Last year I came across a story on Digg about series of vacation photos featuring a young boy playing a handheld game in all of his family vacation photos. There has been some debate over how real the photos are and if they are completely staged or not. However the point isn’t really these particular photos being real or not, it’s that more and more consumers are bringing hand held games with them, to more and more places, including family vacations.

On my most recent trip to Disney World I saw several kids playing Nintendo DS or Gameboys while waiting on some of the longer lines. It appears I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. According to a story in the Orlando Sentinel Disney is offering a special Pirates of the Caribbean Tie in at the Magic Kingdom. Check out the video on that page for the full story, but for you lazy folks basically there are “hot spots” outside of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, that allow you to access new content that is only available in the Magic Kingdom.

The takeaway here is use social sites to tap into what real people are doing. Look for ways to tap into those trends or better yet improve on them and make them easier.

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TimeWarner and Disney have signed on for the test, which they hope will help to identify copyrighted content and prevent illegal uploads of the content.

Google has internally tested the tool, but these test will be their first “external” trial. They hope to complete testing and tweaking for a fall rollout. Of course, in February they said copyright protection would be ready “very soon” (days before they made us think they gave up by partnering with Audible Magic) and in April they told us it would be “a few weeks”. If the tool is released before the end of the year, I’ll be surprised. I’d like to be surprised, though.

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Now Showing: Protected Videos At MySpace

That leaves MySpace severely beating YouTube to the punch it promised to throw last spring. Some sort of copyright protection technology has been promised since then.

MySpace already licenses audio fingerprinting technology from Audible. The new addition of video fingerprinting makes MySpace the largest video site offer copyright owners that protection.

"MySpace is dedicated to ensuring that content owners, whether large or small, can both promote and protect their content in our community,” said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and co-founder of MySpace. “For MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create.”

In addition, MySpace says it has developed content takedown tool intended to make it easier and more efficient for copyright owners to request removal of any user-posted content they claim is unauthorized. How they control for potential abuse, though, is not something the company addressed.

Media powerhouses like Universal Music Group, NBC/Universal, and Fox are all participating in the pilot program, the company said. Some sort of copyright protection has been a demand from major networks since online video began gaining in popularity. Lack of protection has been considered one of the largest obstacles to networks utilizing the Web to its full potential.

And any site that offers that protection is going to have a better chance of thriving in the online video world, as illustrated by a statement by Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye. " With the explosive growth and popularity of MySpace, the recognition and filtering of copyrights will play an important role in its ongoing success."

And YouTube, er, Google, may need to remember that.

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The keyboard is useless, telnets just time out – you have no choice but to power cycle the machine.

Well, maybe. If you are running Linux, and if you have Magic Sysrq enabled, you might be able to do more. Even SCO has something similar: scodb gives access to a kernel debugger if available. I don’t know of anything like that for Mac OS X; there is ddb but that requires attaching a serial terminal and a recompiled kernel.

But let’s say none of that is helpful. In that case, the first thing you want to know is “how dead is it?”. Is the keyboard totally dead – if it has lights for Caps-Lock, do they cycle on and off as you press that? If not, you may have a motherboard or keyboard problem. Can you “Control-ALT-F3″ (Linux and SCO) to switch screens? If so, the OS is still at least partially alive. Can you telnet or ssh to the box? Can you ping it? Does Samba or NFS etc. still work? These give you clues as to the state of the networking stack.

Ok, you’ve given up. There’s nothing that can be done but a power cycle. Here’s another chance to possibly learn something: does a reset exhibit different behaviour than a complete power off? If it takes a power off to get the machine responsive again, how long does it have to be off? Short rest periods might indicate capacitor or register problems: giving the machine a little more time to “bleed off” cures the problem. A need for a longer period off might mean heat problems – are fans malfunctioning or are the insides coated with insulating dust?

No? OK, then maybe something in software is doing this. A “tail” of system logs may give a clue as to what was happening just before the hang (set Syslog MARK option if you aren’t sure that stays running), as may tools like sar. A build up of unusual system activity prior to the hang might give clues as to its cause. If the hangs repeat, setting a “ps” running to log activity can help zero in on that should it happen again.

After all that though, these things are almost (*almost*) always hardware, and more often than not it is power related: bad power supplies are the most common cause I’ve seen. After that comes disk controllers and then motherboards, but nowadays I don’t feel it’s worth spending a lot of time chasing this sort of thing: move the system to new hardware as quickly as possible. If you then want to spend time investigating possibilities on the old hardware, at least you won’t be interfering with normal business. However, given the cost of hardware vs. the cost of labor, even that may not make sense: accept that the whole thing was mysterious, do whatever you need to do to protect any confidential data, and move on. Maybe some parts can be recycled or maybe the machine can move down to less important use, but the cost of messing around with it in its original role just doesn’t make sense.

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*Originally published at APLawrence.com

A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com

No, I’m not talking about the magician’s sleight of hand tricks, ancient castles, or even some magical potion as portrayed in the movies. Instead, we want to discuss the power of real magic. You won’t find this type of magic in an old wand or some ancient cauldron. Instead, it’s easily recognized as the mail box, your telephone, or your computer e-mail system.

Reach out to others and discover the true meaning of magic.

The magic isn’t in the technology used for the communications, it’s the message that is being delivered. For example, when you send an e-mail to a friend, or send them a card or letter, you brighten their day. Your seemingly simple act of friendship possessed a power beyond some fairy tale sorcery. You changed someone’s life.

If you are needing help with a difficult problem, and you call or e-mail someone requesting assistance, you are putting magic to work. By not making contact with anyone, nothing happens. By sending out a message, entire worlds can change. Your request for help will probably be answered with kindness, as most people want to be helpful to others. In this increasingly complex world, the most basic human interaction becomes even more important.

That’s real magic at work.

As bloggers, we already understand the power of the written word for sharing our thoughts and ideas with others. For many people, the simple act of writing blog posts is a world changing act. Even a personal diary blog, describing the events of the day, has the power to help the writer understand the day to day events of life. Sharing and discussing experiences helps the blogger to feel that others can identify with their lives. Instead of feeling alone and isolated, the blogger can find a powerful and empathetic support group, only an e-mail or a call away.

For business and professional bloggers, their individual worlds can change beyond recognition. Business blogs help build relationships with potential and current customers and clients. While the blog requires work, and the relationships must be nurtured, many lives can be changed for the better. As bloggers get to know one another, friendships and business ideas are shared, helping one another to achieve greater success. Many bloggers form partnerships and companies. Now that’s changing a world for the better. It’s powerful magic in action for the betterment of everyone.

Reaching out to others, and sharing thoughts, experiences, and ideas is true magic. It doesn’t require special esoteric training, or years poring over ancient texts. All it requires is basic human interaction. Blogs are conversation starters, used in place of magical spells, and much more effective. As people interact back and forth, some powerful changes take place during the communications. Friendships and relationships are built from the trust created through talking to each other.

The real magic in the world is created by helping one another. Yes, interpersonal magic can change the world in many wonderful and often unexpected ways.

Do you believe in real magic?

It’s the magic of sharing with others.

There is no hocus pocus in that!

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Wayne Hurlbert provides insigtful information about marketing, promotions, search engine optimization and public relations for websites and business blogs on the popular Blog Business World.

Check out Blog Business World for yourself.

You can put Bejeweled on your site, or the photos from your Picasa Web Album with Google Gadgets.

The search advertising company has chosen to syndicate these gadgets to provide its users with dynamic content. “By making Google Gadgets available for you to add to your webpage, we’re working to connect developers with enthusiastic consumers and to make information universally accessible and useful to the individual user,” Adam Sah, Google Gadgets Architect, said in the announcement.

The Google Gadgets have an ease of use that makes them easy to insert into websites or blog templates. Advanced developers can play with another option – building Gadgets themselves. Google would like to find more for Universal use, like the ones they opened up today.

Developers use the Google Gadgets API to build those applications. Basically, a gadget is just a XML wrapper for existing web content or applications.

Google provides a guide on developing gadgets, and successfully created ones may be submitted to Google for potential inclusion in its gallery for others to use.

Hey look, Magic 8-Ball, I’ve always wanted one of those.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

"Third time pays for all."
-- Middle Earth saying from J.R.R. Tolkien's books

The number three has importance not only in the world of Middle Earth, but among the bustling developments taking place in the world of XML. A pair of firms has updated their XML developer products to version 3 this month.

“In Stylus Studio 2006 Release 3 Enterprise Edition, we’ve updated our XML Deployment Components and our support for popular processing components including DataDirect XQuery, RenderX XEP, Saxon, and others,” Robert Evelyn, VP and General Manager of DataDirect’s XML Products Group said in a statement.

Stylus Studio also added new Java APIs for their XML Deployment Components. Developers who craft applications to work with EDI/ANSI X12/EDIFACT formats for processing government RFQs and purchase orders should find these useful.

The new release also included support for DataDirect Connect for JDBC 3.6. This connector provides access to relational databases. The platform’s support for DataDirect XQuery means applications can query a variety of sources like SOAP messages, EDI, or relational data, and output XML.

Altova unveiled updates throughout the Release 3 version of its XML Suite Version 2006. XMLSpy now carries support for enhanced error handling in the XML validator; a new XSLT 2.0 and XQuery profiler; and processing with the XSLT 2.0 engine that averages a 75 percent increase in speed.

A tabbed interface in the validator lets the developer track multiple files with validation errors. Each file can be assigned to a different tab, allowing the developer to trace each file on a separate tab.

Altova’s StyleVision 2006 has received a series of enhancements to its user interface. The company also noted new features include CSS and JavaScript support. In its MapForce 2006 product, Altova included Web services implementation along with advanced flat file parsing.

MapForce, like XMLSpy, integrates with both the Eclipse and the Visual Studio IDEs. That provides MapForce with an easy path to enter a developer’s toolkit for application development, due to the popularity of both IDE products.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

This is a new model I have been playing with. It’s an architecture for marketing or PR campaigns that leverages the best of the old media world while bringing in elements of the new.

The Magic “T” of Marketing is predicated on the fact that advertising and PR as we know them today are not going away. We’re still going to pitch media and watch Super Bowl ads. However, these disciplines are changing to be sure and there’s more grey area. So, all marketing professionals must add new skills.

The Magic “T” of Marketing is really simple to understand and use. Basically you leverage the mainstream media world for what it’s best for – big reach. And you use new media to develop a deep level of engagement by conversing with a very narrow slice of your audience. This taps into two big marketing needs – reach and engagement. John Ounpuu had the courtesy to draw it up

Let’s put this into action with a fictional example. Say you have a new pet food you want to market. It’s the first cat food of it’s kind that enables cats to speak English and not just say meow. It’s revolutionary! Here’s how you could utilize the Magic “T”…

First, you want to reach as many people as you can with the message that your new cat food is breakthrough and that it’s absolute magic. So to garner big reach you would naturally…

* Develop a marketing plan

* Create messaging

* Advertise on relevant TV shows

* Create print ads

* Conduct a big PR campaign that gets the message out in all the right venues

* Organize events

In other words, business as usual. So now everyone knows there’s a food that gets cats talking. Now, to build a deeper level of engagement with their owners you might….

* Develop a podcast where customers and their cats share their stories about how they are finally able to understand each other thanks to this whizbang new food

* Monitor RSS feeds for mentions of your product and reach out to selective evangelists. Here you would invite them in to participate in an online consumer feedback panel. You can share ideas and generate discussions about how to improve the product, the marketing and more

* Launch a special contest on YouTube in search of the best Shakespearean oration by a cat that eats your food

Ok, my example is hoky for sure. But you get the idea. Use the mainstream media to build reach and social media to build engagement with a narrow subset of the larger audience.

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Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

This refers to bloggers who have from 20-1000 other people linking to them and tend to be more topical or focused on one niche.

Steve Rubel is a PR strategist with nearly 16 years of public relations, marketing, journalism and communications experience. He currently serves as a Senior Vice President with Edelman, the largest independent global PR firm.

He authors the Micro Persuasion weblog, which tracks how blogs and participatory journalism are changing the public relations practice.

A: Laurie, before you call in the SWOT team to deal with this investor (sorry, couldn’t resist that one), let me tell you exactly what a SWOT Analysis is and how it can not only help you plan for the future, but get a gauge of how your business is doing today.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT Analysis is a written exercise that can help you clarify and focus on the specifics that make up the four areas that most affect your business. The purpose of a SWOT Analysis is to help you build on your business’ strengths, minimize and correct the weaknesses, and take the greatest possible advantage of potential opportunities while formulating a plan to deal with potential threats.

Think of a SWOT Analysis as a checkup for your business. By spending a little time examining the internal and external factors that affect your business’ health you can better gauge the present state of your business and identify things that may adversely affect your business’ health in the future.

It’s a good idea for every business to perform a SWOT Analysis on occasion, especially if you are doing strategic planning, contemplating a change in direction or formulating new strategies for distribution, marketing and sales.

Should you hire a consultant to perform a SWOT Analysis for you? Speaking as a consultant who has been paid to perform SWOT Analyses for companies in the past, I can honestly (and yes, without bias) say that depends on three factors: (1) the size of your company; (2) how in-depth the SWOT Analysis needs to be; and (3) how much of your investor’s money you’d like to spend.

Larger corporations are most likely to hire professional firms to perform such analyses, primarily due to the complex nature of big business. Some corporate SWOT Analyses can run on for several hundred pages. Typically, a consultant will charge up to $100 or more per hour to perform a detailed corporate SWOT Analysis and most large companies consider this money well spent as a good SWOT Analysis can reveal otherwise ignored factors that might increase the company’s bottom line or help avert future losses.

For a smaller business, however, a professional SWOT Analysis can be an exercise in overkill. For your money you will get an impressive, detailed report that will make for great show at your next investor or board meeting and a wonderfully expensive door stop the rest of the time. I don’t mean to belittle the value of a professional SWOT Analysis for small businesses. It’s just that smaller companies can learn as much from their own efforts as that of an expensive consultant.

You can perform a simple SWOT Analysis with a #2 pencil and a fast food napkin, but to get a truly accurate view of your company’s SWOT factor I suggest you do things a bit more formally (and without the aid of condiments). I recommend that you involve all the key players in your business, including management, employees, your attorney, accountant, even your spouse. My wife often gives me insights into my business just from listening to me talk at dinner. Sometimes we business owners and managers can’t see the forest for the trees. It’s good to have someone else point out things we might miss.

Here’s how to perform a simple SWOT Analysis. On a piece of paper draw a vertical line down the center. Now draw a horizontal line through the center of the page. The paper is now divided into four quadrants. In the first quadrant (upper left) write the word “Strengths.” In the quadrant next to that write “Weaknesses.” Drop down to the second tier and label the first quadrant (lower left) “Opportunities” and the remaining quadrant “Threats.”

Now just fill in each quadrant accordingly. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors that affect your business. Opportunities and threats are the external factors. Let’s look at a quick overview of each.

Strengths are those things that make your business stronger. Strengths might include: a product or service that sells well; an established customer base; a good reputation in the marketplace; a good track history; a high traffic location; strong management; qualified employees; ownership of patents and trademarks; and any other aspect that adds value to your business and makes it stand out from the competition. Strengths should always be gauged by the strengths of your competitors. If your business does something well just to keep up with the competition, it is not a strength. It is a necessity.

Weakness are the antitheses of strengths. Weaknesses are those areas in which your company does not perform well or could stand improvement. These are the areas of your business that make you susceptible to negative market forces and aggressive competitors. Weaknesses might include: poor management; employee problems; lack of marketing and sales expertise; lack of capital; bad location; poor products or services; damaged reputation; etc.

Opportunities are those things that have the potential to make your business stronger, more enduring, and more profitable. Opportunities might include: new markets becoming available or old markets that are expanding; possible mergers, acquisitions, or strategic alliances; a competitor going out of business or leaving the marketplace, making their customers open to you; and the potential availability of a desired employee.

Threats are those things that have the potential to adversely affect your business. Threats might include: changing marketplace conditions; rising company debt; cash flow problems; a strong competitor entering your market; competitors with lower prices; possible laws or taxes that may negatively impact your profits; and strategic partners going out of business.

Once you have filled in all four quadrants, you can use this information to create strategies that will help you make the best of the information learned. For example, once you have identified your strengths you can better use them to determine which opportunities to pursue and to help reduce your vulnerability to potential threats.

Now that you know your weaknesses you can formulate strategies to overcome them so you can pursue opportunities. Knowing your weaknesses can also help you establish a defensive plan to prevent your weaknesses from making your business particularly susceptible to external threats.

Whether you use a consultant or create a SWOT Analysis on your own it is important to remember that a SWOT Analysis is a subjective analysis tool that can be strongly influenced by the opinions of those performing the analysis. For small businesses especially it is imperative to keep the analysis simple and to the point. Don’t overanalyze and don’t immediately take the results as gospel.

Remember, it’s an analysis tool, not a magic 8 ball.

Here’s to your success!

Tim Knox is a nationally-known small business
expert who writes and speaks frequently on the topic. For more
information or to contact Tim please visit one of his sites
below.

http://www.dropshipwholesale.net

http://www.smallbusinessqa.com