When we sit down with clients, they often want a new perspective on their company.  All to often the insulated internal views they hold are guarded and warped with years of rose colored glasses.  Often we are asked, “What really is the 10,000 foot view that so many consulting firms speak of?”  Our answer, “Up high on a mountain, you don’t get a great view of someone’s business or their industry, you just get light headed with a lack of oxygen.”

A true perspective shift, is seeing the same image with the ability to blur some parts while finely sharpening other parts of an image.  In consulting, we perform a perspective shift exercise for clients who are looking to improve their business, design and brand,  or their process.  Techlife can help you start to think about why the same image can be seen differently thanks to a lesson in tilt shift photography.

True tilt shift photography refers to the special type of lens that helps take images with a different focal plane or shallow depth of field, the result in some cases is what looks like a miniature scene from a model.  Techlife has covered a London artist who creates miniature art and uses tilt shift perspective to blend the art to the real world.  Thanks to two websites you can take your own photos and quickly create miniature scenes of your favorite shots.

Trolley in Memphis - Tilt Shift Image by Tilt Shift Generator

How to Create a Tilt Shift Miniature Photograph using a Website

1. Shoot a good photo.  The best photos are scenes with most items all at  about the same distance.  Also shot of a landscape or cityscape works better than your family portrait.

2. Upload your photo.  Techlife used two different websites to showcase tilt shift photography, each is a bit different.  Try Tilt Shift Maker and Tilt Shift Generator.

3. Tweak your photo. Each site has various settings that allow you to do different things with your photo.

4. Download your new photo. After correcting the sample to your heart’s content, download the final image for your collection.

Trolley in Memphis - Tilt Shift Image by Tilt Shift Maker

Final Review: Tilt Shift Maker is the easier of the two.  It has less options to tweak and a single “band” of focus good for landscape shots.  It does not have a live preview.  Tilt Shift Generator is more advanced and has a nice real time updating preview option.  It offers many more options to tweak your Tilt Shift photo.  They were both good but the true most important thing, start with a  good photo.  We used 4 photos on each site before deciding on this photo for our article.

If you are interested in seeing how a photographic technique could be applied to help you see your company or organization in new ways, send an email to techlife [at] dkworldwide.com.   Sometimes having another set of eyes look through the lens can help focus your message and increase productivity.

Trolley in Memphis Original

Before Clark Griswold loaded the car, he planned his Family Vacation using a computer.  I am sure all Techlife readers have used their computers to plan trips and book accommodations for years now.  

For our reader’s travel plans Techlife has covered sites like Travelistic, Farecast, Google’s MyMaps and RovAir which all aid the traveller.  Today there are countless websites devoted to planning a trip by air, land and sea along with various hotel accommodations.  But there is another way…vacation rentals. 

A Techlife reader shares this story with us…

We were heading from Oakland to Chicago for a week of fun this spring.  Our family has two small children and a week cooped up in the hotel would have been unbearable.  So we hopped on the computer and found salvation.

If you are looking for a bit more local flavor and unique roof over your head, combined with a chance to get a great deal in a down economy vacation rentals are a great option.   So this is just another Craigslist article, right?  C’mon give Techlife a little credit.  Check out VRBO.com, which stands for Vacation Rentals by Owner, to find over 120,000 properties all over the planet.  

In addition to a more local experience, a VRBO is perfect for the travelling family, as the typical listings are condos or  homes instead of just a hotel room.  This gives you bedrooms, a common area, and often a kitchen for equal or even less money than a single room.  For the family with small children through the extended family or friends travelling together, you get the privacy of your own room but the fun of hanging out at night and in the morning.

As one friend of Techlife is fond of saying, “vacations with little children aren’t vacations but just changes of location.”  Searching the VRBO site, has listings that include all sorts of kid friendly amenities, including homes with pools, swing sets, beaches, dvd players, and a few with use of the property’s boat!

Due to the economy we put ourselves on a tight budget, after searching around VRBO.com we realized our budget was not enough money, but we couldn’t spend anymore.  So we waited, and waited, and waited some more.  Then just a week before our trip, we put our plan into motion.

VRBO does have some drawbacks, each listing is maintained by the property owner so the occupancy calendar is not always up to date.  That alone gave me pause about some of these owners in maintaining their property.  In addition, unlike a normal travel site the search tools were a bit weaker.  I was looking to travel over the Fourth of July weekend and had to visit each property, and then click a second time to the occupancy calendar.  I would have preferred to only be shown properties that fit my criteria from the start, including date.

Price also is weak search criteria.  The site has to sell itself to the property owner and the owners clearly prefer a week rental or longer.  Some owners see the value in offering just a weekend or single night price, but again a bit of manual search is required.

There are some other things a traveller has to get used  to, dealing with countless different owners.  You can easily call or email each owner though from VRBO’s easy to use interface to book or ask a question.  The best feature of VRBO is consistency, you get used to the way the listings are laid out, photos here, description here, bullet points here, price here and can quickly assess properties.

At that late date, I sent out emails to all the best properties on the site in the Wrigleyville area of Chicago where we wanted to stay.  We explained we had this much to spend, and understood they were asking more.  We quickly got a few replies from aggressive owners who realized some rent is better than no rent.  We also lucked out, no Cubs games that week so the owners were going to be fighting for us.  What we got was….

Techlife has been using this site for some time and enjoys the adventure of finding the perfect place and that moment where you open the door and hope it really is perfect.  Of course some properties have guestbooks with comments which really helps.  Remember if your vacation rental ends up like a Griswold vacation you will always have the memories and a killer script.

An amazing place with hardwood floors, cherry cabinets, granite counter tops, stainless appliances and we actually entertained at our place one night while our kids slept.  It was truly a great vacation and the vacation rental was the best.

I love how we don't even need to say out loud that I'm your favorite child.

Endearing.  Thoughtful.  Loving.  

These are all things that Someecards decided would NOT make the cut this Mother’s Day.  

Snark.  Attitude.  Dirty.

Ahhh…more like it, you say? This Mother’s Day take the five minutes to send your mom a card using Someecards.  She is sure to wonder about her parenting ability. Good Job!  While you are at it, send a few more e-cards to those Mother’s in your life who deserve a bit of hardcore mommy praise.  Keep in mind Someecards is definitely for the over 18 mommy crowd.  At this point you probably saying to yourself, “do I really need to read the rest of this joke of a Techlife?”  

Let’s answer that, with yes — everyone who has ever gotten an e-card from you will thank you for reading this column.  First a bit of history.

I think of you every time I browse my cell phone on the toilet.

This is Spinal Tap popularized a new comedy genre to modern audiences, the mockumentary.  The recipe is as follows, take a serious subject, with actors who deliver deadpan accounts of their fictious life,  acting as real people. Add pinch of crazy, a dash of ridiculous and there you have it a documentary that is all fun.  In motion pictures we have seen the same group bring us classics such as Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show.  Much of the dialog, like real life is unscripted.

Other television shows such as The Office and The Colbert Report have successfully brought this brand of comedy to the small screen.  Finally The Onion has been entertaining us for years in print and lately in video format as well.

So as Techlife often encourages, business ideas that spark unique creative bursts often come from turning the establishment on its head.  Sure we have all seen greeting cards at the store that are a bit risque, but probably you have never seen so many cards with black and white older style line art, that is taken so far out of context with the surrounding words.  What are we saying?  A few examples will help educate you.  Don’t say we didn’t warn you, and yes we chose the cleanest ones.

I'm glad we share a sense of humor and an understanding that I'm slightly funnier.

Check your political correctness at the door because while Someecards.com has the normal categories of greeting cards or ecards, such as Birthday, Anniversary, and of course Mother’s Day, the cards themselves are anything but normal.

You would have loved the gift I didn't bother getting you.

Like the other greeting card sites Someecards has added some, uh, unusual categories such as Take your Kid to Work cards, Presidential/Electoral cards and of course the obliagatory Steroid Abuse cards.

Like most good businesses these days, Someecards recognized that once in a great while even “you” get a stroke of comedic genius combined with timely current events, so they have a Make Your Own card section and there are some pretty funny people who use the site.

Oh, yeah did we mention the whole site is free.  Yeah we know you.  Send your best cards to techlife [at] dkworldwide [dot] com.

Dear Techlife,

I don’t have a lot of money, but my old computer is dying on me.  I think there is something wrong with the power supply or the fan thingy.  Either way, I am going to replace this 5 year old beast with a new one.  Tell me how to buy a computer with today’s choices, and I will.  I am drowning in too much information.

To many computer choices and no time,

Overwhelmed

Dear Overwhelmed,

As a writer for Techlife and the owner of an internet marketing and hosting company we are actually asked this question a few times a week.  We have got “How to buy a new computer” down to the following three simple questions, cause hey, we like things simple.

Of course we need a quick paragraph of assumptions.  You are replacing an existing machine, pretty much a given these days.  You have data you don’t want to lose. “Duh!” You would like something that will last, so you don’t have to buy again in 1 or 2 years.  Yes, the word genius is tossed around quite often, feel free to to use it again.  You are going to at a minimum surf the net and send email.    ”Of course I am.  Enough of the small talk, let’s skip to the questions already, you had me at easy.” 

Top 5 Laptops on Amazon - $675 - $1600, 13.3 - 16 inch screen size, 2 - 3 GB RAM standard and DVD Drives

Question 1 - What can you bench press?

Answer - “Are you kidding?  This is your first question?”  Give me a chance, I have a reason for this.  These days there are a few types of “new” computers for you to consider.  The standard desktop, a laptop or a netbook.  ”Yeah I know this already, the desktop is the cheapest, the laptop is the lightest and - ”  Not so fast there professor, things have changed.  Netbooks are even smaller laptops, and are often both the cheapest and the lightest.  Many also have longer battery life than a regular laptop.  ”So what’s the downside, they sound perfect?”  Well these machines are normally small which means, a smaller keyboard and a smaller screen and most don’t include a DVD player/recorder.  We typically tell people to visit an electronics store or even your local Target and Walmart to see these machines first hand.  They are also sometimes a bit less powerful than a laptop or desktop, which is probably ok if you are doing the basics; email, web surfing, paying a few bills.

Top 5 Netbooks on Amazon - $319 - $389, 8.9 - 10.1 inch screen size, 1 GB RAM standard, some with 9.5 hour batteries

Question 2 - What’s the demo?

Answer - “The demo?”  Sorry, in marketing speak the demographic.  Who is using this machine?  Business, Family with little kids, a young woman on her way to college? What will they do on the machine?  If you are a single business user who will be the only person on the machine, what do you use it for?  Presentations?  Invoicing? A family might have a dad into photography and who pays some bills, a mom who shops for the kids clothes and researches and plans her garden, a son who wants to play video games and a daughter who wants to use voice and video chat.  ”What about homework?”  I did say “want” not “need.”  Finally a college student can hopefully get by on a single machine for the life of school, which means staying in touch with home, writing papers, research, and maybe some 3D models of chemicals, people, art, or fashion depending on her major.  

Surprisingly the business user might be able to get by with a low powered netbook, if they have a lot of travel and a full size monitor, keyboard and mouse in their office.  The active family needs a bit larger hard drive with all the users and their various needs.  The college student has to consider a combination of power, speed and mobility as well as what their prospective career calls “standard.”

Question 3 - Lottery or  Stimulus?

Answer - For the high percentage of lottery winners who read Techlife we want you to know the price of a computer is just as important to those looking for a little economic stimulus love. When it comes to price each of the three types have their high and low end.  I always recommend looking at the maximum amount of RAM your machine can accept, it rarely comes with all that can be put on board.  Buying extra RAM is one of the best ways to ensure a speedy machine.  If you are looking to skimp, you can always opt for a smaller hard drive and use an external drive to store archives, which has another benefit of being a bit more secure.  

Final thoughts:  We have been suggesting people get laptops these days.  They are less power hungry then a desktop which means a slightly lower cost of ownership.  They have their own battery backup in case of a power failure while you are working on that masterpiece.  With your keyboard, monitor and mouse can act very much like a desktop and take up less space in the process.  Let us know what you think the best machine and why.

The economy’s situation is certainly gloom to some.  Just today I got a death rattle email from a local business.  As the owner of a few businesses in my career, the end of one has always brought the feeling of the phoenix, rising from the ashes.  I am usually inspired to ride the next boom.  Of course before you reach the final hours, there are many things you can do to change the situation and turn it around.

Probably the scariest thing we see with clients is the failure to recognize change opportunities in their own business.  The old axiom, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it is just that, old and with a little deep thought, self-perpetuating.  Many people look for a silver bullet, but the truth is, small changes to a process or a marketing tweak often result in incremental improvements and end up much more cost effective.

It is often hardest to see change from the inside.  When we work with clients we help to implement a change plan to identify opportunties and then act on them.  As you begin to consider your changes and consider the gloom if you just keep on keeping on.  We bring you four excellent reviews of the past, to learn from.

Memorable Companies That Have Vanished - A visual slide show of 25 companies who were once well known and didn’t adapt.  The blurbs are well written such as:

It’s hard to believe these days, but at one time Burger Chef was the number two fast-food burger chain in the U.S., second only to McDonald’s.

Retail Stores Closing Their Doors - From some stores to all stores, retail is cut-throat.  Be aggressive or close your doors.

Fastest Dying Industries - Considering taking that early severance and starting up a new venture, stay away from these areas unless you are a maverick. 

Top 25 Things We Wish Would Make a Comeback - Take heed business owners, this list is the list of tweaks, change and boldy stepping away from “safe.”  It’s the list your mother warned you about, and the list Techlife readers love. 

Our recent article Fail = Success, was just that.  We have had quite a few business owners ask about turning their business on its head.  Keep exploring, forget the voice of gloom and be like Apple’s founder Steve Jobs when releasing a new product, make your company go BOOM!

Do clients want to fail?  Do you want to fail?  How bad is failure in today’s world?  

When we sit with clients we often share stories of success.  How a solution we implemented for a client led to an increase in sales or in another case our brainstorm led to a new product.  By using our broad base of design, technology, marketing and experience we provide clients valuable lessons in success.  You might say we traffic in success and our clients certainly appreciate it.

Of course there are some people in business and in life who don’t need or want any advice.  These true pioneers of life forge ahead and lead the way for the rest of us.  How does this business plan sound:

We plan on showcasing how badly people FAIL in life.  We expect our website visitors to create and submit all our content.  We expect people will come in droves.

That is exactly what happened for Fail Blog.  This website has dedicated itself to showcasing failure.  With labels applied to photos and video of “FAIL”, “EPIC FAIL”, “MASSIVE FAIL” and more this site has made a business out of celebrating small and large failures.  The typical reaction is more than just a smirk sometimes it is a true LOL.

In our daily lives we don’t often encourage failure, so to see a site like this succeed is a cosmic lesson in finding lemons and making lemonade.  The site’s vibrant community provides even more enjoyment with comments and jokes about each post.  

To ensure the site only showcase’s the best FAIL on the homepage, they have a voting area where all sorts of submissions can be graded on failure or success, or is that success or failure.  I am so confused!

As we continue to meet with business owners we certainly will share a new story with them, FAIL can be success too!

What’s your best failure story?  Share it with us in the comments.

All images courtesy of failblog.org.

The Dojo's Cubed Addict - Multiplayer Real Time game for Android, Mac, PC and Linux.

As we meet with client’s the hardest thing for them to wrap their arms around is that on the web, your business is instantly global.  “Awesome, bring it on.”  “Yeah, so, no big deal.”  These are some of the common answers we hear from client’s.  It is then we sit them down and using their enthusiasm or lack thereof, we coach them on doing business in a global economy.  It’s not always easy with i18n (shorthand for internationalization) and l10n (shorthand for localization) and social networking and web 2.0 and e-commerce.

Now imagine adding mobile customers to the mix.  That is exactly the challenge David Kainer of The Dojo experienced.  Provide his customers a gaming platform globally that easily works for all mobile devices and Linux, Mac and Windows computers (<=computer download link, start playing today) based customers.  He also added in multi-player real-time , and to top it all off…it is all FREE.

Techlife sat down with David, who from his Sydney office, works with the London office to learn about The Dojo.  How?  Why? How hard?  It’s all in there, and we even cover why he chose Google’s Android first over Apple’s iPhone. 

Techlife: What is The Dojo?

David Kainer: The Dojo is a global platform for uniting game players in interactive gaming, irrespective of platform. It’s aim is to provide great multi-player experiences on mobile and online and really begin to blur the boundaries between the two. Best of all – it’s free.

T: How did you come with the idea for The Dojo?  Was it based on something?

DK: Dojo Media’s production studio, Viva La Mobile, has 5 years of experience developing and running real-time multi-player mobile games. I think the culmination of that experience and knowledge, as well as recognizing the shortage of true interactive gaming in the mobile market, led to The Dojo.

T: What is your background?

DK: I come from a computer engineering background and have been involved in mobile software virtually my entire professional life. After a couple of years developing vehicle tracking software for wireless devices with a US corporation I threw my hat into the ring and co-founded Viva La Mobile in 2003 and now Dojo Media in 2008.

T: How many people does it take on the back-end to run?

DK: For the time being we run a pretty small team with some excellent developers and engineers. Of course as more people access The Dojo and hopefully become regular players we will increase our team as the system scales up.

T: Where are you located?

DK: Headquarters are in London and the development studio, where I am most of the time, is located in Sydney.

T: What was the hardest aspect of getting The Dojo up and running?

DK: Apart from the technical difficulty of creating robust real-time multi-player games for mobile, one of the trickier aspects was actually drawing the line on the features list and to actually commit to launching the beta.

Cubed Addict has a true international feel with global gamers playing head to head.

T: What surprised you about the audience so far?

DK: I think the global nature of the audience has really taken us aback. We first put Dojo Cubed Addict onto a few free mobile sites and we have since seen players from about 30 countries in the system. It seems that people from India to Russia to the UK and USA all enjoy a similar experience.

T: Have there been any problems yet?

DK: Yes for sure. The first edition of Cubed Addict was the best of 3 rounds per game and we found that sessions took too long and players often quit after the first round. So we re-released it with a game being a single multi-player round. Secondly the control scheme on the T-Mobile G1 leaves a little to be desired. This was a hangover from the porting process from Java mobiles, and we will address that in January 2009. On the whole The Dojo is in beta so we expect problems and feedback about usability is helping us to refine it.

T: Was Cubed Addict, originally just called Cubed and you added the addict after playing yourself?

DK: Actually you’re not far off the truth there. We originally launched a multi-player game called “Cubed” on an Australian carrier in 2005 and it was hugely successful and highly addictive. Cubed Addict is essentially the sequel to that title.

T: Why did you release an Android version before an iPhone version?

DK: We feel that timing wise we are right on target to hit the Android market while there it is new and exciting whereas with iPhone we are a little late. We plan to release an iPhone edition early 2009.

T: How many games is the target for The Dojo?

DK: We plan to launch another 3 titles next quarter and will continue to develop more. We will also introduce a 3rd party developer program if and when the numbers allow it. Our goal with game releases is quality over quantity.

T: Give us a preview of the upcoming games?

DK: Next game will be Badlands 2, a sequel to one of our earlier multi-player games. This is an action game where multiple players (the original had up to 4 but we may push this higher for Badlands 2) fight it out in various futuristic combat vehicles. Expect a large variety of weaponry and some very useful digi-good power-ups that you can get from the Dojo Shop.

T:  We recently covered London based Casual Collective’s Minions in a column, and really enjoy it.  Check it out, they may have gotten the idea from Badlands, but I can tell you anything like that on a  mobile will be amazing.  (I realize 5v5 is probably unlikely.)

DK: Will definitely check it out. The original Badlands was maxed at 4 players due to device limitations, but these days I think we may be able to get up to 8 players in a room, so 4v4 may be possible. No idea until we try!

T: Do you have a gaming at work rule?

DK: Lately we haven’t actually had much chance to play in the office since launching The Dojo has kept us highly busy!

T: Do you feel Dojo gaming is really a mobile experience with an added desktop version?

DK: Dojo is not solely about being mobile. It is about giving gamers a unified experience across both mobile and desktop. It’s the gamers’ choice how they choose to play.

T: Any plans for Wii, Playstation or Xbox versions?

DK: Not in the short term but if it makes sense in the longer term then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

T: Finally - a hint for the readers - why in Cubed Addict when playing an opponent does the board start to rise upwards quickly?  Is there a trigger?  Why is the trigger not the same for both parties?  In fact I often see the trigger for my side go off and release and their’s stays nice and low.  Sync issue?

DK: Ah, this is one of those features that is designed to ‘mix it up’ a little. The trigger is simply a timer and the purpose is to disturb the status quo that can sometimes happen in the game and push both players to the limit. I think there may be a sync issue there. I have noticed that happen too sometimes. It can be very hard to iron out all issues like that with multi-player games, especially with packet-dropping devices like mobiles.

New Release.  New Version.  Sequel.  The second time around audiences know what to expect and the build up is extremely exciting.  This is why we tell clients to re-invent themselves.  It is exciting for the client, their employees and their customers.  Everyone likes the makeover.

We had three exciting stories recently in Techlife that all are forms of version 2.0.  All of them are exciting and unique.

First we have a follow-up to the Techlife Gift Guide with version 2.0 of the Give 1 Get 1 program from the folks at OLPC that we wrote about last year.  You can get involved and make the donation of a lifetime, by giving the metaphorical fishing pole..

Next we have two companies who have released new versions of very popular free flash games.  XGen Studios released the new Stick Arena Ballistick and The Casual Collective released a new site with a whole bunch of upgrades and new games. We pit them head to head. (Hint we are all winners.)

Finally, we were emailed from a reader the viral video that was part of a presidential campaign starring “you” the voter.  It was a unique bit of marketing with certain Web 2.0 twist.  And while the election is over this bit of marketing is something we are sure to see more of as time goes on.

Do you have re-make, re-do, re-invention or re-ally good idea?  Share it with us.

Time for that company makeover?  No idea where to start? We can help your company or organization today so why wait? Hit me via email at: techlife [ at ] dkworldwide [dot] com. Do you subscribe to the RSS feed for Techlife? Visit the TechLife weblog where all you need to do is point and click.

(part of the syndicated print column’s writing process exposed to online readers)

(part of the syndicated print column’s writing process exposed to online readers)