I just reviewed EPKs from several sites and here is what I can tell you about them:

• Reverbnation – I can’t download photos in print resolution, OK otherwise. Videos link directly to Youtube. Correction: I can only download print resolution “Media Photos”, which not every artist has
• My Power Press Kits – hi-res photos are embedded in PDFs, which is endlessly annoying, but at least I can get them.
• ArtistECard – Beautiful but useless – photos are embedded and can’t be used by me, can’t easily copy the bio text. Really not a fan of this approach.
• SonicBids – I like this EPK I can easily download hi-res photos, copy text from bio, and the rest of the links are also included. The only negative is that there seem to be limitations on videos.
• Lafango – beautiful and functional. Except that videos are proprietary. Everything else I can live with. You can simply link directly to your Youtube videos in the links section.
• Epresskitz - FREE and perfect. Seriously. I can download hi-res pictures with a single click, the videos are directly on Youtube, and it’s overall very functional. Their flash intro is a gimmick that can be ignored. Yeah, send me a link to that and I will be happy. I like how it limits you at the free level so you are forced to only post 3 videos and 3 pictures. I’ll even link to them.

I will reach out to Reverb and Sonic about my findings. They should be able to adapt without too much difficulty. As a live venue promoter, I am precisely the person they need to please in order to maximize their clients’ profits.

In conclusion, I would recommend getting an Epresskitz account in addition to your usual reverb or sonic. The free level will force you to edit yourself to only your best 3 photos and videos and that will make my job so much better.

While it is tempting to use Facebook as an EPK, it doesn’t quite work that well for full-size image downloads unless you tweak things. It’s too dynamic for this purpose.

I wrote this article originally as part of my article on how to sell out your show with the aid of the venue’s in-house promotion team and it was getting too long to be a part of that post.

Congratulations on booking a show at the hottest club in town! Now what?…

Have you ever wondered why the club that so enthusiastically booked you, at least that is what your manager told you, is not doing much to promote you? Here’s what life is like on the other side of the table and how to get more promotion from your venue’s in-house promotion team.

First, a little background. I work with three of the hottest Latin music live performance venues. I have to keep up with programming entertainment three days at one venue, two days at another venue, and four days at our newest venue. As you can see, I am programming entertainment for nine different days for every week. We book up to three bands per night on some nights. On a typical week, we have to advertise for 3-5 bands, and often even more.

My clubs each have 500+ people capacity, so you would make serious money if you sold out our venue.

The bands that get promoted the most are either repeat bands that I personally liked, new to me bands whose music I liked in the first two minutes of researching them, or those who provide me with a pre-written copy and an electronic press kit.

Since you are likely to be the third option (although it’s likely that I’ll like your music too), this article is for you.

Elements of the ideal electronic press kit in order of importance:

• Contact info for the band’s acting publicist (essential)
• One-paragraph bio about the band in English (priority) and whatever other language you sing in
• Five printed 8.5×11″ posters with corresponding digital versions
• Direct links to the band’s two best quality Youtube videos
• 4×6″ digital flyers in both portrait and landscape
• Digital file of group photo of the band in print resolution
• These are are nice to have
• Technical requirements rider
• Digital 11×17″ poster
• Band logo in print resolution
• Headshot of the band leader in print resolution

This may seem like a lot, but I really need all these elements as they comprise my ideal electronic press kit. Anything that is missing from this list is something I have to either create or skip. Unless I have an added incentive, I will simply skip it.

Some of this order may seem unusual, but think about it from my perspective. I am trying to get you promoted with least effort on my part. I need to be able to reach you to request additional materials.

This is what I do to promote your show: I tell my staff to post your posters on my walls, copy/paste some text my event listings on Facebook, ReverbNation, and my ticketing provider, insert your horizontal 4×6″ flyer into my website slide show and link it to my Facebook event listing, attach your vertical 4×6″ flyer to my Facebook event listing as a cover image, and attach your Youtube videos to my event listings. Boom! I am done with your band in 2 minutes and I love you even if I am not in love with your music!

The headshot, the group photo, the 11×17″ digital poster and so on are nice to have if I want to produce a combo 11×17″ poster for my club, but most of my promotion is electronic.

Anything that I skip is a missed opportunity for your band! Most bands do not have posters on my walls, for example.

I want to spend no more than 2 minutes on promoting your band

Remember that my goal is to copy/paste and not let my time go to waste.

I don’t want to spend my time writing an original article about you, figuring out which of the 20 mediocre Youtube videos is your best, looking for a good high resolution image of your band (I spent 2 hours looking for a good picture of my $30/ticket headliner this week and finally gave up, which motivated me to write this article), or doing graphic design.

My role is to introduce my existing club patrons, who are not your fans, to your band and to get them excited about seeing you perform live. Unfortunately, I also have many bands that need to be introduced. Therefore, your job is to make my job as easy as possible.

Most online EPKs are not fully sufficient for me to create my event listings. They are great to introduce your band to fans and prospective bookers, but not all of them are very good from the perspective of a venue promoter. However, just about any of the online EPK providers would make my job much easier. I’d much rather ask you directly, using the contact information in your online EPK, for the missing bits instead of having to rely on Google to find information about you.

I split my review of online EPK providers into a different article as it was getting long.

Get to know your venue’s in-house promoter

You, as the band leader, should insist on getting the contact information for the venue’s in-house promoter. It’s probably not the owner. Your booking management rarely passes along the information we need to make your show more successful.

You need my

• Phone number
• Email address
• Facebook profile
• Preferred way to communicate with me (Emailing me is not the best option, by the way. Chat with me on Facebook for fastest response)

Time is of the essence! Send me the press kit as quickly as possible!

Immediately after you are booked, email someone like me directly with all the elements I mention in this article. Just send me an email message with the text of your bio and other text elements of your EPK as I describe them below, links to your online presence, and attach the image files directly to your email message. Advise me if you sent printed posters so I can alert my staff.

Very often the in-house promoter will not be told about you until the week of your show. In fact, you should assume that no one told me anything about your band until the last minute and gave me absolutely no information about you. Seriously, that is the truth about almost every band we feature on our stage. It really can be that bad in this business.

Please use Gmail to send this as then you can have a message up to 20MB in size and large graphics will definitely increase your message size. Other email providers sometimes have smaller message limits.

Here is what I really need from you in order to effectively promote your show:

Band’s promotion point of contact (your acting publicist)

This is typically not your booking manager who has too many bands on his hands and is primarily focused on booking and finding new venues. His job is to book you at my venue. Promoting the show is secondary. He is simply too busy to interact with someone like me.

My suggestion is to pick someone from your band (must speak English and be available after 5pm) to interact with venue’s promoters and take charge of the overall promotion effort by acting as your publicist. Why after 5pm? We, the nightclub promotion people, are nocturnal species.

• Email
• Cell phone (that gets answered after 5pm)
• Preferred method to communicate with them

Full listing of your band’s social media presence in order of importance:

• Youtube channel
• Facebook page
• Facebook profile for band leader and perhaps other band members
• Online EPK, if you have one
• Non-EPK profiles on Reverbnation, SonicBids, and similar…
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• You will notice that I don’t care about your website!

One-paragraph “Bio” about your band

This should be ideally in English (priority) and Spanish (if you are a band who plays in Spanish). You would be surprised how often the promoters do not speak your language.

However, the word “Bio” here is misleading! Let me clarify what it means in this context.

What I want from you as “Bio” is primarily the answer to a few key questions

• “What is your band famous for today?”. I am asking about any music awards and critical acclaim your band received in the past. Examples would include Grammy nominations, MTV music awards, how many CDs the band released, opening for national bands, links to articles about the band, etc – no, I am not kidding about any of this and we’ve featured bands who released 50+ records and won various high caliber awards.
  
  Go big here and don’t be afraid to brag, I need to grab people’s attention.
• “What is the latest single?”. I need to know which of your songs is getting most promotion today.
• “What is your biggest hit?”. I also want to know about the previous singles that did very well.
• “Where is the band leader from?”. I want to establish heritage and and affinity with my patrons.
• “What is the band’s primary genre?”. I want to know if you are merengue, salsa, reggaeton and so on.

Any other information is irrelevant. I don’t care about your life story, but I am happy to link to it. Help me sell your band to new fans.

This point is very important, so I will repeat it twice. I really need your “Bio” information in English for our Latin bands!

Here is what I would say about Fulanito, whose music I personally enjoy and whom we featured multiple times, as a skeleton for his paragraph:

About Fulanito

Fulanito is a Merengue artist who released 7 albums and comes from Dominican Republic. He is a two-time Grammy nominee for “Best Latin Album”. You heard his hit singles such as the mega-hit “Guallando” and the most recent single “Take it off”.

Can I write a lot more?

Sure, for Fulanito I can spend extra time on research and write a magazine article if I really wanted to.

However, that paragraph tells you about the band’s biggest hit “Guallando” and their most recent hit “Take it off”, where they are from, and what they are famous for. That, coupled with some hot videos, is enough to get someone’s attention.

You can send me a longer story, but I need a one-paragraph version with answers to my key 5 questions that I can simply copy/paste in addition to whatever manuscript you choose to send me. Put your one paragraph intro at the very top of your bio. I really don’t want to edit down your life story if I can simply copy/paste one paragraph of text.

If I have to edit your life story and it takes me more than 2 minutes, I am more likely to skip it entirely. I can’t include a multi-page life story for each of my 3 bands in my Facebook event listing and some info about my DJ and a page of info about my venue specials, amenities, and policies. Who is going to read all that?

Ship me some posters

Ship me 5-7 pre-printed 8.5×11″ posters that I can put on my wall with some space on them to write down the date of show. I’ll put one on my front door, one or two on my club walls and patio doors, one in each restroom, and one by each bar. While it’s nice to have 11×17″ posters, 8.5×11″ are a lot cheaper to print and would be equally effective inside the club.

This is very important: if the poster is good enough to not make the club look ugly, it will probably get posted by someone even before I see it because any club staff member can do this unlike the rest of our promotional efforts.

If I don’t have to print it, and most clubs can’t print an 11×17″ poster in-house so they have to make a trip to a copy store, it will get posted faster. Here is a scan of a wall poster that was on my club’s wall. Someone simply added a date with a Sharpie on the 11×17″ posters. On the digital copy, a few days later after I finally got it, I added the date with my editing software. Both actions took mere seconds and so this event got a lot of exposure at our clubs. You will notice that prints were posted first!

Since the promotion company did not give me a digital file, but they gave me plenty of prints, I had to scan this 8.5×11″ poster and so the digital quality is not optimal. Therefore, if you are shipping me some prints, please also include a copy of this file on the CD in your package.

Add a QR code to your poster

By the way, I would add a QR code to your poster that links directly to your main online presence (Website, facebook, youtube, reverb whatever). Just go to http://bit.ly and shorten your main URL. Then take the resulting link like one of my links http://j.mp/zedumg and add a .qrcode to that. Now your http://j.mp/zedumg becomes http://j.mp/zedumg.qrcode and that will have an image file of your QR code. You can track every scan of that code, by the way.

I would do this for both digital and printed posters.

Direct links to two of your very best Youtube videos.

Ideally, these should be your biggest hits with professional sound. I will link to them directly from my Facebook event listing that I will send to my club’s 5000+ friends and the objective here is make them fall in love with your sound. It must be Youtube because it will be directly embedded into your Facebook event listing.

Remember that I am typically not your fan, at least not until I heard you on my stage, and it is very likely that never even heard about your band. I can either choose to scrounge Youtube for your videos and try to find one where you both sound and look good, or I can do something more fun like spend more time on the dance floor with some hotties. Guess what I would rather do?

If you send me your Reverbnation EPK (electronic press kit), that is still not enough. How am I supposed to know which are your very best songs if you send me 20 videos? I don’t have time to view 20 videos.

If all your videos have terrible sound, link me to some Soundcloud tracks. Whatever audio/video you choose to link to must be directly playable on Facebook.

Oh, and I really hate those self-indulgent intro videos that are recorded with booming radio DJ’s voice. I will never link to those.

Digital 4×6″ flyers

An image file of a professional-looking 4×6″ flyer complete with your show date information and my club information or enough space where I can easily add my showtime information as I’ve done on Julio Bravo’s flyer. I can print a copy of that on 11×17″ and call it a day. I can also include that on my website as part of my slideshow and you will stand out from my other flyers.

I need a vertical “portrait” flyer for your “Facebook Skyscraper” – the image that gets seen at the top of the event listing and usually works best in vertical orientation.

I need a horizontal “landscape” flyer for your website slideshow and for your Facebook wall photo.

Pre-printed flyers would be nice, but they get expensive. If you are printing something, print me some posters instead. That is going to cost you a lot less and will still get you a lot of exposure.

Here I added my blue club logo, my contact info, and the date. The rest of the flyer was provided by the band.

Compare it to my in-house flyer. Notice that my in-house flyer focuses on promoting the night rather than the band itself.

I can give you a tip to maximize your investment in pre-printed flyers. You can pre-print a bunch of flyers and leave an area of them white. You can then run them through a laser printer (this is commonly done with envelopes, so look up how to print envelopes with a laser printer) and add showtime information specific to my club.

I am very happy to leave a stack of these flyers on my flyer table. Most other bands will not do that, so you will get a lot of attention. Be sure to include your information similar to what you see on the Montez image in the previous point. You want your new fans to be able to find you quickly.

That is exactly what I do with my in-house flyers in order to track the efforts of my outside promoters, but most clubs do not have someone who knows how to do that. Ideally, you would have both a vertical (portrait) and a horizontal (landscape) 4×6″ flyer. I would use the portrait flyer on my Facebook event listing and the horizontal flyer on my website slide show.

One good high-resolution group picture for your poster

One good high-resolution picture that I don’t have to edit other than to add my club logo, date of show, and my club contact info. I want to simply print it 11×17″ and post it on the wall of my club as quickly as possible to maximize your exposure. If you have nothing else, send me a high resolution file of your CD cover or your proposed CD cover.

Let me show you an example of a very good promotional image that I used to promote this show. Montez de Durango projects the image of a successful band. Notice the band’s logo, clear shot of all band members, interesting background, the band’s official social media pages, and plenty of space at the top where I can add my own graphics.

Reverbnation RPKs do not let us easily download hi-resolution images unless you specifically upload “media” photos.

One good headshot of the band leader

It’s always nice to have a headshot of someone that can be used as part of something we are making in-house to help promote the show.

Reverbnation RPKs do not let us easily download hi-resolution images unless you specifically upload “media” photos.

Your band’s logo

This is important if I decide to promote you on Facebook and do presales. Since I have a very limited amount of space, I will use your logo, not my club’s to feature in your ad. I’ve done that for Fulanito and Montez.

What the sound engineer needs to know (technical rider)

I put this in the end as this is not strictly for me (although I know my way around the mixing console), but it would help us to better prepare for your show. Think of me as being in the twilight and the sound engineer being in pitch darkness about your band. I can at least look you up online, hear what you sound like, and so on. The sound engineer’s job is to rig you up ready to go live in a matter of minutes based on zero information. I’ve seen them look up band pictures to try to guess what technical requirements the band might have. It is a very stressful task!

Your sound engineer will treat you like a rock star if you can provide him with this information and I will certainly share it with him in advance.

Ideally, you would simply send me your “technical rider”. If you do not yet have one, it’s a very good idea to create one now. You should assume that the venue did not share with the sound engineer your technical rider you submitted when they signed your contract. I know this may sound absurd, but I am telling you directly what you need to know based on reality.

Here is what we really need to know:

• Total number of band members, their names, and what instruments do they play. Please list all of the instruments and special configurations like drum mics so we can properly mic your drums and accommodate multiple keyboards, acoustic guitars, harmonicas, etc.
• Total number of microphones and direct boxes required per show.
• Does your singer require a special mic? Most will sound great with a base Shure SM58 but some singers absolutely require a high sensitivity mic like a Sennheiser e840 or a Shure Beta series mic to be heard properly. Please be sure to let us know in advance if you are planning to use a condenser mic as that can create some additional challenges if the venue uses mic splitters.If we don’t know about your special mic requirements, we can’t make you sound your very best. If you are one of the people who has special mic requirements and we hand you a regular mic, your voice will sound like a muffled AM radio and the instruments will drown you out further.No one will enjoy that performance. I am personally very annoyed when I hear that, especially when the instruments sound great, but by that point it is simply too late.
• What are your monitoring requirements (how many monitors, how do you like them positioned, what instruments do you want in each mix, and so on). If I have 2 monitors on my stage and you require 4, we are probably not going to have an easy time with your show, right? We can’t always accommodate all monitoring requests, mostly for budgetary or technical reasons, but it doesn’t hurt to let us know what you prefer so we can try our best to meet your requirements.
• What are your preferred channel allocations? This is optional, but could be handy.

Your in-house promoter is like a (very lazy) music journalist

Think of me as someone who writes articles for music magazines. These writers typically get a press kit sent to them by the band’s publicist. Some of my listings were republished as articles with little modification, and some I sourced from various magazines as well.

The less original research I have to perform, the more likely your story will be more complete and you will receive more promotion from the venue. I want to be done with you in 2 minutes.

If I am not your fan (I doubt I am Hunks’ target demographic…), but I have all these elements, I am happy to copy/paste all this into all my various places where I promote my events and move on to the next band. Our articles (event listings) do not have to be perfect. In fact, there is no requirement for there to be an article and I can skip over writing anything about your band, which I do most of the time if it starts to require too much research. There is no editor to whom you can appeal my event listing.

Therefore, we are lazy. Do our work for us and we will happily promote your band to everyone we know.

Lastly, I am going to refer you to a very good graphic designer. It is crucial to work with someone who truly understands this business. His name is Brian at Elite Design Works and he does exceptionally good work when it comes to flyers even if you do not know what you want. You will also like his rates.

By the way, if you are not booked yet, if you walk in with all this into my club, in addition to your demo CD, you are probably going to increase your chances of being booked.

It does not have to cost much to produce a high quality web video

A great online video consists of several key elements

• Presenter
• Content
• Visuals
• Audio track
• Videography

Audio is more important than video for your online presentations

Surprised? Think about how you currently produce your web videos and your web meetings. Oh, right. You do not produce them. You call into your webinar from your cell phone and hope that your prospects that you fought so hard to bring into this meeting are paying attention to you. Convenient? Sure. Does it cost you sales? You bet it does.

You may well be using better technology for producing your product videos, but why are you subjecting your live prospects to the remnants of 19th century technology.

The telephone was invented in April of 1876.

Regardless of how great your telephone device is, you are still subject to the limitations of the phone network from 1876. The analog telephone network is limited to 3khz of bandwidth. That is likely meaningless to you, but you surely know the difference between listening to a 32kbps mono MP3 and 192kbps stereo MP3. The 32kbps sounds like AM radio. The 192kbps file sounds like a CD recording to most people with the exception of some audiophiles.

Would you make a music record using your cell phone?

If a 32kbps file sounds like AM radio, what do you think a 9.6kbps file sounds like?

The actual bandwidth of the GSM codec used by your cell phone is 9.6kbps

Everything you say gets downgraded to sound quality that is far below even that of AM radio.

Consider how the people are consuming your live presentations. Are they sitting at the computer? Can they listen to your presentation using their computer?

Which of the following sounds better?

• You -> telephone -> cloud -> listener’s computer
• You -> cloud -> listener’s computer

Buy this. This microphone costs less than $25. As of this writing, it was $18!

Audio Technica ATR-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser Microphone

Every computer today is equipped with a sound interface. Why not take full advantage of that?

If you must dial-in, please, use Skype. The quality of a Skype call is far superior to any cell phone conversation.

Audio quality is critical to the success of any virtual presentation. There does not have to be any difference between a marketing video and a live web conference call. Use the same equipment.

Video can be produced in two ways

• Screencast
• Live action video

A camera is simply not required for a screencast. An engaging presenter equipped with sufficient audio tools does not necessarily need a live action video.

Pay attention to how TV news programs are produced. There is not a single moment on your TV screen where there is a static image. They use slow panning for images. You may want to look into techniques how to introduce that to your videos.

Still working on the video portion of this post… stay tuned

Do you want to make yourself look fat?

That’s precisely what will happen when you extend your arm with the camera and try to take your own picture.

You will experience what is known as “wide angle effect”. When the camera is too close and the lens is too wide, your picture becomes distorted.

Look at the results closely. Do you see that your face is distorted? Do you see that your arm appears disproportionately large?

Arm-length pictures have two things in common:

1. They will make a supermodel look ugly – believe me on this. I am a gatekeeper on a website for models. I see thousands of images of women who range from fairly attractive to centerfolds. Even they look awful with such images. I denied a verified Playboy Cybergirl of the month access to our site until she uploaded better quality images.
2. They make people engage in forensic analysis to try to figure out what your face would look like without these distortions. That’s hard work.

Please have someone who knows what they are doing take a headshot of you. The camera should be in zoom mode and no closer than 6′ from you. There are exceptions to that rule, but they involve expensive equipment. You want to stand outdoors in a shadow about 6′ away from the wall ideally after 5pm or at any time on an overcast day. Avoid direct sunlight.

Correcting an Adobe oversight, bypassing geolocking, and splitting Firefox to be even more useful…

This is going to be a little technical, but it shouldn’t be too bad. You can follow me on Twitter as @WISELEO.

By the end of this post, you will accomplish the following:

1. Watch flash content on one monitor full screen while work or tweet on another
2. Watch foreign country video content without being told “You can’t see this”
3. Split your Firefox browser into multiple sub-browsers
4. Add custom routing table entries to keep your local Twitter access quick and direct

Here is a sample of what we are trying to achieve

Pretty cool, isn’t it? I got BBC iPlayer on one screen displaying Spa 2010 Grand Prix and Formula 1 live timing, TweetChat, and Twhirl on the other. By the way, I am in USA.

Full screen flash patch

There is this really interesting tool called Ignoflash and you can download it at http://deve.loping.net/projects/ignoflash/. It corrects one annoying “feature” of Adobe flash player. If you have two or more monitors and ever tried to watch a video full screen while working on another monitor, you discovered that Flash player exits full screen mode as soon as you click.

1. Download the tool
2. Unzip it and launch the tool (if you use Vista or Windows 7, please run it as Administrator)
3. Click the down arrow on the drop-down box above the big “Browse” button (ignore it, you’ll never find these files manually) and select the line containing NPSWF32.dll (NP is Netscape Plugin)
4. If you do not have that line, you need to install Adobe Flash player from Firefox.
5. Ensure that Firefox is not running by checking in Task Manager and ending the process if necessary
6. Ensure the radio button points to Netscape and not ActiveX
7. Select at least “Ignore focus changes” and click Apply.
8. It will probably say failed to patch 10.0 but success patching 10.1. That’s normal.
9. Your Firefox is now patched. Start it up, go to Youtube, and test full screen video.
10. Optionally, feel free to patch your Chrome and IE flash players as well. The .OCX file needs to be set to ActiveX, the rest are all patched as Netscape.

Watch foreign country video content (USA, UK, China etc)

I use a service http://usaip.eu which provides me with custom VPN. They have US IP addresses, UK IP addresses, China IP addresses and so on. I’ve been using them for 2 years now and the service absolutely rocks.

You can test it in 7 minute increments with a free demo account user/pass demo.

Once you verify it works in either or both L2TP or PPTP mode, buy an account. It’s about $9.63 per month. The account takes about 5 minutes to activate.

Follow their instructions, and you should be able to access BBC content now. I recommend connecting to UK 2.

You need to be running on VPN for the rest of these instructions.

Fox Splitter / Split Browser for Firefox

This is a lovely little extension. It allows you to split your browser window into multiple sub-windows. And even then there is a trick that took me a while to figure out. You will find it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4287/

1. Install the extension
2. Restart Firefox
3. Open http://www.formula1.com/live_timing/live_timing_popup.html – register and login if necessary
4. Open another tab and open http://tweetchat.com/room/F1 – authenticate to Twitter to participate in #F1 chat
5. Right click on the and choose “Split to the left” – this is important as otherwise you’ll have “interesting” time trying to stack sub-frames properly on the left
6. Right click on the TweetChat tab and click New Tab
7. In the new tab, go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/default.stm – we’ll use this tab for the new real-time car position window.
8. Right-click on the BBC F1 tab and choose split to the left
9. Now, right-click BBC F1 tab that is now next to the timing tab and choose Split to above.
10. Choose whatever the link is that says “Live – ____ Grand Prix”
11. You now have F1 Live Timing at the bottom, F1 live video at the top, and TweetChat to the right
12. I also keep a Twitter client Twhirl underneath my Firefox window, but that’s up to you.
13. Click File -> New Window and drag the new window to your other monitor
14. Go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/default.stm and click the “Live – ____ Grand Prix” link
15. You might as well activate BBC One video full screen at this point and continue your setup on the other screen.
16. Choose the real-time driver position above living timing after the start and be sure to click mute on that feed.

Whew… That was a LOT of confusing clicking, wasn’t it? Imagine trying to figure it out the first time!

Final settings – custom routing table

Once you are up and running on VPN, every request goes through VPN, which can be ridiculously slow.

If you have XP, simply launch a command prompt

1. Click Start
2. Select Run
3. type CMD and click OK

If you have Vista or Windows 7, you will do some extra steps.

1. Click the start orb
2. In the “Search” portion of start menu, type CMD and wait a second
3. Right-click the CMD it finds and choose “Run as Administrator”
4. This will launch a command prompt with elevated privileges

What we want to do now is bypass VPN for our Twitter clients.

Let’s first find out what is our default gateway.

1. Go to our command prompt
2. Type “ROUTE PRINT” and press Enter
3. At the top you will see some entries similar to
   IPv4 Route Table
   ===========================================================================
   Active Routes:
   Network Destination        Netmask          Gateway       Interface  Metric
   0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0      192.168.1.1    192.168.1.136   4250
   0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0         On-link     172.31.46.181     26
4. See the 192.168.1.1 value after the first set of a couple sets of quad zeroes? Whatever that number is in your case should be what you use in the following commands. 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 are very common.
5. The following IP addresses correspond to various Twitter-related services so just run them as is.
6. What you want to see in response to entering your commands is “OK!” or something similar.
   C:\Windows\system32>route add 168.143.162.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1
   OK!
7. Simply type these commands very carefully and press Enter to activate the new routes
8. route add 168.143.162.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1
9. route add 70.86.182.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.1.1
10. route add 128.121.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0 192.168.1.1

This configures your computer to use Twitter outside VPN so it’s going to be much faster.

Speaking of configuring TweetChat

1. After you login to http://tweetchat.com/room/F1 with your Twitter credentials, it becomes a fairly full-featured Twitter client
2. It automatically appends #F1 to the end of your tweets
3. Click refresh rate and set it to 5 sec
4. Click “toggle font” to fit more tweets on your screen
5. Reload the frame if it becomes too slow

Summary

I hope you enjoyed this article. Formula 1 is streamed without commercials online. You also have full access to all BBC content, such as the iPlayer.  After the race you can also watch the BBC Forum (Red Button) by simply waiting a few minutes after the race stream finishes.

If you are using VPN for security so your data can’t be intercepted while you are at an unsecured Wifi location such as Starbucks, please do not enter these route add commands to ensure that the entirety of your session is encrypted.

I feel very strongly about how Facebook continually forces users to be less secure by default.

Let me show you what I mean.

• Facebook Social Plugin is used on over 100,000 websites
• Facebook already has the “Only Me” option, but unless you look for it very hard, you will not find it

All I want Facebook to do is to add the “Only Me” option as a one-click button to instantly secure your account.

Most users don’t realize how much Facebook shares by default.  As the service continues to envelop the globe, it’s becoming a de-facto database potentially containing every human on Earth.

I don’t think I am out of line when I suggest that some of them might want to keep their privacy and have the option to share data sporadically.

To that extent, I posted a comment on Techcrunch http://tcrn.ch/bhrw4T and got attacked for being ridiculous to apply a “secure by default” concept to social media.

However, I happen to own a startup that is acutely focused on security. One of the problems we solve is data disclosure. Thus, I am aware of what happens when wrong data becomes published.

Sooner or later, a high profile case will highlight this point.

A simple example could be this.

You apply for a job. You don’t want to show up on their radar screens, so you lock down your social media accounts. You are hired, and you unlock them.

Another example could be getting your parents on Facebook.

They don’t know how far-reaching it is. So setup a sandbox for them until they are ready to figure out how to adjust privacy settings.

Facebook should offer the option of “Only Me” as one of its default options. “Friends Only” is not enough. We make “friends” in social games who might not necessarily be very friendly.

I have about 400 friends on my Facebook account. Out of them, only 12 are in my “Real Friends” list. The rest are casual contacts. They shouldn’t see a lot of data my real friends are entitle to access.

In the spirit of Eric Ligman, who always comes up with crazy ways to get customers with fewer than 5 employees enrolled into Open Value volume license agreements (did you hear the one about using $8 licenses for Office Mobile to open an Open Business agreement http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2010/03/18/microsoft-open-license-basics-the-8-way-into-microsoft-volume-licensing.aspx), I decided to illustrate some of my creative ways to save customers lots of money when deploying servers.

I’ve been thinking how to save my customers the most amount of money when buying servers.

Traditionally, as a consultant I am expected to do this:

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Simply put, Microsoft Software Assurance really allows you to get the support you need when you need it.

It is expensive to support older software. Professionals like me have a huge knowledge base about the product, but after a while all that version-specific knowledge fades away. We forget the tricky workarounds to bugs, we assume that a feature from the newer version was present in the old software, and in general what takes 5 minutes to troubleshoot on a current version takes over an hour on older software.

Sure, I can support Microsoft Exchange 5.5 server. I can also support Novell NetWare 3.12. How many others do you think can do it anymore without doing extensive research? Do I really want to support Exchange 5.5 and all its limitations?

Another example is Microsoft Office. Many innovations happen on that platform. Yet as new platforms get rolled out, older software is no longer supported on them. Outlook 2002/XP can’t remember POP3 account passwords on Vista and Windows 7. The older version uses API that is simply not in Windows 7 anymore. The new API was introduced in 2001. 3rd party add-ins are rarely updated for older releases.

Software assurance + Open Value is actually a cheaper way to license Microsoft’s software. You typically get two or three versions of the product. Buying Windows Server releases without enrolling it into Software Assurance is again not a very smart thing to do. As soon as you introduce the next version of Windows Server 2008 into your network, your Server 2003 CALs are no longer valid. A software assurance customer gets replacement CALs automatically. A customer who is not enrolled in SA must purchase these CALs at full price again. This is not very painful on Windows Server, but SQL Server and Exchange CALs are very expensive and cost hundreds of dollars per user. There are no upgrade CALs available.

Open Value, which includes Software Assurance, comes with extra benefits. You get elearning training for your products. You get cold server standby license. One of the most valuable benefits, however, is ability to pay for your licenses in 3 annual payments. Think of it as interest-free financing.

I can open an Open Value Software Assurance volume license account for any customer for as little as $40. While it is true that you need to have at least 5 licenses to start, there are licensing tricks that most people don’t know about.

Next time you are buying a server, think about not paying Dell’s OEM fee, but instead to license it through Open Value license. However, even if you do buy an OEM server, enrolling it into SA gives you similar benefits to as it you bought it through Open Value in the first place.

As of this writing, one of my favorite products Microsoft Outlook 2010 with BCM is slated to only be available to volume customers in both Office 2010 Standard and Office 2010 Professional Plus SKUs. I will work with existing BCM customers to setup a volume customer account even if they have fewer than 5 employees.

In short, if you wish to save money using Microsoft software, you will benefit from opening a volume license agreement. Talk to me about how this really works. We also have financing and subsidies available.

As of this writing, you can buy Office 2007 today and get Office 2010 free.

I am a Microsoft licensing expert who knows a frightening number of ways how to save on software licensing. For example, I can setup a web server with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server for less than $1000 for unlimited number of users. Talk to me today. 510-282-1008

A little birdie known as Microsoft Partner Program dropped this package at my door step

In it I have a lovely3x6′ banner proclaiming that I am a Microsoft Small Business Specialist. That’s not as obnoxious as my 4×8′ Vista launch tour banner though.

I also got a DVD named “Windows Foundation Server 2008R2″. I decided to investigate what it is.

After all, I just got some seriously nice hardware (two quad xeon 3.66Ghz IBM x366 servers with a 6-drive SAS array and 8GB RAM) and can finally play with 64-bit applications.

I ran into one interesting road block when I tried to find pricing for this product. It’s not really available in any form except as when purchased from an OEM such as Dell or HP.

I knew it would be cheap, but Dell is selling this for $279.

Let me give you an idea what a tremendous value this product is. It is a full-featured and mostly unrestricted Windows 2008 Server product that can host any Windows Server application.

Most Microsoft products require what are known as CALs (client access licenses). This product, priced at an incredible $279, comes with 15 built-in CALs.

Here is what it costs to get a Windows Server 2008 for 15 users through other means.

Windows Server 2008 Standard (5 CAL) - $726
Windows Server 2008 CALs (10 users) – $300

Grand total for Windows Server 2008 – $1026

Small Business Server 2008 Standard (5 CALs) – $952
Small Business Server 2008 (10 CALs) – $674

Grand total for SBS 2008 Standard – $1626

As you can see, Windows Foundation Server 2008R2 is a tremendous value. It’s about $1026 worth of technology available for less than $300 when you buy a new low-end server.

It has some minor limitations (supports single socket CPU although it will support all cores if you have a quad-core chip, it can’t have more than 15 users, there is the limit of 30 SMB concurrent connections, can’t have children or be a child, and a few other restrictions), but businesses with fewer than 15 users are ideally positioned to use this product.

Personally, I love the SBS product. I have been selling  and supporting it for over a decade now. Microsoft hit the jackpot with the SBS 2003 release. It is a not a very cheap product and many things can go wrong if an unqualified person attempts to make some changes.

Now, however, my advice to microbusinesses is to reduce complexity. Get the Foundation Server so all your workstations start to talk to each other in the domain, and add Exchange and Sharepoint services hosted by Microsoft Online Services. This way the business owner can keep relatively manageable services on-site, but things that require substantial expertise such as Sharepoint and Exchange can be handled by experts.

Microsoft calls it the Business Productivity Online Suite.

While a complete description of what BPOS is deserves its own article, in a nutshell you pay $10/mo/user and Microsoft hosts your Exchange and Outlook services.

Want to try Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite? It’s free for 30 days and no credit card is required.