exactly what he signed up for.
    (more…)

Posted in Off Topic | 7 Comments »


Zombies Invade Maine!

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

Rich Brooks Talks ZombiesZombies are way hotter than vampires, both in Hollywood and the Web.

Last week the good folks over at 207 had me come on to talk about zombies:

  • how to make a zombie costume,
  • how to prepare for the (inevitable) zombie apocalypse, and
  • how to create zombie-themed websites.

I busted out one of my favorite zombie t’s and waxed philosophical on our undead brethren. We took a look at the CDC’s official blog post on preparing for the zombie apocalypse (for real!) and a great how-to video on creating zombie makeup where the major ingredient is toilet paper.

I also got to show a little love for the project I worked on with Josh Fisher, Zombie Ipsum: the lorem ipsum alternative for zombie websites.

You can watch the video on the WCSH website or check it out below:

Rich Brooks
Zombie Hunter

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Posted in flyte news, Off Topic | 1 Comment »


What the CTRL-F?!?

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

CTRL-F

No comments on how gross my keyboard is.

Ever spent too much time searching a long web page looking for information? Here’s your keyboard shortcut.

Today I read an unbelievable statistic in the Atlantic: 90% of US Internet users didn’t know you could use CTRL-F (command-F for us Mac users) to find a word or phrase on a long web page or Word doc.

Now, I know the readers of this blog are part of that 10% whose palms are firmly planted on their collective foreheads right now. Personally, I must use the command-F 30 or 40 times a day easy. In fact, the command-F shortcut makes me so efficient that I had time to create a video on how to use command-F to save time. (Pretty meta, right?)

With this one video I’ve probably recovered all the worker productivity in this country lost to fantasy football.

So, let’s say during your time giving free tech support to friends, family and lovers you’ve watched them struggle to find some information on a long web page. You didn’t know how to explain to them that CTRL-F would set them free. Now you can just point them to this post (and accompanying video at YouTube).

You can check out my dad’s website on raising resilient children (and more) here.

Another favorite of mine: command-A then right arrow to get to the end of a long doc, left arrow to get to the beginning of it.

Rich Brooks
Bringing back the US’s AAA Rating One Keyboard Shortcut at a Time

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Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, How-To Web Marketing Videos, Off Topic | 2 Comments »


How to Take Better Pictures with Your Cellphone

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

Would you like to take better photos with your iPhone, Droid or other smart phone?

Last night I was on 207, the evening news magazine on southern Maine’s NBC affiliate, WCSH. We talked about some of the great free and inexpensive photography apps that can improve your picture taking, add cool filters, create panoramas or even twist your photos into tiny little worlds.

Some apps, like Camera+, add stabilizers, timers and burst photo options to improve your picture taking.

Others, like Instagram and Hipstamatic, add cool filters that you can try on after you’ve taken your shot.

The picture to the right was taken using the Instagram app on my iPhone. It was already a gray morning in Maine, but the Instagram filter added a slightly ghostly feel to the foggy scene out of our office window.

Pano is an app I like for creating panoramas. What’s nice is that it gives you a sliver of your previous photo so that you can line up your shots better. Here’s one I took of the Portland Waterfront:

Except for the little glitch about a quarter from the right it came out pretty well.

We ran out of time, but I especially like the TinyWorld app that turns your pictures into, well, tiny worlds:

You can watch the video at the 207 website or down below:

Rich Brooks
Unfiltered

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Posted in flyte news, Off Topic | 3 Comments »


Music In The Cloud: What’s the Right Choice for You?

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Rich Brooks on TV Talking About Music in the CloudThe other day I donned my “tech guru” hat for 207 again, (a little misleading–I wore no hat) to talk about storing your music in the cloud.

I looked at a number of services, including Amazon’s new cloud music service (which started the conversation), as well as iOS friendly options like mSpot and ZumoDrive.

All of these services allow you to upload a certain amount of your music to the “cloud” so that you can access it from other computers and mobile devices. You can purchase additional space a gig at a time on most of these services.

To be honest, I don’t see the appeal. I can carry about 50G of music on my iPhone or 120G of music on my iPod and never have to worry about whether I’m near a wifi hot spot or whether AT&T is going to deliver my music back to me. Even that’s only a fraction of my music collection, so the idea of spending hundreds of dollars a year to access music I’ve already purchased just doesn’t work for me, and the iPod/iPhone option fits in my pocket.

One service that I really did like was rdio. Besides being able to upload your music you can access their music ($5/mo for web, $10 for web & mobile access). I’ve already discovered a bunch of great music. The interface and product search needs some serious work (genres? release dates?) but everything else is pretty solid. I’ve never been a fan of “renting” music, but I think that after my 7 day trial is up I’ll spend the $10 a month for access to a wide variety of music I wouldn’t have otherwise given a chance.

You can watch the segment over at the 207 website or down below.

Rich Brooks
Head in the cloud, music in my pocket

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2011 Technology Predictions

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

I really wanted to find a swami hat before this segment taped, but no luck. So, without my Carnac abilities at full, I attempted to predict the future of technology…at least through 2011 on 207 the other night.

You can watch the video at WCSH’s web site or in the video below.

Oh, and one other prediction I forgot to mention? 2011 will be the year of the triple rainbow.

Rich Brooks
I See All…And Blog Most

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Posted in flyte news, Off Topic | 3 Comments »


Marketing Idea for Papa John’s Pizza

Sunday, December 12th, 2010

I was watching a college hoops game this weekend when I noticed that a fan behind the Kentucky bench eating a personal Papa John’s pizza.

At first I thought this was a pretty good marketing coup…after all, I wasn’t the only watching the game. Then I realized that Papa John’s could improve on their in-game marketing by changing the pizza box:

  • Flip the branding. Early Mac laptops had the Apple logo appear upside down when the laptop was opened which seemed awkward to everyone but the Mac user. The TV audience will see the box top when it’s opened, so the branding should be flipped to make it more recognizable.
  • Simplify the box. I love the story about how Papa John sold his ’72 Camaro to fund his entrepreneurial dreams, but few people are reading at the game, and you can’t make that out on the box top from home, even with a 1040p HDTV.
  • Add a call-to-action. I wonder if you could add the web site address or 800 number for fans at home to call right now and still make it legible. It’d be worth a try.

Of course, this would work for any company selling personal pizzas at sports arenas. Any who take me up on the idea can feel free to send me tickets to the Superbowl, Finals, World Series, Stanley Cup or March Madness. Heck, I’d even take some tickets to NASCAR if someone will explain to me how the Chase works.

Rich Brooks
Root, Root, Rooting for the Home Team

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Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, Off Topic | 7 Comments »


Sites for Movie Reviews, Times & Settling Debates

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

In another hard hitting segment on 207, we take a look at movie review sites, trailer sites, apps for finding a movie near you, and how to settle any movie debate in seconds flat.

Watch the original segment on the 207 site or down below.

Rich Brooks
Despicable Me

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Google Results Appearing In Page? Helpful or Disruptive?

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

This morning while I was putting together a list of web sites we had recently launched for professional services companies I Googled “Benjamin College Consulting.” A new site we launched was the first result (that’s always reassuring) and I clicked on the link. To my surprise, there was more there than we designed.

As you can see, right in the middle of the page was a blue box with information about my previous search. Throughout the page were highlighted words that matched that search. Even after clicking the “hide” button the highlighted words stayed highlighted.

As a web designer–OK, well, as president of a web design company with little to no web design skills to my name–I have to say I am appalled. People spend a lot of time on the design of their site, and just because someone finds the site through Google is no reason for Google to graffiti all over the resulting page.

As a searcher I don’t get any additional benefit, either. What, did I just forget the search that brought me here?

If Microsoft did this (and they’ve tried similar stuff in the past) we’d all be appalled and Walt Mossberg would be calling for their heads.

I’m not sure if this was just some beta-test, or if I missed some major news release from Google…either are possible. I’m also wondering if I’m overreacting. Have you seen this in your searches today? What do you think about this? Value-add or disrupting to your web browsing experience? Please let me know your thoughts.

Rich Brooks
I Know Why I Arrived Here, kthxbai.

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Posted in Off Topic, Search Engine Marketing | 6 Comments »

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