The Biz

Most sites that are built exclusively around or are developed solely for mobile applications are probably dead. This may because the cost of mobile usage has been far too high in North America such that most mobile users are limiting severely how and when they access the net to avoid outrageous bills. Only now are annual flat rate fee structures coming into effect in North America.

Continue reading "Is the Mobile Web Dead? Not for Hybrid Web Apps" »

This morning, the Official Salesforce Blog announced that they have expanded their partnership with Google and together have delivered an industry-changing new product called Salesforce for Google Apps.

Techmeme and the New York Times has some great coverage on this developing story.

As heavy Salesforce and Google Apps users, we're pleased with this development and can see how we'll be using this dynamic duo for greater productivity and ultimately our ability to deliver a better service.

Continue reading "Salesforce and Google Link CRM Apps to Office Tools" »

Monday evenings, I typically grab an hour to listen to my favorite podcast, This Week in Tech (TWiT) hosted by Leo Laporte, with frequent guests John C. Dvorak, Patrick Norton and others who analyze the weekly news in from the world of technology.

Seeing as Audible is their major sponsor, I knew the time would come when they discussed recording audiobooks, the time required and how much narrators get paid.

Well, I've got some answers for you.

Continue reading "Leo Laporte Should Record an Audiobook" »

There's been some discussion regarding software developers exploring new ways to bridge the gap between desktop and web applications.

Development tools such as Adobe AIR and Mozilla Prism are the two most notable players. To get a feel for what can been done, Adobe had published a nice gallery of applications.

Let's face it, the only reason desktop applications are still relevant is because of bandwidth and security.

Continue reading "Web Applications Improve with Greater Bandwidth and Better Security" »

Sitemaps have been around since the advent of the Web and used primarily as a way to list all the pages on a particular website.

Nowadays, sitemaps have other purposes such as organizing web content by topic, showing the search engines which pages you have created and developing a linking structure that emphasizes specific areas of your website over others.

But just how do you make a sitemap? And, how do you get that sitemap into Google, Yahoo! and MSN? That's today's topic and for the webmasters and entrepreneurs out there, I think this article will be quite refreshing.

Continue reading "How To Create a Sitemap (For People and Search Engines)" »

An article in the New York Times explains how the barrier between man and machine is fading away.

For decades, we've been stuck with the mouse, icons and drop-down menus, originally invented at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s and made popular by Apple and Microsoft in the next decade.

How far have we come?

Continue reading "Voice Commands To Improve Data Input on Small Devices" »

News: There was a relatively short outage on Amazon’s S3 storage service a short while ago. Voices.com uses Amazon to host audio demos, but not auditions or files uploaded for SurePay escrow transactions.

Continue reading "Amazon S3 Outage" »

Photo by stevegarfield.

After the recent report that podcasting is on the rise in terms of both a larger listening audience and ad dollars spent on the medium, there's been significantly more chatter about how to start a podcast.

First and foremost, podcasting is about the content, not the technology. It's easy to get overwhelmed with technical details and special equipment, but it's really not that complicated.

Today, we're going to break it down into three simple steps; production, distribution and monetization.

Continue reading "The Three Layers of Podcasting" »

This tutorial covers how to export your Del.icio.us bookmarks by saving an XML file to your desktop, then importing that file into your personal Google account or your corporate Google Apps account.

You'll be amazed at how easy it is to do. Let's get started.

Continue reading "How To Import Your Del.icio.us Bookmarks into Your Google Account" »

Each year, the challenge generates thousands of entries and tens of thousands of comments from around the world, and results in high-profile recognition of 50 leaders, innovators, and technology pioneers. This year's challenge promises to be bigger and better.

Continue reading "Voices.com Moves Ahead in Fast Company's Fast 50" »

Even with the best instruments, microphones and recording gear, the quality of your recordings depends greatly on your preamps.

Let's dive in and learn about the differences between hardware and software preamps, as well as how to choose the right preamplifier for your home recording studio.

Continue reading "The Audio Recording Signal Chain : Preamps" »

A microphone, sometimes referred to as a mike or mic captures the sound of your voice and converts that sound into an electrical signal.

All modern microphones are designed to accomplish the same thing. A microphone takes varying pressure waves in the air and convert them into varying electrical signals.

There are five different technologies commonly used to accomplish this conversion:

Continue reading "The Audio Recording Signal Chain : Microphones" »

Over the next few articles, we'll be discussing "The Signal Chain", audio engineer speak for the steps that a sound takes during the recording process.

The decisive factor for judging the sound quality of an audio production is subjective and influenced by current trends.

Having said that, knowing and optimizing the signal chain in your recording studio will ensure the best possible sound with the equipment readily available to you. It is important for you to understand what each component in the signal chain requires to perform at its optimum state, and that's precisely what this series aims to teach you.

Let's dive in...

Continue reading "The Audio Recording Signal Chain : Sound Sources" »