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Month: January 2013

Anatomy of a Kickstarter project: Photo phobia

In the first article I posted on my painful climb to kickstart my business, Elegant Insights Braille Creations (www.elegantinsightsjewelry.com), using Kicstarter, I described some of the basics behind posting a project.  As of that article, I had not yet finished the video that is supposed to accompany the business or project profile.  I found the process of video creation to be one of the most painful things I’ve ever done, and in the end, I chickened out. 

Ideally, you are supposed to put your best face forward, blow your own horn, talk up your talents, put it all on display.  You should craft a video showcasing you and your project in a way that is so compelling, your viewers simply cannot resist throwing money in your direction.  after all, who wants to pledge money to a project that does little more than elicit a yawn?  So, you either have to be personality plus, or pitch an irresistible offer.  Some videos are very low production value, just a person sitting and talking about their project in front of their laptop webcam.  Other videos are mini multi-media productions that make one wonder why they need the money in the first place.  Despite my best efforts to be interesting, I succumbed to my fear of being in front of the camera and made my video all about the product.  all you’ll get of me is my voice doing the narration.  it’s quite the cringe-worthy commercial.  But everyone has to play to their strengths, and my otherwise long list does not include being a media maven.  All I can hope for is that my plea for pledges will be appealing enough, and by extension, distracting enough, that viewers will overlook the fact that my face is nowhere to be seen.  I actually think forcing myself to be in front of a camera could be detrimental in the end.  For the life of me, I cannot seem to come across as anything other than a kidnap victim in a ransom demand video.  If I look as though I wish I were anywhere else, how is that going to convince potential pledgers to "feel the passion"?

Uploaded it will be, as is.  In a world where no one seems to be camera-shy, and everyone seems to strive for pseudo-stardom, it’s clear to me I live in the social media celebrity-obssessive stone age.

 

You can read part 1 here: Anatomy of a Kickstarter project:  Preliminary examination

 

 

     

 

LL

 

 

 

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AI Squared set to release ZT 10 update with important fixes

AI Squared is set to release ZoomText maintenance update 10.0.6, a free update that will fix a number of issues that have plagued users since the major release of ZT 10.  As a ZoomText user, the most frustrating of these has been a problem with cursor detection, especially when entering text into an edit field, such as that used when I enter search terms into a search engine, or when composing a tweet in Twitter. 

Here is an excerpt from the release notes page, which outlines the entire list of fixes.  Hope you find yours there.

Version 10.0.6

Release:  January, 2013 for Windows 7, Vista, and Windows XP

Improvements to IE9 support
ZoomText now provides greatly improved support for email and other web sites when running in Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). Improvements cover many of ZoomText’s features including: typing and program echo, cursor echo and tracking, cursor enhancements, reading with AppReader and DocReader, and use of Reading Zones.

64-bit version of IE9 is now supported
ZoomText can now be used with Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) 64-bit.

PDF documents now open quickly in Adobe Reader. 
When ZoomText was running, PDF documents would open very slowly in Adobe Reader. This problem has been fixed.

Caps Lock state now correctly announced
In various applications, including Microsoft Office and Firefox; ZoomText would incorrectly announce the state of the Caps Lock. This problem has been fixed.

WebFinder now works with Firefox 15
ZoomText’s WebFinder can now be used in Firefox 15 to find text in web pages.

ZoomText now reads in ABBYY FineReader
ZoomText’s AppReader and DocReader can now be used to read text captured from images in ABBYY FineReader.

There are other fixes that improve response when using other programs, such as Firefox, Gmail, and jaws 13.  To read the entire release notes page, go here:

ht.ly/gHG6w

For more info, contact support at AI Squared: aisquared.com/.

LL

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