Alternative Apple iPhone 3GS headphones / earphones as recomended by twitter followers

zbud_blackUPDATE 26.02.12:  I thought I’d update this post as there are a few more headphones on the market that will work as per the Apple iPhone headphones (and cheaper) for the 4 and the 4s. I had a look in my local tescos the other day as I have lost another set of Apple headphones and both sets of Addidas Seinheisers are out of action.

I bought these and they work perfectly KIT Sound iPhone Stereo Earphones with Microphonebut also while I was there I saw these Bliss Black Metallic Earphones available in various colours and for those (like me) who loses or breaks them all the time, pretty cheap to.

Please add anything else you find to the comments on this page to keep it up to date, thanks!

After not having too much success with a google search for an alternative replacement set of headphones for my iPhone 3GS I turned to Twitter for some advice. I got quite a response so I thought I would share the tweet recommendations. Note: I have popped into a reseller and they did tell me that apple would replace a faulty set still within the 1 year manufacturers warranty.

Apple [Link]
Replacements for the headphones that ship with the iPhone £21 and the in ear earphones are £59 on the Apple site.
Z.buds [Link]
These look awesome, durable, not to expensive and all the iPhone functions.
Griffin [Link]
SmartTalk and TuneBuds Mobile. Two solutions and not too expensive, both do not have volume control though.
Bose ipod buds [Link]
A little more expensive, in line microphone but no volume.
Klipse Image S4i Earphones [Link]
Looks like a good set of headphones, a little expensive although comes with a 2 year warranty, microphone but as far as I can see no volume control.
Etymotic hf2 Hands-free Headset [Link]
Again going for the sound quality higher end of the market, a little expensive mic, control, but again no volume.
JVC HA-KX100 [Link]
Affordable, mic and control but again no in line volume.

The latest Mac OSX update includes the App Store, now you can have Apps on your Desktop

The latest Mac OSX (10.6.6) update includes the App Store,  widgets meet applications and visa versa to produce lightweight desktop Apps not dissimilar to the Apps on your iPhone or iPad. Some popular Applications such as iMovie, Garage Band, Keynote etc have crossed over to the App store and the prices are very reasonable. Installing an App is single click just like in iTunes, the icon appears in your dock and updates regularly occur in the same way as your mobile Apps.

I have tested a couple, comparing them to the versions I have on the iPhone. The Amazon Kindle App is very simple and seamlessly links to your Amazon account.

Here’s where the Backslash is on an Apple Mac keyboard when working in windows

Just a quick one as my post on where to find the hashtag on an Apple Mac keyboard seemed to help a lot of people out.

I have VMWare installed on a few Macs running Window XP and Vista on various computers and it has recently become necessary to type a backslash when entering a user name and password. Unfortunately the key is not in the same position as in the Mac OS.

Bottom left hand corner, the ~ key (I think its called the tilde key next to the z)

Improve your searches – search engine tips and tricks

Many people still search one or two keywords and trawl through endless list of results in a search engine. Beyond the provided filter tools there are many tips and tricks to finding what you want quicker. Ever see the keyword you searched in the summary but arrive at page with 20 feet of scrolling. Hit Control F and search that page for that word and be there in seconds. Use and image search and come across sites that you wouldn’t usually have found.

The bulk of this post is about the little tips and tricks when actually entering text into the search bar.

Phrase search (“”) Use exclamation marks to make more than one keyword a phrase, the results shown will be results where these two words appear next to each other.

Site Search Site search is great for finding something you know appeared on a particular site. Often this search delivers better results that some website own search. Jus type site:thewebsite.com and then the keywords to only search one site.

Filetype Search As per site search but the results are specifically files with the file extension you specify, for example chocolate sweets filetype:pdf

Exclude a keyword (-) No brainer!

Wildcard Search (*) This constitutes anything and then your search term. If you only remember some of what you want to search use the wildcard, for example * sweets results in all types of search with a word then sweets.

Exact Search (+) Means that both your words must appear in the results, for example chocolate + sweets.

How to convert powerpoint presentations into video with free software

I have had a lot of requests for the best way and a simple solution for outputting a Powerpoint presentation to video and what are the limitations in doing so. A few suggestions I had heard in the past was using Picasa, Accoolsoft PPT or Slideshare, I didn’t have much luck with Picassa or Slideshare so I won’t write about them. Accoolsoft on the other hand produced some very nice results and even allowed you maintain transitions, animations with slides and to embed videos in the presentation.

Usually I would do this in the edit suite, PNG a deck of slides and time the transitions to a voice over, sometimes this is not necassary it merely needs to change slide every 5 or so seconds.

Doesn’t like fade to blacks on the video
Doesn’t like the when clicked option when embedding a video into a slide.
Doesn’t like embedded videos when things are deep on a drive.

Procedure

Homepage for the Acoolsoft PPT to Video software, Click add in the bottom left hand corner of the page.

Navigate to the PPT file you wish to convert to video

The PPT is added to the Que click Next to continue

Select the format for the video output file. Quicktime (.mov) is a generic format that will playback in quicktime free player.

Many other formats are available and the paid version of the software opens this up further.

You can also refine the settings for the output video as below.


Resolution = Frame size for the video
Encoder = Video codec
Frame rate = frames per second
Bitrate = increased bitrate improves quality but also increases file size.

Set the transition time between the slides

Advanced settings allows you to alter layout and add background music.

Select the location for the output video and click Start

Establishing your online voice, blogging and your readership

My good friend Merrin Wake emailed me the other day for some advice on getting traffic through to her blog secretsofmotherhood after reading a few pages I established that identifying the readership in this situation would be slightly different than I am used to as the users are not business users and not consumers. Merrin said that the blog was set up with social media tools, in this situation is key to go an extra mile when talking to your readers. Establish your voice and create conversations with your readers, this way passive absorbers of your information start to become your brand advocates. It only takes a couple of power users of your website pushing your message to feel like you have a mini marketing team working for you and you are laying down the foundations to facilitate some viral marketing.

Remember that no two people browse the Internet in the same way! We all have our favorite platforms, our favorite browser plugins and we all use social media in different ways so make sure your blog caters for as many of these people as possible not just your preferences. Share buttons with limited clicks is essential for the reader to spread the word. Subscribe Fields for those who wish to be sent a email digest.  Follow and Like Buttons for those who passively watch you through social media platforms. RSS feeds (in particular Feedburner) for those who will watch you from their email client.

Link exchange,
Obviously, search engine optimization should be at the for front of your mind not just during site design but on every post, every keyword and every heading. Link exchange is vital to your SEO and I don’t just mean sending out annoying emails to similar sites asking to swap links I mean, where are your potential readers? Are they on Facebook? If so, have they joined a group in which you can start a discussion that links back to your pages, can you get them discussing and spreading the conversation to various other platforms such as digg, delicious, yahoo buzz etc? Inbound links are important not just for traffic but also for search engine bots to find your site. Outbound links have to quality sites have similar effects.

The paid way
If your site is making some money then the quick way is to incorporate some pay per click adverting or direct advertising on websites you would like to be seen. There is an art to this so don’t take it on lightly but here are some starting points to get you thinking. See my Digital Marketing posts.

Make Quidco a part of your everyday online shop and save cash back

I was talking to someone at the weekend who does a lot of online shopping but hadn’t heard of Quidco. Nearly every online retailer offers cash back or incentives of different amounts all you need to do is sign up for an account. Quidco takes the first £5 and then you keep the rest, I have earned £122 alone in cashback this year, shopping that I would have done anyway. Once you have an account search Quidco, follow the link to the merchant, at which point a cookie will be dropped and tracks you to the checkout, simple!

Sign up for an account using this link,

i love Quidco GreenWhite

Creating a custom Google Map and embedding it in a webpage or Blog Post

Despite ripping me for writing a blog my brother who has been given a yacht to use in the Caribbean for 5 months along with James Martin (kite tester for kiteworld magazine, sponsored rider and male model, no big deal!!) has decided to document their trip by writing their own WordPress blog, Wind Waves and Caribbean Raves. To add an extra dimension and make use of the fact that they have been cross referencing anchor spots with windsurfing, surfing and kitesurfing locations. They wanted to include some kind of map.

So, here’s how to use Google Maps My Maps function to create your own custom maps and embed them in the blog posts, not oly that I will explain how to embed extra media such as a YouTube video into the Map.

Sign into your Google account, under the Google Maps logo in the top left hand part of the page click on My Maps and then Create new map. Give it a title and description, in the edit mode you have the option to draw on the map, drop a pin or grab and navigate the map. I have created a map as an example, using some footage I shot at Gwithian beach in Cornwall the other week I then chose the html option on the push pin and embedded the share code from Youtube.


View Video Beach Guide in a larger map

The pitfalls of social media and online recruitment methods

I am running a pilot to monitor the success of new media approaches to recruitment while recruiting for my assistant. During the research process I came across a few findings that were worth a note.

The flip side to recruiting on the Internet, despite the fact that a particular platform does not represent a true overview of a countries demographic, but what does? is the simple fact that even those using conventional practices for recruitment for vetting. It makes a lot of sense! In the past you’d get references to discover whether your candidate has a good work ethic, is not going to create problems etc but social media is quicker and provides a more rounded summary as the candidate has not chosen the referee who speaks on their behalf and in many cases are more open with there posted information. The problem lies with the discarding of candidates for reasons you have discovered via these means, it might not necessarily be the HR department doing this but the individual departments conducting the interview process who are taking an unnecessary risk on behalf of the company. Fair enough if you discover someone is a drug taker, criminal etc but what if discover the candidate is planning a pregnancy, has an alternative sexual preference etc and they are discarded. If you have decided to do your online research then be sure the reason the candidate was discarded can be back up with valid reasoning and in many cases proof of this.

Media Streaming, MacBook Pro, PS3, Xbox 360, MediaLink, iTunes Part 2

Ok, I didn’t manage to get this to work completely but as I think it might be down to the network I am going to post it anyway. I almost managed to stream the music from my MacBook Pro (iTunes) through the Xbox 360. The idea of this is to have all music in one central location to avoid duplication of songs and double handling when it comes to updates.

Also, if you don’t have your mac set up to run a Windows environment or need to improve your Bootcamp set up follow my blog post that talked about an easy installation of VM Fusion using your Bootcamp partitioned drive. I did need to import the Bootcamp Partition in order to mirror the music folder in OSX and Windows.

I didn’t use the medialink streaming server software, instead I opened up VMFusion and loaded Windows Media Player. In the VMFusion Setting found under Virtual Machine I then turned on folder sharing and mirrored the music folder where the iTunes Media folder resides. By doing this I was able to use the Add to Media Library under File In Windows media player in order list all my music without actually copying anything over into this environment.

Next, make sure all you media sharing is turned on in the windows environment (I’m using Vista) you can do this via Library > Media Sharing > Share my media to: in Windows Media Player, the Xbox 360 icon should appear in the box below,  or choose Control Panel > Classic View >  Networking and sharing > Media Sharing > Change.

With everything on, turn on your XBox 360. Go to My Xbox > Music Library and select your computer, you should see your playlists…. problem is, mine won’t play!!

If anyone can get ths working please expand in the comments area?

See how I got this to work on the PS3