Technology : Howe Innovative Design

August 20, 2018

No Comments

What should you do if your digital content is stolen?

After a lovely weekend camping in the Sawtooth National Forest, I woke up to an email notifying me of another website’s pingback to two of my recent blog posts Low Nickel Gardening and Nickel Free Sunscreen. Whenever I write anything online, I enable the pingback setting in the rare instance another website will link back to my blog post. The majority of the time I’m aware when a blog post link will be pinged back because they have contacted me and sought permission or collaboration. However on this particular Monday morning, another website had scrapped or copied my entire blog post content, including my photographs. Not only was it alarming to have my content outright stolen, but to have my copy written content and photographs of Stevie and I gardening and my face claiming to be the work of another’s website hurt.

I went online to get support from other bloggers and one suggested I use the perspective that my content is “awesome enough to steal.” WTF. Who says that? Another blogger mentioned her food photographs had been stolen by a national magazine company and one was placed on the first cover of a national magazine. She suggested not paying for an attorney and letting “karma do its job.” I appreciate their perspectives, but no, a lot of time and energy went into crafting my content and the photographs were family photos. I’m not going to sit around and accept it’s okay for another person or company to infringe on my copyright rights.

What should you do if your digital content / intellectual property is stolen?

January 11, 2017

No Comments

Video Marketing: You need It. Here’s Where to Start PT.1

Welcome to the 4 Part Video Marketing Series

We’ll start with platforms for posting videos. Where and how you want to post determines what equipment and resources you’ll need. If a simple vlog on YouTube is what you seek a solid phone with a lavalier mic is fine. For crowdfunding videos higher quality productions is required. Business promotion is still a higher tier.

In Part II I’ll talk about the equipment I use and offer you the benefit of my endless research. In Part III, we’ll look at Editing software. In Part IV we’ll dive into copyrights.

Video marketing begins with watching videos. It’s easy enough. You’ve already been doing it in the bathroom, on the bus, on your phone, tablet and computer. It’s crept into your Facebook and Twitter feed. Even Instagram is in motion. Your smart TV has a YouTube app. Without realizing it, you’ve become a major consumer of video marketing.

Our brains are evolved to track motion, lights and identify faces. It’s reflex, we can’t help it. Our monkey brains may get us to click or turn up the volume but you’ve got to entertain the cerebral cortex if you’re going to keep viewers or get them to share.

I’ve had fantastic experiences with Vine, the 8 second social media video platform. Twitter bought it and announced it was killing it. It’s still live but all those astonishingly talented wunderkinds making great art are moving away. Here are some video platforms to post to social directly or to host your videos for sharing across platforms.

Options for low maintenance video for social media platforms:

Persicope– Live video streaming on Twitter. This platform is gaining popularity for low maintenance vlogging for consultants. I’m not impressed with the grainy, poorly or non scripted videos appearing in my feed. Frankly, it’s like showing up to a date in sweatpants. Put in a little effort. Periscope has potential. I’m not watching it at this time and I will take literally ANY excuse to watch a video online.

Facebook Native– I see lots of front lit, tight headshots of self-promoters gesticulating wildly to overcome scrolling, muted videos. I’ve yet to click on a single one. Better resolutions than Periscope. Facebook’s main failing as a marketing platform for me: Users aren’t in a purchasing mindset. If you’re doing video on Facebook edutainment or entertainment are the keys. Don’t sell me, Tell me. Show me a great story with lush visuals, voice over and solid script. Good for big brands but not so much for independents, like me.

Instagram– I’ve officially just seen my 500th shot of snow in Portland. Limited from 3-60 second long, you can do A LOT on Instagram. Most broadcast commercials are 15-30 seconds. Instagram is engagement gold. If you’re looking for validation for your social media efforts, you’ll get it here. Make it fun, fast, apply filters and speak DIRECTLY to your audience. Literally, like you’re talking to a friend.

YouTube- Owned by Google, it has become a verb & noun: YouTubing (to post a video on YouTube) & YouTuber (A person posting on YouTube). If you have a Gmail account, you have a YouTube account. It has the disadvantage of ads you cannot control, including those from your competitors or products you may not want to be associated with. The advantages: Heavy Google favor for SEO for video titles and keywords plus a built in audience.

Vimeo- Exceptional quality HD & 4K video with no ads (for Plus plans for better). If you’re a true professional, this can be a fantastic platform, with player customization and loads of features for a reasonable price. This is a personal favorite as a web developer and social media manager. Great embedding and sharing options using HTML5. If you want to build a portfolio, this is a great place to base it. Though, I haven’t hosted with them, it’s a very cost effective method, without the expense of a developer or complications of managing hosting, a serious ordeal I’m paid good money to endure. One of the biggest advantages: maintaining the copyrights and full control of your productions.

Next Post- Part II: The Rig: The Equipment

October 21, 2016

No Comments

Massive Internet Outage

Whoa.
Twitter.
Amazon.
Spotify.

All down. Following a DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service making access to sites hosted by Dyn a Domain Name System (DNS) provider inaccessible. Including all websites on the Squarespace and Wix.com systems. I’m going to pretend for just a minute that isn’t incredibly gratifying as a web developer. That those crappy do-it-yourself, saturate the airwaves with advertising providers don’t offer secure services… That’s a different blog.

Ok. But what does this mean?

We don’t use Dyn for our DNS (domain names).

No Howe Innovative Design clients are affected or effected by this attack.

It’s mostly East Coast sites that are down.

Deep breaths…

A DDoS attack is exactly what it sounds like. A bot has been programmed by a group of hackers (or possibly an individual, it’s not clear yet) to disrupt the system that indexes sites. A Domain Name System or DNS, takes complex Internet Protocol addresses (IP addresses) converting them to the domain name. Step One: open a search engine. For example, Google or Bing (we won’t make fun of you for using Bing). Then enter, “Kick ass web marketing, development and photography for cheap” you’ll ideally get “Howe Innovative Design.” Returning results in text: Howe Innovative Design with some meta tag and/or indexed content from the site.

July 15, 2015

No Comments

Picture of burnedout lightbulb shattering

Beware the Cool Idea

“Beware the Cool Idea.”

-Jeff Jarvis in his book What Would Google Do?

Tech Startups are in vogue. Those of us who are slightly older than the average white, male, clean cut twenty something, bright eyed tech founder remember the bubble in 2000. Wild, rampant speculation generating stock profits on paper, wiped away when the dot com bubble burst. All those great ideas so generously funded with Venture Capital, gone.

Hedge fund managers had to deliver the news. It became understood that tech stocks were volatile and high risk. Remember that? I do. I was entering my 20’s and college. I believed in the future of tech. I went to college to create a hybrid e-zine ultimately and get a job generally. The tech boom opened the door for companies like Google to plunder the underutilized, unemployed workforce of Silicon Valley. Creating the best damned search engine the world has ever known: Google. Sorry Bing. I’m a Google Partner. Every one of my clients wants Google love.

Fast forward 15 years later, everyone wishes they would have bought tech stock in Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. when the professionals heeded warnings. We all adopted the technology but not the underlying concept: innovation through problem solving. Scientists and entrepreneurs both solve problems to arrive at a solution. Research reveals the problems. Conduct testing, analyze the data and arrive at The Idea. Every good scientist will tell you, don’t start with the idea. Let the data guide you. Find the trends, the patterns, identify the technical realities.

Over the last five years, running Howe Innovative Design, I’ve met many entrepreneurs. I’ve been pitched many cool ideas. I’ve seen some slick graphics, presented by fit and sexy innovators. Plus, there’s frequently free hors d’oeuvre. I enjoy the presentations and wonder how they will generate actual revenue after those three rounds of venture capital funding. I’ve patiently listened while meeting to the passion they have for this project. They dismissively wave a hand at the notion of generating revenue. They confuse enthusiasm with currency. Passion is not the price of admission to the Fortune 500 club.

January 12, 2015

No Comments

How I Sold My Soul for Free GB

I literally sold out my mother for 512 MB of storage on Dropbox. I didn’t even need to do it. I managed to score 48 GB of free space for free. I’ll tell you how.

September 8, 2014

No Comments

Turn off Autobackup on Your Android Phone

A recent rash of naked celebrity photos ganked from iCloud prompted me to turn off my Android auto backup feature. Apple’s notoriously secure storage cloud wasn’t so much secure as simply not a target of hacking efforts. Apple’s small but exclusive market share made them undesirable targets. Why create a virus that can only infect 10-13% of all computers when you can create a virus that will devastate 82-87%% of all PC computers? Thus, PC’s have been targets of hackers. Plus, most government agencies use PC’s.

July 18, 2014

No Comments

Evil Spam Bot Ruins Analytics

I was checking my Google Analytics numbers. I noticed a very high bounce rate and a ton of visits from seamalt.seamalt.com. I have no idea who that is or why they are visiting my site 38 times a day. I turned to Google for answers. Turns out an evil bot is probing my site and not even buying us dinner.

Seamalt is an Ukranian SEO company with an obnoxious search bot, pinging sites, blowing up analytics and ruining your analytics data to try to drum up customers. It’s spammy, it’s gross, it targets WordPress sites and I want it out of my numbers. You should too. If you want to get rid of Seamalt you have several options. I will be doing this for all of my current and future clients.

To Remove Seamalt:

June 24, 2014

No Comments

Small Business Marketing Toolkit #1

Brand Promise. You need one.

“Great!” you say.

“What is that?”

Okay. Crafting your Brand Promise is a process. It begins with asking some questions.

Image courtesy: Scrapbook Marketing Minute

I began Howe Innovative Design to solve a problem. There simply weren’t affordable yet skilled web designer in my area. It was one or the other. My first client was a local non-profit. This opened the door to creating client solutions and developing what was to become my brand identity.

Let’s get started with your Brand Promise.

February 27, 2014

No Comments

Zombie Apocalypse hits Meetup.com

Meetup.com Latest Casualty to DDoS attack

On February 27, 2014 Meetup.com the online social networking platform facilitating offline groups around the world, suffered an epic hack. The problem was discovered as a result from a Tweet at 7:50 am. Four hours later, the crew of Meetup announced the platform was down due to a DDoS attack.

February 25, 2014

No Comments

5 Simple Steps to Create Your Web Marketing Strategy

Create Your Web Marketing Strategy in 5 Simple Steps

There are several questions you should ask when creating and/or updating your website. Answering these 5 questions will allow you to strategize exactly what you want your website to do (it’s functionality) and say (its content).