If you are planning to share your personal photographs over email or on a public website, such as a blog, or maybe on other social networks then it may sometimes make sense to remove the camera data, and in particular the GPS location information from the images before putting them online for everyone to see.

Your organisation must protect your contributors

If you run a business (or an organisation such as a charity, school, club or a magazine for example) where your customers, fans or followers contribute photographs for you to publish on any of your sites or social networks then you should be protecting their personal information by making sure you remove any photo meta-data from the images before you upload them. A good example of this would be a school, or club where parents contribute photographs of a birthday party, or an event that took place at a pupils home etc.

I have listed below a selection of applications that can help you remove this data, together with some simple to follow instructions.

QuickFix application

There is a free Windows utility called QuickFix which can help you with this.

Just simply drag and drop the photographs into the QuickFix window and click the Clean Metadata button to remove all of the identifiable information from the photographs. The application  creates a new copy of the image and will not overwrite your original photographs. QuickFix will not only delete the EXIF data and the GPS location information from your photographs but also the IPTC and XMP tags which may have been added by your photo editing application.

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools

Microsoft also offers a free utility called Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2 that you may use to edit as well as delete common metadata from digital photographs including the GPS location should you wish.

Using Windows Explorer

Here is an an alternative way to remove EXIF Information (if  all the photographs are in one folder) Believe it or not you can easily remove the EXIF data from one or more of these photographs using Windows Explorer itself without requiring any additional software.

All you need to do is to select all of the image files, then right click your selection and choose “Properties” Now click the “Details” tab and click on the “Remove Properties and Personal Information” link. The next screen will give you an option to remove the various metadata that is embedded inside the pictures. Watch the following video to see how simply this can be done.

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Next Steps

If you have any tips (or stories to share where photo meta data has caused an issue) the please let us know in the comments below. Thank you

About Ian McKendrick

Ian is an IT Strategist, broadcaster, and Keynote Speaker on IT Strategy, Social Media and Information Security. Connect with Ian on Google+

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With Google Plus seemingly taking over the internet as millions flock to try it out, many bloggers are now looking for a simple way to integrate Google+ into their blogs.

After trawling  the internet for a suitable plugin, and experimenting with the many widgets, plugins and pieces of code that I found, I finally unearthed a WordPress plugin that was quick to install, simple to use, looks pretty cool, and works a treat.

It’s a neat little plugin for WordPress called Googlecard and it enables your blog visitors to easily add you to their Google+ Circles. It’s a widget that you can use in your sidebar, it fetches your Google Plus profile picture and lists underneath it how many Circles your Google+ profile is listed in. There’s even a nice little button that visitors can click to add your Google + profile into their own Circles and begin following you.

Take a look in the sidebar on my blog here you’ll see the plugin in action and you can test it for yourself, go on, try it out by clicking the button to add me to your circles!

Follow the step by step walkthrough below to learn how to install the Google+ widget in your own blog.

Step by step installation instructions:

Download the plugin from Google+ Devs website Here> and save the zipfile to somewhere where you can easily find it again on your computer. (You may have to right click the Download link and select “Save Link As” or “Save Target As” – It depends on your browser)

Click to Enlarge

Log into your WordPress blog dashboard, open Plugins / Add new plugin.

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Select Upload, click the Browse button, navigate to where you downloaded the zip file, select the file and click the Install Now button.

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After the plugin uploads and installs, click Activate to activate the plugin.

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Once the Plugin is installed and activated, navigate to Appearance / widgets in the WordPress dashboard

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Drag the Googlecard widget to where you would like it to appear in your WordPress sidebar

Click to Enlarge

Entering your Google+ settings into the Googlecard widget:

1. Twirl open the widget box by clicking the little arrow
2. Update the Title that will appear above the widget in your sidebar
3. Enter your Google Plus ID number (instructions for finding your Google Plus ID number are below)
4. Click Save to save the updated settings and you’re good to go!

Click to Enlarge

Finally, click your Site Title at the top of your dashboard to view the results of your handy-work…

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…and you should see the new Googlecard plugin in all its glory in your sidebar!

Update September 2011

A good alternative is here: http://widgetsplus.com/
Pop the resulting code into a text widget in your sidebar and you’re good to go!

How to locate your Google+ ID

Here’s how you can find out your Google Plus ID. Log into Google+ and click on your profile picture. Doing this opens up your public profile and you can find your ID by looking for the 21 digit number in the address bar at the top of your browser. See the image below where I’ve highlighted my Google+ ID number, you will find your own ID number in the same place when viewing your public profile online.

Hope this all helps!

So what are you going to do with Google+? Is it going to make a big difference to how you manage your social networking activities? Is it going to replace Twitter or FaceBook for you? We’d love to know, so please give us your feedback in the comments below.

About Ian McKendrick

Ian is an IT Strategist, broadcaster, and Keynote Speaker on IT Strategy, Social Media and Information Security. Connect with Ian on Google+

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PowerPoint Presentations; We’ve all seen them, some of us fear them, they’ve even been known to fill a few of us with dread!

When someone mentions that they are bringing along their PowerPoint to show us we sometimes can’t help but shudder at the thought of having to sit through a multitude of bland, boring slides all crammed to the brim with mind numbing facts and figures.

Have you ever wondered if that’s what’s going through the minds of your prospects as you jump into your car, clutching your laptop bag which you have just uploaded with your latest and greatest PowerPoint presentation?

Here are a few tips you may want to consider if you want to create compelling PowerPoint presentations that will engage and inspire your audience, and help you to close more deals. I also share several ideas on how you could  use social media and the Internet to ensure your presentations reach more people and improve your Google rankings.

Before you begin – Create a story board

Every one likes a story, and each one has a beginning, a middle, and an end – As should your slide show. When preparing your PowerPoint slides, approach the task as if you were preparing to shoot a film. CLICK HERE> to download my PowerPoint Storyboard template, print it out, grab yourself a pencil and sketch out a storyboard that describes the journey that you will be taking your audience on. Roughing out your story in this linear fashion, and sketching the images by hand will invariably fuel your creative side and inspire you choose the most appropriate graphics, words and anecdotes to get your messages across in the most memorable way.

Don’t say it with text – Say it with pictures

A picture says a thousand words, so see if you can get away without using any text at all in your slides. Most stock photo sites have fairly extensive search capabilities. Try typing in a few abstract phrases about what you are saying with each slide and see what comes up, you may well find the perfect image that supports exactly what you have to say which will have a far greater impact than any words can say. Let the picture do the talking for you, and use it as your own personal cue card to remind yourself of what you need to say to emphasise the message you’re communicating.

If it’s complex – Build it up step by step

If you have complicated processes, or a complex way of thinking to get across then build it up one image at a time, using complimentary, simple animations. Make sure the audience understands where you are in each step of the sequence before introducing a new element. That way you will keep your audiences focus and attention, and it will also help you to clarify the message you are conveying. This technique works really well when presenting graphical data, particularly when overlaying data for comparison. If all the data is on the screen at once the audience are concentrating on working out what they are looking at, rather than listening to you and absorbing your message. Your slides should support and reinforce what you are saying, and not dominate or distract your audience from your presentation. Watch this example HERE>>>

Pace your delivery – Use light and shade

Watching someone delivering a PowerPoint at a million miles an hour, at the top of their voice, with the same intensity of passion throughout the entire presentation will simply wear you out. All you will remember is the speakers speed and intensity of their delivery rather than the message. Similarly, watching someone present using a gentle, timid monotone from beginning to end will soon send you to sleep! Just as we appreciate, when listening to a good piece of music, or when watching a well edited film, light and shade keeps your attention and helps to deliver the message. Your presentation will be far more memorable, it will engage the audience more, it allows your audience to relax and enjoy the journey that you are taking them on, and grab their attention when it needs to be grabbed.

Define clear calls to action

Do not to ask too much of your audience during your presentation, ideally you should never have more than three calls to action in your entire slide-show. When delivering your call to action build it up gradually so that when it appears on the screen it has the maximum impact. Use silence to let it sink in, pause for a moment when it appears, and carefully watch your audience to make sure everyone has seen it. Reinforce your call to action by reminding the audience that they are welcome to take notes. If the only notes and follow ups that your audience make just happen to be your carefully crafted calls to action then you can expect a high conversion rate from your presentation.

It’s not a sales pitch – Really it isn’t!

Never commit the cardinal sin of ramming your business down your audiences throat. No-one likes sitting through the adverts while watching TV so don’t try to sell to your audience with blatant adverts about how good you think you, or your products are. The best sales presentations work well because they demonstrate just how the product or service has helped someone, and the trick is to create the desire in your audience to want the same solution, or peace of mind for themselves. The key is to find out what pain your audience suffers before hand, and use your presentation to demonstrate how your customers, who used to suffer the same pain as them, now have complete peace of mind since using your products or services. This approach will create the desire for those your audience to be just like them, and they will be far more susceptible to your proposition as a result.

It’s not about you – it’s about them- about how they benefit

No-one is interested whatsoever that your business was established in 1879, or that you have a widget machine that is far superior to your competitors widget machine. People want to know what you, or your product or service can do for them. They want to see examples of how easily, quickly, or cost effectively you have helped their peers (or their competitors) out of the same hole they find themselves in. People value personal recommendations or practical examples far more highly when making their buying decisions, and they will not be based on the fact that you’ve just bought yourself a brand new fleet of vans! Of course, if there is information that is critical to impart to gain the confidence of your audience, leave it towards the end of your deck where it will have more impact. This will help you to tick the boxes that they need ticking, right at the very moment you need to gain their commitment and to progress onto the next stage, or close the deal.

Record it – Put it on the Internet

Once you’ve composed your presentation it won’t be seen by many people while it’s on your hard disk or memory stick. It could be seen by thousands if you upload it to the Internet, even while you sleep! There is plenty of free software on the Internet that allows you to capture your monitor display while you record your voice talking through the slides. Even professional screen recording software like Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, or Adobe eLearning Suite2 cost only a few hundred pounds, which would enable you to create Screen Casts and rich eLearning content that you can post on YouTube, and even promote through your social networking marketing activities. This strategy has the potential to bring you many thousands of pounds worth of new revenue, so it would be a false economy to ignore this as an option.

Get onto page one of Google – Be seen as the expert

When you have access to simple tools like this you will be able to easily produce content on the fly and post it to your blog,  and it can become a core element of your social media marketing strategy. Using PowerPoint to create simple walk-through’s, capturing these and posting them as videos on YouTube, and then as articles on your Blog will soon elevate you as the expert in your field. If you produce content that is helpful then people will bookmark you, and your site will become the one that everyone turns to when they need the information you provide. Gathering valuable back-links like this will allow you to reap the rewards of excellent search engine rankings, and could even get you listed on page one of some of the worlds top search engines like Google. The cost of managing the blog side, the hosting, the integration with YouTube, and all of the magical “SEO webmastery” that goes with it is quite reasonable these days, especially if you get one of our new SuperBlog II’s.  These new SuperBlogs are now making it so much easier for everyone to get started because everything has been set up for you and you’re good to go, and they even come complete with free set of simple to follow on-line video tutorials as well!

Online demonstrations – Perfect deal closers

Have you ever thought about creating and recording your presentations to use as on-line product or service demonstrations? Make them as punchy as possible by keeping them short, no more than 2 or 3 minutes long at the most. The fact you have slick looking on-line training collateral to better serve your customers needs can create a hugely positive impression on them about your business.  These can be perfect to point your customers to while they are on the phone with you, as not only can you can use them to help them with their enquiries, or answer their questions, but they can even be used to close deals with them while they are on the phone with you.

Get professional help – It pays dividends

A cheap, amateur looking  presentation has the potential to kill your business with a single viewing so you should never leave this to chance. To succeed in today’s competitive marketplace you have to outshine your competition like a beacon, you must be looking at your very best and leave no causes for doubt. I help businesses and individuals create professional quality, and highly persuasive presentations, More Here> I also help organisations of all sizes grasp social media by the horns and help them to formulate business winning social media marketing strategies, which can be  backed up with all the policies and procedures necessary to protect even the most heavily regulated bodies. To make sure you’re going along the right track we offer a free consultation.  Phone or email us at 01279 755 555 or customer.care@superblog.biz, or visit us by appointment at our Bishop’s Stortford office.

What has been your experience with PowerPoint?
If you have any ideas or feedback that you’d like to share with us then please leave us your comments below

About Ian McKendrick

Ian is an IT Strategist, broadcaster, and Keynote Speaker on IT Strategy, Social Media and Information Security. Connect with Ian on Google+

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Highrise is a great product for managing and tracking conversations and todo lists for yourself, and between your team. It’s a very simple system, so simple in fact that it can sometimes be a little confusing!

I use Highrise for managing several aspects of my businesses, and I also use it to organise my work with several different teams and team members. It’s a brilliant tool for getting rid of Inbox Clutter and keeping your tasks organised.

The Dropbox feature is awesome, it allows you to attach important emails to specific contact records, which is great for sharing important email communications with your team.

Dropbox magic

Each Highrise user is given a unique Dropbox email address, and when they forward an email to that address, Highrise works its magic in a couple of ways.  If the “From” email address is already associated with an existing contact, it will attach that email to that contact’s record. If the “From” email address  is not already in Highrise, then it will create a new contact record for you, and attach that email to that. Also, if the email contains any attachments such as documents, images, sound files etc. they are attached to the email as well. If it’s an MP3 file it even displays it with a snazzy little mini MP3 player so you can play the file without even leaving the web page!

The most common question I’m asked by team members is “I sent an email to my Highrise Dropbox and it was rejected”

Comprehensive Highrise help

Highrise is great as it offers a wealth of comprehensive help , has a great video tour on using Highrise emails and dropboxes , and in depth instructions on how to overcome common email issues and even help specifically with using email dropboxes . In fact, there is so much helpful information that it’s quite overwhelming to a new user, and it’s not immediately obvious for people to work out what the problem is, or how to overcome this particular issue.

Here is my take on explaining the solution to this common Highrise Dropbox problem of email rejection.

How it all works

To manually attach an email to a contact in Highrise the process is:

1. Open the email you’ve received
2. Forward it to your personal Highrise Dropbox address

How the Highrise Dropbox works

There is an inherent link between the email senders email address (the person who sent the email to you), the email contents, and the contact details you have stored in your Highrise database.

When you forward an email you’ve received to your personal Dropbox, Highrise will look at the “From” email address in the email, and use it to file the email and attachements, see this example:

Email address matching

As the email address “ian@domainname.com” is one of the email addresses you have associated with the contact “Ian McKendrick” then Highrise can work out where to file the email in its database. The email is then filed under that contact’s record as shown here, together with any attachments that were in the email:

Contact record created automatically

If  the “From” contact’s email address is not already in the Highrise database then it will create a completely new contact record for it, and then file the email with that new contact record, together with any attachments that were contained in the email.

Email being rejected

If Highrise cannot find any email address in your email at all, it will reject it and send you an email telling you so (This is the most common problem I am being asked about) The rejection email you receive will also contain links pointing you towards potential solutions the problem.

Incomplete email address

When I’ve looked at these rejected emails I’ve noticed that in the majority of them the email address is either incomplete, or hasn’t been formatted correctly. I’m not sure why this is, it just seems to happen sometimes, but because Highrise does not know where to file the email you sent to your dropbox, Highrise rejects it. Here’s an example of an email that doesn’t contain correctly formatted email address information:

The Solution

When that happens, a simple workaround is to “Fudge” the email address by simply typing it in yourself before you forward it to your Dropbox, or you could quite simply copy the entire contents of the email into your clipboard, and paste it into the contacts record as a new note, attaching any files you were sent in the email manually.

Feedback

If you have been having similar problems and you’ve overcome them, or you have any feedback you would like to share, then please let me know in the comments below.

Many thanks

About Ian McKendrick

Ian is an IT Strategist, broadcaster, and Keynote Speaker on IT Strategy, Social Media and Information Security. Connect with Ian on Google+

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Unprecedented growth of Social Media

As I continue bringing Social Networking and Social Marketing to the masses through my seminars, I find many people are very confused or even intimidated by the sheer number of social network applications available for people to use these days, and the number continues to grow. When we made our “Introduction To Social Networking” training video earlier this year there were around 375 mainstream social networking type applications. It’s now estimated (only 5 months later) to be in excess of 3000 applications and services!

Don’t be confused by Social Networking

Many of the people I’ve met while presenting tell me that they find the whole Social Networking scene really daunting and offputting, and this can be true, especially if you’re a newcomer and you want to get started quickly. Initially there are many things you need to think about and do, and altogether it can seem like a huge, tangled pile of spagetti making it  difficult to know where to begin. To help address this Mark Peters (of Star Radio fame) and I are in the process of putting together our Social Networking video training series. We decided to make it easier by breaking everything down into a series of small simple steps that were easy for anyone to follow.  So, if you’re puzzled about whether you should be Tweeting or you’re just wondering what all the fuss is about then you’ll find this training video is especially for you.

Sit back, relax and learn

Mark and I wanted to produce something that you could not only give to your Granny to get her to use Twitter or Facebook ,but would also appeal to the fully competent IT “SuperGeek” that doesn’t get out enough, and could even be watched by people who know a little and wanted to learn a whole lot more. The video below is the result of our first module of 20 which will follow over the coming months – and it’s totally FREE!

My advice to you all is “don’t worry” and don’t feel intimidated or put off. Go and make yourself a nice hot cup of tea /coffee, relax, hit the play button, sit back and enjoy!

Download the full version, and other Social Media training videos  HERE>>>
(includes iPhone/iPod/iTouch/MP3/MAC/PC versions + training notes)

Book me for your event HERE>>>
Get a FREE SuperBlog like mine HERE>>>

About Ian McKendrick

Ian is an IT Strategist, broadcaster, and Keynote Speaker on IT Strategy, Social Media and Information Security. Connect with Ian on Google+

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