Hart Voice Overs

My friend and excellent VO pro Dave Courvoisier has discovered a very promising new website/application called chirbit.  It holds a lot of promise for those of us that work in the audio industry, whether voiceover or radio.  Dave had an excellent back and forth with the chirbit developer and posted about it on his blog Voice Acting in Vegas:

The site struck me as a delightful use of the potential of audio and social networking.  I eventually asked the originator of the site – Ivan Reyes – if he’d mind responding to a few pointed questions about Chirbit, specifically the possibilities for voice-actors.

It looks to me like the future holds a lot of promise for this way cool application – Chirbit.  Check it out by clicking on the quote.

When I use a company that has exceptional customer service I like to pass that information on to my friends and clients.  Redco Audio is one such company.  Redco manufactures and distributes custom pro audio and video cables, connectors, patchbays, microphone boxes and custom panels.

Recently I ordered some wall plates from Redco.  They didn’t have exactly what I wanted so they custom made them for me.  I ordered on a Monday, they made them on a Tuesday and I had them in my hot little hands on Thursday.

Hart Voice Overs New Wall Plates

And to top it all off, Redco’s price was better than anything else I found on the net.  These babies are pretty and stout!  So I got exactly what I wanted at an awesome price.  I’ve only ordered from Redco a couple of times but you can bet I’ll order from them again soon.

Yesterday I had a good friend and sometimes client email me and ask me about the new Hart Voice Overs website.  He said:

“I’m curious to know about the blog that you have been doing.  Was that a free application and did it integrate with your existing website?  How has it been?  You like?”

I’ve had a few other people ask so I thought I would share some of my response: (more…)

Someone I’m following on twitter posted the link to this list on search engine optimization.  I wish I could give them credit but I honestly don’t recall who it was. If it was you leave a comment below so I can thank you publicly.

List of Best and Worst practices for designing a high traffic website:

“Here is a checklist of the factors that affect your rankings with Google, Bing, Yahoo! and the other search engines. The list contains positive, negative and neutral factors because all of them exist. Most of the factors in the checklist apply mainly to Google and partially to Bing, Yahoo! and all the other search engines of lesser importance.”

I’ve bookmarked it so I can keep it handy and I thought you might wish to do the same.

My wife knows me so well.  For Valentine’s Day she gave me Velcro cable wraps and I love them:

I use these guys to keep my microphone and instrument cables neat and tidy in storage and in the rack when I have one that’s too long, I use them to keep up with networking cables in the studio.  I always have an extra or two in my laptop bag just in case.  They are so useful that you’ll find them all around our house and garage managing power cords too.  I even keep them on my boat to manage my docklines.

Here’s the best part.  They are cheap.  No, don’t rush right out and order them from a music supply place.  Next time you are in Wal-Mart grabbing your milk, bread and new underwear swing on over to the sewing section.  You should find these very handy little Velcro wraps tucked in with the needles and such.

My advice?  Pick up more than one pack.  You’ll get addicted to them and want more.  Trust me.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

And to my wife:  Thank you honey, they are just what I wanted.  Love you.

B

So Google now has the Buzz.  You already Tweet and you are addicted to Facebook.  It’s getting so complicated trying to keep up with it all.  Here’s a little help.  Mashable has an article on how to integrate Twitter and Facebook into your Gmail account and turn it into one giant networking center.

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With all the information on the web are these really necessary? I suppose some of us just prefer a book to a screen.

(really I’m just testing how to post from my iPhone)

photo credit: dichohecho

How do you stay in contact with clients and potential clients?

One of the easiest and most inexpensive methods available today is with a well crafted newsletter.  But how do you actually deliver it to your customers?  Sure, you can use your regular email program and send it to ten or twenty addresses at a time – how inefficient.  Let me offer a few suggestions I think you’ll find much less frustrating and a better use of your time.  (more…)

Creative Commons License photo credit: myuibe

Dave Courvoisier made an interesting post on his blog the other day about how to record decent quality audio on your iPhone.  It’s a good read and short.  Check it out.

So now you can find auditions, record an audio sample and submit it all from an iPhone.  Pretty cool.  My biggest suggestion would be to find a nice quiet spot to record though.  One option?  Believe it or not – your car.  Automotive engineers work hard to make today’s car interiors quiet and acoustically pleasing.  So take advantage of their hard work and go record an audition on your lunch break behind the wheel, just don’t drive while you do it.

If you are like me you keep contact with family, friends, co-workers and even clients on Facebook. It can be quite a challenge to quickly scan through all information in your News Feed with that many contacts. Here’s my tip of the day.

Organize your contacts into well defined “friends” lists. For example I have separate lists for family, friends, VO Peeps (other voice actors), high school friends and college friends.

Once you have defined your lists and sorted your contacts it becomes much easier to follow each group in your News Feed. Just click on “Friends” on your main page, then select the group you want to see from the drop down list and all your other contacts are temporarily excluded from your News Feed.

It’s a little more complicated with the new Facebook layout but once you get used to it I think you’ll find it much easier to keep up with who’s doing what and save a little time in the process.