“Here’s to the crazy ones… the ones who see differently… they change things.  They Invent.  They Imagine.  They Explore.  They Create.  They Inspire.  They push the human race forward”.

~ From a 1997 Apple television ad.  Below is another ad from the series.

The history of human kind is full change and innovation.  Fire, the wheel, farming, irrigation, the engine, electricity.  Imagine how different our world has become since just the turn of the century.  Computers, phones and aviation were the hot technologies, now smart phones, tablet computers and the Internet are leading change.   As much as people strive to improve themselves and their world, we also resist change.  That’s also human nature.

“Innovation is a new way of doing things that results in positive change”

~ Carmine Gallo

In Carmine’s new book  “The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs” he showcases innovation, and Steve Job’s leadership role in changing our world.  ”Harvard Professor Nancy Koehn puts Jobs in the same category as other major entrepreneurs of the last 2 centuries, men and women such as Josiah Wedgewood, John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford & Estee Lauder. They all share certain traits: intense drive, unflagging curiousity, and a keen imagination.”

Here’s to the crazy ones, who change our world for the better!  Do you know anyone like that?

1) Shoot your photos:

When you setup your camera to shoot for HDR,  set your camera in aperture priority mode and use a tripod to avoid any discrepancy in the multiple photos you’ll merge to make your HDR. Although you can use as many or as few photos as you like, I tend to use 3 photos most often. Turn on your Autobracketing. For 3 pics in autobracket, set it up at -2, 0, +2.

2) Import your photos:

Once I’ve taken my photos and I’m ready to bring them into Photomatrix Pro, I import them to my PC with Adobe Lightroom 3. Below you can see then photos of the Alamo that I’ll merge to create my HDR photograph.

3) Make your HDR magic!

Open Photomatrix and prepare to work magic on your photos! Once you’ve opened Photomatrix and clicked the “Generate HDR Image” button, the ‘Selecting Source Images’ box opens. Click “browse” to choose the photos you want to import. You need to import all photos as once. To do this, click one file, hold down your control key on a PC or command key on a mac, and continue by clicking each file you want to be imported. Once all files are selected, click open and Photomatrix will align and merge the files. NOW the MAGIC begins:) Strength – Keep it at 100%. Color Saturation – Remember, HDR is about light, not about over-saturation! Every photo is different.  You don’t want a photo that makes you think you are hallucinating; you just want the color to POP! Luminosity – There will be less contrast in your photo, when you slide to the right. Just use your eye and do what pleases you. Microcontrast – Creates fluctuations in color, on a small scale and also helps with the graininess or noise. Smoothing – This is where the HDR effect is applied. Psychodelic go left, melodic go right. White Point & Black Point – The idea here is to have the right amount of light, if your histogram is to far to the left or right you are loosing or adding too much light. Use this to move your bell curve of the histogram to the center.

4) Process your HDR results:

Once you are done playing with all of the sliders, you can click the “Process” button. Tada done with HDR! You can also make additional changes to photograph in Photoshop or Lightroom if you feel it needs any cleanup. For a Quick and Easy Magic Trick, Photomatrix Pro gets a thumbs up at iCreaTech.

5) Brag it up to your friends!

You know you want to impress people with your new mad HDR skills!  Go for it.  Check out my more dramatic High Dynamic Alamo below! Now go try it for yourself!

• How bright is this?  BP’s own ad running at the top of the Google ‘oil spill’ page dares to say “www.BP.com/OilSpillNews Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping.”  Helping?  You caused it!
• Nearly a half million Facebook users have joined ‘Boycott BP’ pages.  Also, Facebookers are commenting NOT to boycott BP stations, as that will only hurt the owners of the local outlet.
• A ‘fake’ Twitter page is mocking BP’s PR efforts, and a new BP logo is online with the letters BP replaced with WTF.
• There is a new plugin for Google Chrome that blots out any mentions of BP with an oil stain!

BP’s PR problems are severe. U.S. President Barack Obama said this morning that he’s talking to experts so he can determine “whose ass to kick.”

~ Mashable

The worst part is this is just the LATEST in BP’d horrific track record.  Jon Stewart has a great, satitical video that shows that BP had 760 willful, egregious safety violations in the US in the past 3 years based on OSHA’s data!  In the video you see that Sunoco, Conoco, Citgo and Exxon had between 1 and 8 violations in the same 3 years.  We don’t need to boycott BP stations.  The US government should BAN BP from any drilling or refining of oil in the US.

BP’s created their own mess to deal with.  But, buying Google ads to link themselves to the term Oil Spill does not seem a good ad placement, does it?  That’s like a handgun maker buying ads under suicides or homicides!

• In 1998, Tony invested $500K with Zappos founder Nick Swinmurn to start the company.  They had almost no sales to start!
• The decision was made early on to focus on service.  In 2004, Zappos moved to Las Vegas to hire more customer service oriented people.  Two examples: Zappos has a 1 YEAR return policy, and pay shipping BOTH ways!  It often ranks in the Fortune 500 Best Companies to Work For list!
• By 2005 sales had hit $252M a year, and now has crossed the $1B in annual sales mark.
• In Nov 2009, Amazon bought Zappos for stock that valued the purchase at $1.2 BILLION!

Amazing what can be done with a better customer service model.  Tony and Zappos focus on the end to end customer experience.  That is what is making Zappos grow, their customer’s loyal and well worth the $1.2B Amazon paid.

Also, Tony is personally very active as the company spokesman.  You can reach him easily by Twitter, his blog and many other means.  At Zappos, there is no place to hide bad customer service because the top person is always available to help.  So, the service just HAS to be great.

Compare that with AT&T:  A customer was sent a cease and desist letter to after emailing suggested improvements TWICE to Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s CEO.  Last we checked, AT&T doesn’t even HAVE a Twitter account.  They don’t want to hear the complaints.  Amazingly when I googled the title of this article, AT&T came up at the top with a PAID ad.  Don’t you love the irony?

I had the good fortune to learn real customer service from a master: Bob Weirauch.  Every single customer was offered Bob’s office and home phone numbers.  You can only imagine the impact that had in many ways, big and small!

Customers love being treated for what they are: The REAL Boss.  Because they pay everyone’s salary, including the owners.  Walking the walk is the hard part.

What do YOU think about that?

Initially, BP estimated 1,000 barrels (42,000 gallons) per day were spilling.  The US Government estimated 5,000 barrels a day (210,000 gallons).  The latest estimates posted by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Boston.com are in the 500,000 to 3,500,000 MILLION gallons per day.  Mulitply that by the 42 days SO FAR and you get an idea of the totals.

Enough oil to surpass the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which dumped 10.8 million gallons off the coast of Alaska in the worst spill in US history,three times over.

~ Boston.com

Based NRDC and Boston.com estimates, the BP spill is 3.6 to 6.4 TIMES larger than the Exxon Valdez already!

And, its increasing by 10% of the Valdez’s spill EACH DAY.  You can see the real damage in more photos like this one of a young heron dying on an oil covered estuary:

For those into the math, it is shown below, along with the links to the source articles are above.

Phase one of Facebook’s strategy for world domination: complete. Facebook announced that more than 50,000 websites have integrated Facebook’s new social plugins in just one week. The plugins are a core component of the company’s new Open Graph initiative.

~ Mashable

Essentially, Facebook opened their database to their partners. When you approve individual Facebook applications it ‘warns’ you their partners will be able to read your list of friends, access you wall, photos and other content. All so you can send a friend an iHeart or see the Photo of the Day. But, how much do we know about the businesses getting that data, and how they are using it besides iHearts?  Based on the number of Facebook applications that are nothing but a virus, Facebook’s quality control and oversight of their partners must be minimal.

None of those issues have stopped the rapid growth of Facebook’s Open Graph, however. Last Wednesday, Facebook launched with 75 partners. Now there are more than 50,000 websites on board — that’s nearly 300 websites adding Facebook social plugins per hour. Clearly Facebook’s 425+ million users have enticed website owners to jump on the Open Graph bandwagon

~ Mashable

What has truly changed the most:

• First, Facebook decided to make the default privacy setting for the Open Graph:  Sure, you can have my data!  So, any of those 50,000 web sites that you visit can pull your personal data and store it on their system. Remember sharing your phone number and email with you personal friends on Facebook? Or what you eat, where you work and your travel plans.  Getting clearer?
• Next, Facebook decided to put in ‘granular’ controls… what’s that?

The New York Times noted that if you want to protect your privacy on the social networking site, you’ll have to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options. Why? Well, Facebook says that it wants to give its users fine-grained control of what they share and what they keep private. That’s admirable, but in the process the company seems to have lost sight of a different imperative: keeping it simple. How many users are going to jump through that many hoops?

~ SEOChat.com

But, the real oxymoron was believing that the data that 425 MILLION users willingly entered into Facebook is actually kept private:

• It appears that it’s only shared with the friends you approve. Plus the applications run by unknown companies you approve. Plus the 50,000 web sites and growing.
• A coalition of privacy groups have taken the issue to Congress as they see Facebook’s new approach breaking FTC laws.
• So, how does Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg feel about your privacy?

Click here to read that article. Facebook is a very cool technology, a great way to stay in touch with your family and friends, and a marketers dream… but, think about what data you ‘share’ with Facebook. And who they are sharing it with as well.

Aaron Williams and The Hoodoo play an amazing blend of blues and rock.  Three of the coolest guys you’ll ever meet, and proof that nice guys don’t finish last!

Premiering here is “Livin’ on Love”, Aaron’s anthem to their love of music, the great people they meet on the road, and those they love but need to leave behind to follow their dreams.  The love that gets them through the long hours traveling to the next gig. Including resting on the sidewalk when you’ve traveled all night and the hotel is overbooked. Aaron wrote Livin’ on Love, and we had the privilege to create this video. We’d all love to hear what you think of this anthem, and your backstage, close up view of life on the road with AWATH!

The song is from “It Ain’t Easy”, a recent MAMA award winning CD.  AWATH recorded the video while traveling, and iCreaTech produced the video using photos from TJ.  While creating this, it was easy to connect with the theme of Livin on Love.  It was a labor of love to create!

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
~ Mark Twain

So, what are your dreams? Do you dare to follow them, and share them? We’d love to help!

According to our research a Facebook Page with 1 million fans is worth a minimum of $3.6 million in earned media annually. Honestly that’s just the tip of the iceberg as I’ll explain.

How many impressions can a single wall post receive? To our surprise we learned the average was approximately 1:1 (0.96:1 to be exact).

We factored a very conservative $5 CPM - how much would you pay for highly targeted impressions?

1M impressions x 2 posts (per day) x 30 days = 60M impressions

60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000 per month ($3.6M annually)

A few key points from the article and social media:

• A community of social media and web ‘friends’ has real value. Now is the time to engage or expand your community as earlier adopters always have an easier, lower cost entry.  But, it does save time and cost to know the best practices.
• Vitrue’s math shows that a business can save $3.60 per year per friend by posting to their social media community at little to no cost.
• Of the business is well priced, the profits for those customers would be more than the $3.60 per year.  If not, you are may be paying too much when your marketing costs more than your profits.
• The math: If the fans are valued @ $3.60 per year, that means with proper ‘care’ they will create an ongoing revenue steam of $3.60 year after year.  Being a finance major, the way you find the asset value from an income stream is to divide $3.60 by the current interest rate.  Using a 4% (current mortgage) rate shows a REAL value of $90 each.  Meaning if you invested $90 @ 4%, it would pay you $3.60 year after year.  So, the income may be $3.60, but the asset value is closer to $90!  If your cost of capital is closer to 8 or 10%, then the value to your firm per ‘fan’ is in the $36 to $45 range just on the cost savings.  Much less their profit.
• The value of an impression is much higher when the viewer has opted to receive the information.  The $5 CPM (cost per million) is a quite conservative number since most web sites cover a pretty wide range of topics and interests.  While Amazon has an amazing number of visitors, could you imagine a more varied set of viewer interests?  How about CNN, YouTube or Google?
• In traditional media you are also paying for the opportunity to make an impression with your message on tv, radio, newspaper or other media.  But, you never know how many people actually see those ads versus the internet’s ability to measure both the number of times the ad is viewed, but more importantly how many times the ad is clicked on to get more info.
• The real value of social media, web or any other media is the number of impressions that turn into customers, and the profit from those sales. That is much harder to measure than the baseline value Vitrue used.  Vitrue’s math shows how much you would have to pay on a general web site for the same amount of ‘viewers’.  However, when your community sees your message properly crafted on a site they opted into, it simply has a higher value than viewers on a general web site.
• Just like web site names, social media names are being rapidly claimed.
• The question is not are people talking about your brand or business on social media.  The question is: Are you Participating in the Conversation?

We can help you research, claim your social media and web names, and engage your community.  That is one of our core business values.

How can we help you reach your goals?