Sure, you’re on DropBox or Box.net…and that’s great!  You may even be on Microsoft’s Skydrive.

But wouldn’t you like to show you clients you’re TOTALLY in control of this cloud thing?

What about developing your own client portal?

It’s a way to extend the brand you display on your website, your business cards, your twitter page, and your email blasts.  Imagine a branded page where you clients can go to download the files you’ve recorded for them.  This creates a wrap-around service for them that keeps ‘em in the fold of your brand from the point of contact to the delivery of the product (followed, of course, by your branded invoice!).

Click on the portal I’ve had built for CourVO.com to see what I mean.  Simple and clean.

There are services that design this for you.  FILE GENIUS is one that comes to mind.

From their promotional materials:  “…File Genius is now used by over 52,000 professionals and is the fastest growing portal solution available. More than 20,000 new users have come onboard in the past 4 months.  Unlike Box.net, Sharefile.com, and other online portals you do not pay for users, bandwidth, throughput, or any other “extras”.  Our solution moves files from one location to another and stores and organizes them for access in an extremely secure web environment. Anyone, including your clients, with a secure user account and access to the internet can use it and exchange documents. You can take a no-charge trial, no payment information is required,..”

File Genius may be overkill.  In which case,  just email me (courvo@courvo.com), and I’ll have my guy here in Vegas set it up for you…he’s very reasonable.

Some other new solutions “in the cloud” lately, are very impressive.

Skype fascinates me lately.  So much potential…so many new features (a new owner too — Microsoft — but so far they haven’t screwed it up).

But the thing that really gets me is the burgeoning cottage industry of 3rd-party vendors that are tapping into Skype’s functionality.  I’m not going to start with a list here (although that would make a great blog someday)…but let me ask you this:

Do you use Outlook, and do you use Skype?..then SkyLook may be for you.  From the native website, here’s a list of things they say SkyLook can do:

Sounds pretty impressive.  Possible downsides:  Outlook itself.  One of Microsoft’s flagship products, and certainly the focus of it’s own list of 3rd-party add-ons…the basic program is VERY heavy…meaning it takes a lot of your computer’s resources. So unless you have a monster processor and tons of RAM, expect Outlook to bog down your speed somewhat.

Another drawback:  Outlook’s price AND SkyLook’s price (you’ll have to go to their site to see for yourself).

But make no mistake both of these are POWERFUL work-process, productivity, and contact management tools.  Awesome really, when you think about it.

I’ve been laying off Outlook lately, but along with Xobni, Gist, Social Connector and others (list of 50 top Outlook add-ons), I may just be able to justify it again.

SKYLOOK.  Hey, c’mon, it’s worth at least a look.  You can dream can’tya?

CourVO

Since a lot of voice over talent use Skype for phone patch, or even in some instances, a sort of “poor-man’s Source Connect”, this may be of interest.

See the ZDNet article:  Skype starts installing crapware on Windows systems without consent.

CourVO

I thought EVERYONE had heard of that service by now.

2Gigs of free storage in the cloud…but the best part is the unbelievable ease-of-use with which DropBox has designed their product.  It appears as just another file folder on your desktop or in your Documents directory.  You treat it like any other folder…make subfolders…copy & paste stuff in and out…add subfolders…all that.  But wherever else you have DropBox installed, all that “stuff” magically appears there as well.  Other computers, other states, other countries, favorite clients, iPads…everywhere you have an account installed.

Even more handy is that fact that you can be invited, or invite others to “share” folders with your DropBox.  This means that clients can put you in their account (with your permission),  and you can copy & paste sound files there as if it were another folder in your directory, and wondrously, on the other end, your client finds it in THEIR folder.

This makes YouSendIt, or DropSend seem almost archaic.  FTP?  Forget it!…too complicated.

Some find that the free 2Gig account gets filled pretty fast, and upgrading means paying a monthly or yearly fee.  Visit their site for details.

Here’s a great blog article on How to Use DropBox as a Killer Collaborative Work Tool.

Other contenders:  Box.net, Amazon, and Microsoft SkyDrive.

Box.net is almost as easy as DropBox, but unless they’ve stepped up lately with a drop-dead-easy DropBox functionality, you still have to log onto the Box.net site to share files.  They have a similar free/pay-to-upgrade structure.

One good thing about DropBox and Box.net is that virtually every file-sharing iPad or iPhone app you can find has DropBox and Box.net compatibility built-in.   You’ll find that VERY handy.

Amazon is a real heavyweight in cloud storage for companies, but individual consumers can get lost in the esoteric and arcane functionality…in fact, I’ve never been able to figure it out…until now.

Here’s a website that explains how to turn the Amazon Cloud Drive into desktop-accessible storage.

Finally, for sheer size of cloud storage, Microsoft’s SKYDRIVE system can’t be beat.  MS offers 25 Gigs of free storage space online!  You need a Windows LIVE ID to get on, but the sign-up is easy, and the online interface is also pretty intuitive.  I’ve used this service to send major big files to clients.  I store it on my SkyDrive account…assign private status to the file, so only parties I designate can see it, then I send my client the URL.  That file is the only thing they see on my SkyDrive account…and they do not have access to the other stuff I have stored there.

I’m sure there are other similar services.  Zoho comes to mind….  but I think hands-down, the above lead the field.

CourVO

(Author adds 4-21-11 the worthy alternative of SugarSync…my thanks to John McClain for that suggestion).

Every generation has it’s opportunities for adventure.  Think of the explorers, the railroad or oil barons, even Bill Gates.  Each met a challenge on the frontier — be it Cape Horn, the Wild West, or a threshold of digital technology.

What is the world-changing opportunity lying right under our noses, that history will look back on in 50 years and say:  “Ya know, it really began in 2010…starting small with _________.”?

THE OUTBACK

The last such frontier was computer technology, the internet, the dot.com bubble…each building on the platform of the technology preceding it.  Microsoft and Apple were revolutionary outcomes of electricity, the phone system, and vacuum tubes.  And THOSE advances were built on advances in metallurgy, glassware, and the assembly line.

Make no mistake, THE NEXT BIG THING is forming right now…right here in the US…its nascent stem cells so defying prediction that we can’t see the thing-it-will-be.

Here’s my take on it anyway:  that “next big thing” will be some sort of paradigm, cultural revolution, or gizmo that binds us even more to one another — almost telepathically…and it’s being born in Social Media.

Ah…so that’s what you’re getting at, CourVO!!!…too many late nights on FaceBook!

…JUST AROUND THE CORNER!

But hear me out.  Three little recent developments — perhaps just insignificant baubles in the corporate world — that will be swallowed up by a Google, or a Lenovo, or a Zappos, may be the harbingers.

Gist.  This golden little software/cloud/assistive chunk of digital awareness will help put online social connections in perspective.  You can join online at Gist.com.  You can download the add-on version to MS Outlook, and you can further utilize Gist on your smartphone.  Gist is quietly amazing.  In Outlook (which BTW is not-so-slowly embracing social media itself: see the new OutLook Social Connector), Gist immediately adjusts to each email highlighted, telling you more…much more, about the person who just sent you a message, in the form of links, contact info, and social media sites.  Another great program of this ilk is XOBNI (inbox backwards).

StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit.  I group these together, ’cause they share a similar approach, which is to let YOU choose the headline, the trend, the hot topic. NewsVine is in this category.  Digg — a surprising survivor of Social Media competition — is about to launch a whole new site revamp that everybody is anticipating, and StumbleUpon just launched it’s new iPhone/Android app.  Actually, mobile is EVERYTHING.  Forget, radio, TV, computers…the trend is all towards personal info & communication on the go.

THE NEW WORLD

Which leads to the capper of my little diatribe today:  GeoLocation services.  This sector is going wild. Yelp and Loopt and a hundred other start-ups launched into this sector, built upon the capabilities of  GPS (remember the history lesson above?)   FourSquare popularized it, but over the weekend, FaceBook got on the bandwagon, and Google is right in the mix too, with “Google Places“.

Detractors caution about too freely sharing your whereabouts.  But advertisers are lovin’ this one…offering incentives, coupons, and special buys for those who check-in, reach out and take-advantage.  Amazing stories are emerging of people finding the very person they’re looking for (!) in the next store over, all because they both checked into FourSquare within minutes of each other on their smartphones.

WITHER VO?

Don’t ask me this question!  I’m just a blogger, not Rasputin…but let’s brainstorm for a minute.  Gist is easy:  it puts lots of handy information about possible voice clients and leads right where you can use it… on your computer and your smartphone.  StumbleUpon, Digg, etc. are like mini RSS readers that keep you up on business trends, and might give you ideas for warm-calling certain leads.

But Geo-Location?  I’m coming up blank on this one.  I gotta call my VO bud Terry Daniel who is absolutely rabid about this technology, and have him explain the big advantage for my voice-over business.  Will it help me to know, for instance, that the production supervisor hired by McDonald’s advertising agency is having coffee at the Starbucks just down from where I’m picking up my dry cleaning?  Hmmmm.

Will there be “places” barons in our near future?

CourVO

Here’s the catch:  I hate Outlook (and that’s coming from me, Dave, an unabashed Microsoft fan).  Here’s why: Outlook is an incredibly feature-rich program that practically bogs your computer down in excess code.

But I use it when I have to, and since Xobni integrates SO well, I end up using Outlook JUST FOR Xobni.

Case in point:  I began examining WHEN Voices.com and V123 leads came across with e-mail notices, and found an interesting trend.  (Yes, Xobni tells you that kind of information)

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Here’s Xobni’s graph of time-of-day Voices.com e-mail notices.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but it looks like a pretty good spike at 3am PST (6am EST).

The rest of the day is essentially a plateau with maybe a mini-spike at 11am PST (2pm EST).

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Now here’s Xobni’s graph of time-of-day V123 e-mail notices.

I’d say that’s a peak at roughly 10amPST (1pmEST).

The rest of THEIR day is all over the place.

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What’s my sample?  Since October 10th I got a total of 2,863 e-mails on my CourVO@CourVO.com e-mail account.  As you can see, Voices.com and V123 constitute my 2nd and 3rd most prolific incoming mail source.  I say all this to underscore that this is NOT a small sample.

I haven’t quite figured out why Xobni ranks V123 2nd with 64 incoming per day, and Voices.com 3rd with even more emails per day.  I may be reading that wrong, but I stand by my claim that this is a large sample, and a trend that should not be ignored IF you choose to wait by your computer for the hottest leads.

IF you’re doing that…then your leash from the computer is a short one regardless.  If you want to maximize the greatest possible hit-time to check out Voices.com and V123 leads, then, well…there’s your data.

The argument for and against pay-to-play sites rises to the level of Mac v. PC flame wars.

Then the secondary debate about V123 v. Voices.com rises to the level of mules v. elephants.

That’s another conversation.  I just thought this was a novel set of data no one had published before.

CourVO

Windows 7 is their best operating system yet.  Vista was good, but Win7 reaches the pinnacles to which Vista could never quite arise. The upgrade install was brainless.

I’ve been running Win7 on my laptop and my audio studio desktop computer for about 2 months, now, and the RC version (release candidate) is SOLID.  I swallowed hard when I installed on my studio computer.  I even dual-booted so I’d have my old XP to fall back on.  But I can’t remember the last time I booted up to XP.  I don’t get the blue screen of death anymore.

Win7 is fast, reliable, intuitive, forgiving, and innovative.

The following is list of VO-related software programs I run on Win7 with nary a hitch:

AudioTX ISDN
Sony SoundForge Audio Studio 9.0
Adobe Audition 3.0
GoldWave 5.52
Audacity 1.3.9
SKYPE 4.0
MS Office 2007
MS IE 8.0
FireFox 3.5
Opera 10.0
Google Chrome 3.0
Flock 2.5.2
Tweetdeck
WinZip
…and more

In fact, I haven’t found a program yet that runs on WinXP that won’t run on Win7…WITH TWO NOTABLE EXCEPTIONS:

-Pro-Tools (and I have the 7.4cs version)
-Source Connect 3.1 (which I use through it’s Source Elements Desktop interface — it doesn’t like Vista or Win7 either)

Win7 also happily accepts my legacy audio drivers for an old Soundblaster card, my USB-connected Alesis Multimix8, my M-Audio FireWire Solo, and my LexiconPro I.onix U42S audio interfaces.

So why, with all that going for it, do I feel like Microsoft is going down?

Redmond has gotten so big, and so dependent on legacy software-related solutions, that it hasn’t been agile enough to adapt to the new Google-driven paradigm of online software, cloud-computing, and  network-driven, New Media runaway hits.  Open-source was never something MS could understand.  They made their fortune on expensive, bundled, license-protected software.

Oh, it’s got a few tricks left, and some form of Microsoft will endure for many years…but it’s dominance is waning, and more quickly than most of us realize.

But I digress, and I don’t have the chutzpah to launch into a full-fledged diatribe about tech-giant wars.

I’m just tellin’ ya… if you’re feeling pressure to continue in the same vein for a while longer, Win7 is a very safe move.  The release is scheduled for October 22nd, and I’ll be there…in fact I’ve petitioned to hold a launch party.

Click HERE for the latest from MS on Win7.

CourVO

On the VO-BB, Lou is always quick with helpful technical tips…and I just knew he’d have a suggestion for me.

     I needed to back-up saved soundfiles to a USB HD.  This is something I need to do on a regular basis, and it means transfering a whole directory or sub-directory of files.  But I may have already transferred some of those older files, and don’t need more copies at my destination drive…AND I don’t want to answer endless qualifying questions from XP about whether I want to over-write certain files.

   Lou pointed me to SyncToy.
SyncToy is avaiable at the Microsoft Website, but is not supported by the company.  However, it’s a very robust and feature-rich program that did just what I needed, and it’s offered at no cost.

Later, Lou wrote back to offer yet another link to a program called Goodsync, which is not free.

CourVO

Apparently, one of the big announcements to come out of the conference is that Microsoft is releasing the Beta version of it’s Internet Explorer browser 8.0. 

Read more about the new version HERE.  MS seems to be ready to play nice, and join it’s competitors in common standards for browsing protocols.

More HERE from one of the presenters at the conference.

Download the new browser HERE.

CourVO