I used to read all the time. Louis Lamour and other westerns, Clive Cussler and the adventure genre were some of my favorites. For my return to reading I’ve decided to read business and marketing oriented books to increase my knowledge of my chosen area of expertise.

I got the recommendation for my first book from Cory Miller and James Dalman’s Webdesign.com reading list. It’s called The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell and I thought I’d share my thoughts on it.

This was my first Malcom Gladwell book and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I like his writing style. The Tipping Point is a book about change and some deep thinking on epidemics. Gladwell himself describes the book as an “intellectual adventure story”. It largely exposes some concepts that you will have to walk around with for a while before the practical use becomes apparent. At least that has been my experience.

From the description of the book I was hoping to get some practical ideas for creating more interest in my business, i.e. to improve my marketing efforts. It’s not that kind of book. I think it just might turn out to be better.

In the book, Gladwell spends a lot of time developing the idea of how epidemics are started and spread and gives specific examples. Some of the examples are about disease epidemics as you might expect but the others are about crime, fashion, bad habits and school shootings. I’ll have to admit that in the middle of some of the lengthy examples he almost lost me. If this happens to you, stick with it. At the end you’ll realize that you need the benefit of the examples in order to apply the principles.

Gladwell’s findings are that almost always, a tiny percentage of the do the majority of the work to start an epidemic. He calls this the Law of the Few. The other two rules of The Tipping Point are The Stickiness Factor and The Power of Context. He uses these three rules to organize thinking about epidemics and help us to understand how to create a Tipping Point of our own.

Carrying out the rules of the Tipping Point are three main types of people. Gladwell calls these Mavens (information brokers and are teachers), Connectors (who know “everybody”) and Salesmen (excellent at influencing people).

Again, examples from various parts of history are given including Paul Revere (a Connector and a Maven). Each of these people play a different but vitally important role in an epidemic.

With my subconscious mind armed with the concepts about how and why epidemics are created and spread I am now watching for that piece of information that will help me answer the question that Gladwell leaves us with in the Afterward of the book. That question is: “How do I find the Mavens that will spread the word about my particular business?” or put differently, how do I build a Maven trap?

The last few pages of the book are the best in my opinion, but would be of much less value without the experience of the examples so again, stick with it. It’s worth it.

In conclusion, I highly recommend The Tipping Point. If you’ve read the book and figured out how to build a Maven trap in your business, I’d love to hear about it. Why not leave a comment?

The upgrade process

As I suspected, the hot topic surrounding Windows 7 upgrades was just how far one could go toward performing a clean install with upgrade media.  First to clear up a couple of technical terms. Upgrade media are the disks that Microsoft sells that allow you to install Windows 7, but only activate if you have a qualifying installation of a previous version of Windows. In contrast the Full version of windows by definition can be instlalled on a clean hard drive with no previous Windows install present. The other big thing is that Upgrade media costs less than the full version.

Here’s how my upgrade went. I removed my original 160 GB drive with XP on it, and installed a new 320 GB drive. After printing out the Windows 7 upgrade guide by WinSuperSite’s Paul Thurott,  I booted the system with the Windows 7 upgrade disk in the drive and followed the prompts to do a custom install.  The install went smoothly.  It’s a relatively quick install, but the question was, would it activate successfully once it phoned home to Redmond?  The answer was no. At least not initially.

Paul did a great job researching and experimenting with the upgrade media. His suggested next step after a failed activation was to do a “registery hack”.

Method #2: Registry hack
Note: This workaround is not supported by Microsoft but my understanding is that it has a 100 percent success rate.

The registry hack worked for me. Activation was successful after performing the steps outlined and re-booting my laptop.

On a side note, I have also upgraded my wife’s Vostro 1520 laptop. I ordered upgrade media from Dell (which they sent at no charge). They will only send an equivalent disk. In other words, since the Vostro came with Vista Home Premium 32 bit, they sent Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit. We decided we might want to upgrade the RAM in the future from 3GB to 4GB or more which really requires a 64bit OS. So I backed up and then did a custom install with MY 64 bit upgrade disk from Amazon. After entering the license key from the disk from Dell the activation went smoothly. I wanted to throw that in there in case anyone else is wondering about doing a similar upgrade.

Windows 7 Review

During the summer I got my first case of Mac fever. I read MacBook Pro reviews, watched videos and read message boards.  I made up my mind that I would get a MBP, but would wait at least a year. I think the best compliment for Windows 7 is that I no longer have Mac fever. Well . . . maybe a little!   Microsoft has really closed the gap. Despite the warnings by the aforementioned Mr. Thurott, I have come to really like the new task bar. I can see where it might confuse some people, but pinning programs and re-arranging icons is great.

I wrote about Libraries in Seven during my beta test and that remains my favorite feature I think. On the visual front, I like the semi-transparent task bar and window frames and the “slideshow” wallpaper that changes on set intervals. Speaking of wallpaper, I just downloaded some great wallpaper images from National Geographic. These are great if you like landscapes.

This is getting long so I’ll just mention a couple more things that have worked really well for me. One is networking. Windows 7 calls it Home Group.  It’s just easy. “It just works” is a phrase that Apple fans like to use. Well, so far Windows 7 “just works” for me. The other thing I use all the time is sleep-mode. That’s a simple thing, but XP would lock up coming out of sleep half the time so I never used it.  Now it’s like near instant boot-up out of sleep.

It really is time to move on from Windows XP.   Windows 7 is rock solid, clean looking and runs all my apps and hardware flawlessly. Way to go Microsoft!

Brett

I’m way behind in updating my Windows 7 experience. There’s a good reason! I have had no further experience with Windows 7. No, I haven’t given up on it or changed my mind about how good an operating system I think it is. Fact is I got busy over the summer and had to go back to my XP drive.

I’m not that dependent on MS Office, but I need it every once in a while and I decided it just wasn’t worth the trouble of re-activating it. Also I didn’t want to invest any more time in this operating system that I would have to re-install come October.

So right now I’m just waiting for Windows 7. I took advantage of the pre order for Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade at Amazon.com so I should get my copy on October 22nd.

I plan to install Seven on a fresh hard drive. I need a bigger drive anyway and it would just make me feel better if I had the old XP disk intact just in case I need to revert. There’s probably some licensing issues with that strategy and it’s still not clear if that will even be possible. I’m confident someone will figure out how to do it though. I will report my experiences here so stay tuned.

Brett

I do remember the computer lab in college having some type of Apple computer. Probably an early Macintosh operating system. I never paid much attention to Macs because they wouldn’t run games like Wing Commander, which I spent hours playing between classes.

Lately though, I’ve been bitten by the “Mac Bug”. I don’t play games any more and I just want to get some work done. My main work is processing photos and web development and from what I hear a Macintosh PC is great for that.

I stopped at an Apple Store a couple of months ago and I have been reading a lot of reviews about MacBook Pro since then. I’m wondering if the 13″ Macbook Pro screen will be big enough for those infrequent times that I’m on an overnight photo shoot. Otherwise I’d have it connected to a 22″ Dell 2209WA monitor which is due to arrive here within the hour ~8-)

——–
Sidebar:
The Dell 2209WA display (I got two) arrived as I was typing this. Of course I had to hook one up and I’m looking at it now as I type this. Out of the box it looks great. Maybe too bright, but I’ll adjust it later and maybe do a full review post.
——–

During my Mac research I noticed a bunch of people recording “Unboxing Videos”. So instead of immediately opening their new MacBook they set up a video camera and record their experience. I wanted to make an exaggerated version of those as a parody, but I ended up just doing a “for the record” type of thing with my wife’s new Vostro 1520 from Dell. Her school sytem is actually almost anti-Mac so she decided to go ahead and fit in with a Windows PC this time.

Anyway, enough rambling. Here’s the video I recorded on my Sony Hi8 camcorder and imported and edited with Windows Movie Maker that comes with Win Vista Home Premium. Enjoy!

Here are the specs on this Vostro 1520:

• Intel Core2 Duo 2.24 Ghz
• 3GB RAM
• 320 GB HDD
• 15.4″ Widescreen
• Vista Home Premium (Make sure you specify the Windows version you want when ordering a Vostro. They were going to put Home Basic on this one until I caught it.)
• Webcam built into the monitor
• Express Card slot.
• 4x USB 2.0 Ports (2 left / 2 right)
• IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port on right.
• CD/DVD Burner (Tray-loading)
• LAN and VGA on the back (No DVI)
• SD/MMC Memory Stick/Pro slot and headphone/mic jacks on the front.

Fast forward a couple of years and I still have only touched one system running Vista. I’m going to be a bit more brave with Windows 7. I downloaded the beta over the weekend and installed it on my old system.

My test system is a home brew box vintage 2000 with an Asus main board, an Athlon XP 2200+ processor and the mininum recommended 1GB of memory. I thought this would test whether the system requirements were more forgiving than for Vista as Microsoft clamis.

I did a fresh install on the system partition and it installed without a hitch. I had a major problem right off the bat. The ethernet card wasn’t recognized. It was a Wal-Mart/Linksys/Network Everywhere card. After some research I found out that the drivers were never even developed for Vista.

Luckily I had a couple of other NIC cards in the closet that I had picked up at a computer show out of the two dollar bin. The first one wowrked. I’m not sure what the make of the card is, but Windows 7 recognized it right away.

Ok, so now I’m on the net and I have a clean device manager, but my display is not optimal. My card is an Nvidia GeForce4 4200 with 128mb of memory which should be adequate to run the more advanced features of Windows 7 beta. I guess Nvidia hasn’t bothered to update the drivers for this card for Vista/7 because all I’m getting is the “Standard VGA” card driver. That means 1024×768 max and the refresh rate is noticeably slow.

Summary: It seems stable, it connected to my home network easily and I like the window snapping feature. I just wish I could find drivers for the video card. i really don’t want to sink any money into this old system just to try out Wwindows 7 beta. If anybody can help I’d appreciate you leaving a comment.

I plan on posting again on my Windows 7 beta experience.

Brett

I’ve listened to The Digital Photography Show for over a year and find it very entertaining and most of the time educational. These guys are not your typical know-it-all photo pros. They are uber enthusiasts who have made some great connections with industry professionals like Scott Kelby and Rick Sammon and frequently do interviews with them.

Apparently they had a not so elegant breakup with The Podcast Network and have moved their podcast to Digital Photography Life on Personal Life Media.

If you’re a podcast junkie and into Digital Photography, you have to subscribe to Digital Photography Life.

Brett

Even renting such a lens costs more than the kit lens on your DSLR so I wanted to find a good company to rent from at the best price and service combination. As usual I researched several companies and I think I found a gem. More after the jump. . .

Camera lens rental is obviously a commodity business model. Most of the companies I looked at had very similar prices and terms. You can rent with or without insurance and the rental periods usually start at a week with extended periods available. Most of the websites of these companies also functioned very similarly. I think most of them operate out of a garage at their home, but that’s ok.

In the end I went with LensRentals.com. They are not the absolute least expensive, especially where I live because we’re in the same state so I had to pay sales tax. But the service was top notch. From reading their “about us” page I learned that they were located near Memphis TN which is only about three hours from here.

From order placement to receipt

LensRentals.com is one of the oldest if not the oldest lens rental company. The other thing that impressed me was that they bit the bullet and took the steps necessary to implement good business systems. They have custom software that tracks their inventory of lenses and it works. Here’s a quick workflow example:

• Shortly after I placed my order online I received an order confirmation email and then FedEx tracking information in another email.
• FedEx delivers the lens. The delivery requires a signature.
• Within a half hour of receipt, I got an email notifying me that the rental period had started.
• The email had instructions for returning the lens and the due date.
• The paid return shipping label was in the box.
• When LensRentals got the lens back I got an email that told me the transaction was completed.

A problem and how customer support handled it.

The day after I got the lens, I was showing it to my friend and fellow photographer, Kyle Johnson. To be honest, Kyle recommended LensRentals to me in the first place. Kyle shoots local high school sports and you can check out his work and buy sports photos on his website right here.

I had noticed an intermittent squeaking noise coming from the lens when I used it the first couple of times, but I did not notice the fact that it was focusing slower than it should have. Kyle picked up on that and suggested that I email LensRentals right away, so I did.

Actually I decided to use my Canon PowerShot SD750 compact to make a short video while Kyle operated the lens, and sent the video along with the email to customer support. That was at 2:50pm. At 3:05pm I got a reply email from one of their reps. The video helped them diagnose the problem. They would be sending out a replacement right away. By 3:08pm I had another order acceptance email from their system and by 3:14pm I had a tracking number email on the replacement lens which was shipped priority overnight.

Now admittedly, my sending a video to demonstrate the problem greatly sped up the diagnosis process (my arm hurts from patting myself on the back, by the way , but still you gotta admit that is fast service. The next day I got the replacement lens and it worked fine.

Three nuggets of advice

This is a long post, so to reward you for reading this far here are three pieces of advice:

1. Allow a couple of days lead time from when you actually need to use the lens.
2. Videos such as from a compact camera are worth a million words when motion and sound are involved. I had used this technique with a Canon printer that went bad about a year ago.
3. Don’t hesitate to use LensRentals.com

I also got very quick email response from LensRentals.com before I placed my order. BTW, I’m not receiving any kick backs for this review. I was genuinely pleased with the service.

I may as well throw in one small glitch. For the return shipping you can specify a USPS return label instead of FedEx. Since my nearest FedEx drop-off location is almost 20mi away I did just that. With the first lens I got a USPS return label, but with the replacement lens there was a FedEx label. I’m sure FedEx is the default and since it all happened so fast I am willing to forgive them for the very small oversight.

So there you have it. If you need to rent a pro lens check out LensRentals.com.

I plan to post about the event I shot with the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR. Stay tuned.

Brett

If you spend any amount of time online and you use a Microsoft Windows based PC you know, or at least I hope you know, that you need to be on your toes to protect the security of your computer and the data stored on it.

I want to share one of my core resources for keeping up with the latest news and information about keeping your Windows PC safe and running its best. That resource is Windows Secrets.

I have subscribed to the Windows Secrets newsletter for several years. Then this past summer I upgraded to their paid version. I read it thoroughly each week. It’s not always a home run for me, but this week was good enough that it prompted me to write about it. Click this link to read this week’s Windows Secrets Newsletter.

If you don’t have time to read it, at least install the NoScript plugin for Firefox (if you don’t use Firefox, you should). NoScript is a defense against “click-jacking” where a bad guy can install something on your computer when you click a seemingly legitimate link on a website. Be aware though that NoScript also blocks friendly scripts, but you can turn those on when you are on a trusted site.

The other good article in this week’s WS (you have to upgrade to the paid version to get it) is an explanation of how Adobe Flash player stores information on your computer similar to browser cookies. Too much to explain here but you really need to read it if you have the Adobe Flash Player plugin installed.

Check out Windows Secrets.

By the way for the record, Microsoft Windows based computers and Apple computers are both PC’s (Personal Computers). They just run different operating systems. Apple PC’s are not totally immune to viruses, etc. The bad guys don’t bother creating viruses for Mac PC’s because there are relatively few of them. For now. Just had to get that out there!

Brett

I’ve lost count, but I believe 2007 marks the ninth year that I’ve created photo calendars for my family. Every year I scare them by telling them that I just didn’t make enough photos this year to come up with a good calendar. They never take me seriously and I have always managed to put thirteen photos (one for each month and one for the cover) from the year gone by into a calendar that they can enjoy until the next year.

Back when I started doing this, there were no online photo services and very few digital cameras, if any. The first two or three calendars were made by Kinkos. I would label the photos by the month and they would make color enlargements and laminate the photos and the calendar pages and assemble the calendars. Then as inkjets and scanners improved I started scanning my 35mm prints and printing my own enlargements for the calendars. I even did my own assembly by borrowing some time on the laminating machine and binder at my work. That was less costly, but needless to say the quality suffered.

This year I had plenty of photos. As you’ve noticed I have also been experimenting with Flickr and photo sharing online. My favorite online photo sharing and backup site has become Phanfare. More about them later. On Phanfare they give links to order prints, etc. One of the companies they use for printing is Shutterfly.

If you sign up with Shutterfly, they give you 10 free 4×6 prints to try out their service. I ordered my 10 prints right away so I could get an idea of their quality. If the prints were good then I wanted to give them a shot on this year’s calendar. I placed the order for the 10 prints and got them back in about a week. They looked great! I got busy right away uploading my calendar photos. I was able to choose special borders and even put in custom dates for the birhdays and anniversaries in our family.

My 2008 calendars arrived yesterday and I was beyond pleased! They did in fact look exactly like the Shutterfly previews, custom dates and all. No silly lamination here. The pages are heavy card stock with a nice white spiral binding and the photo results were of the highest quality. I like doing things myself, but there’s no way I could get this kind of quality doing the calendars myself. I can’t wait to see the reaction this Christmas eve!

If you’re looking for a printer, especially for calendars, I highly recommend Shutterfly.

Merry Christmas!

Brett

As part of a Dave Lakhani coaching group I learned about Mind Mapping software by a company called MindJet. Dave is a “rabid fan” and although I’ve only recently tried the software I can say that it is awesome!

I just learned about a webinar that Dave is doing for MindJet. Here are the details:

The webinar is called “Use The Power of an Hour & MindManager to Map 2007 Goals” and will show people how they can become more focused, and efficient in achieving business and personal goals by investing just one productive hour per day.

Dave plans to talk about his powerful formula for maximizing every hour, show people how to create what he calls “Fearsome Focus®” to maximize “personal effectiveness, help others identify and control once and for all the distractions that keep them from reaching their goals and create a “Master Life Vision Map.”

Here are the details, if you’re interested in attending:

Wednesday, December 13th
1:00- 2:00pm Pacific Standard Time

Link to register:

http://www.mindjet.com/us/company/events/webinars.php?s=3

Check it out!

Brett Weaver

http://www.brettweaver.com