Posts from — November 2008

One of my long time complaints about the Apple iTunes / iPhone platform was that you had to dock your iPhone to get the latest podcasts off of your computer.  I was disappointed that even though you had great connectivity through the cell network or wifi, you couldn’t automatically download podcasts straight to the iPhone.  You had to use iTunes on your computer as the podcast catcher.  Then someone created an iPhone app to “catch” the podcasts right on the phone.  Apple pulled it down from the iPhone app store only to receive complaints from the users.  This week, Apple released iPhone update 2.2  which allows on the fly downloads of audio and video podcasts straight to the iPhone through wifi or the cell network.   This makes the iPhone a much more useful tool when you are on the road without your computer.

What a tough name.  First off, it isn’t just for corporate communicators.  It is for all organizations – non-profit, educational, any enterprise with a group of people who need to be communicated with.  I just got tired of trying to get the “perfect” name.  So, there you have it…   You can say NMICC, as in “ANEMIC.”  (Thanks to Shwen)

So much for the name.  I have talked with a number of people over the last few years about using new media / social media tools within an organization.  Lots of effort has gone into using these tools with the external customer, but I wanted to leverage these tools internally.  That is where a lot of my energy has gone.

 If you are at all interested in leveraging new media / social media tools for internal enterprise communication, I hope you will join the group at the NMICC.  You can find the group at http://newcorpcomm.com.  See you there.

Here is the quick and dirty welcome video to the NMICC.

Find more videos like this on New Media for Internal Corporate Communicators

What do you have if you don’t have your reputation?  Not much, I say.  We all know it:  “Your reputation precedes you.”  Have you ever Googled a job candidate?  Your boss?  Your new business partner?  Have you Googled yourself, lately?  If you haven’t, someone else has.   Go ahead, Google your self now, then come back.

Are you surprised at what you found at the top of the search?  How about the first five items?  Did you expect what you found?  I want to scare you a little first then show you some ways to protect your online reputation.

Google is a reputation management system.  Do you “own” your online reputation?  If you don’t, claim it while you can.  The consequences can be ugly.   It can take a little work, but what do you have if you don’t have a reputation.

Glenn Tilton is the CEO of United Airlines.  Mr. Tilton didn’t claim GlennTilton.com, so now the pilot’s union has it.   Take a look.  It isn’t pretty.  I will bet, Mr. Tilton wishes he owned GlennTilton.com.  Are you in a position where something like this could happen to you?  Could something like this happen to you in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years?  You bet it could.  It is very cheap to buy a domain name and hold it.  Consider it insurance – very cheap insurance.

So, I’ve convinced you to buy your own domain name.  Great.  Now what about your LinkedIn profile or your MySpace page?  I suggest you take a look.  What if there is someone out there who uses the same name as you, has a less than stellar reputation, and is ranked highly by Google?  Their profile will show up whenever anyone searches for your name.  You can prevent this by staking your claim to your name on all the popular social networks.  This will take some time, but when you go to your next job interview, you’ll be glad you did.  Here is a GREAT tool to claim your profile on social networks.

One last suggestion…  If Google doesn’t have you or your favored profile at the top of the search list, you can move yourself up the Google search by making your new website a blog.  With regular posts, you can move your website to the top of the Google search.  Help people find what you want them to find.  It takes a little time and effort, but you can control your online reputation.

UPDATE:  Ping.fm is a great way to manage all of your online networks.  Many more networks are represented there.

UPDATE 2:  Be sure to check out Rex Whisman’s post on this very subject.

Update:  No construction required.  I finally found the Y-adapter I’ve been looking for:  Y-MPS-2MF  Scroll down to the correct model number.  This will save all of us lots of work.

iRiver Setup – Two electret headmics and custom “Y adapter” to record 2-track conversation.

To create the stereo – two electret mic adapter, I used a regular “Stereo earphone “Y – adapter.” I split the outer covering with a razor on both legs. On one side, I cut the red wire and on the other side, I cut the yellow wire. Closed it all back up and and plugged two electret head mics into the female ends of the adapters and then the male end into the iRiver. This allows you to record two separate tracks with pretty good results. Some of the other “Y adapters” I used had some aluminium shielding wrapped around the wires. For those, I did the same thing, but used some heat shrink tubing on the cut ends to make sure nothing grounded against the shielding.

Here some pics to help. Click on them to see a larger image.

An additional tip, I use three of these setups to record a group of six. Obviously I get three separate stereo recordings, but I just put them all together in my favorite audio editing software. To help synch the separate recordings, I create a spike by clapping one time into all the recorders. Then, when I’m editing, I just line up the spike on all the tracks. It isn’t perfect, but it works amazingly well.

Here is a show that was recorded this way using a single recorder – InsytWorks Marriage Projections

The second one was recorded using three iRivers, Y adapters, and head mics – TheDivaCast Harley Ride . It did take some postproduction, but it worked.

Here is a Electret Powered Mic page I used to create my iRiver Stereo adapter.

The Altec Lansing AH302i I use is no longer available, but here is the larger, newer version

Something like this will also work.

I really think any mic designed to be plugged directly in the “mic” input on a computer or laptop will work.