Despite my remarking how disappointed I was with this past Macworld/ iWorld Expo I attended, I still managed to glean more than just a few worthy moments from my overall experience. In fact, I had to actually break it down into 2 blog posts. If you missed the first one, you can catch up by going to http://jsgilbert.com/macworld_iworld_best_of.html. Although there really isn’t any order to part I or part II, just as recollection and my notes directed me. So, picking up where I left off, a visit to http://www.fastcaptech.com/  FastCapTech, will uncover a few rather cool items, such as the iPole (in several permutations). This rather inexpensive device will hold most any cell phone, as well as any number of the newer smallish cameras from the Canon Powershot to the GoPro. They have other cool solutions, such as bike mounts and something called the “Rhino Mount”.

There were two companies offering some very cool download and conversion programs for iOS and Mac’s. The first is Jaksta at  http://www.jaksta.com/ , and the second is Shedworx at http://www.shedworx.com/ Check them out and see if they have something that might work for you.

iCookbookDiabetic is still a free download from the Apple App Store and offers some pretty great support for diabetics, pre-diabetics and anybody looking for a healthy, but tasty alternative. It includes shopping lists, articles and lots of recipes. For a few bucks, they also have iCookbook, with over 2,000 recipes available on iOS and Android platforms.

I discovered http://www.tinylightbulbs.com/ at the Expo. I think they get their name from tiny lighbulbs worth of ideas going off. They have lots of cool products, most of which funded through crowdsourcing or alternative funding Some of these items seemed a tad pricey to me, such as the  ”Soundjaw”. It did make their demo iPad 2 sound a heck of a lot better, but at $13 or $14 for a tiny piece of plastic, I’m not sure if I’d buy one. You can take a look at the hundreds of items they are promoting and see for yourself which one’s are worth the investment.

Lantronix had a great little box called the xPrintServer. No bigger than an iPhone, it allows you to print from all your iOs devices to almost any printer without any special software. You can check them out at http://www.lantronix.com/it-management/xprintserver/xprintserver.html and they’re available at Amazon, eBay and plenty of other places.of a lot better, but it’s a tiny piece of plastic for $13 or $14.  Still, it was pretty darn clever. You’ll just have to decide for yourself as you browse the hundreds of different items they offer.

Givit claims to be the best video editing app for iOS. It is free and you can find out more at ” http://www.givit.com/. I watched the demo and it seemed pretty good to me. Of course I run Adobe CS6 Suite on 2 platforms, so it’s not going to be my cup of tea. Give it a whirl and see what you think.

KB Covers, at KB Covers.com had well built custom keyboard covers for ProTools, InDesign, Photoshop, Final Cut and dozens of other popular programs, as well as lots of colors and bling. They are at http://www.kbcovers.com/

Jam, is just a fun little app that lets you delivered finished musical masterpieces. Well, “masterpiece”, may be a stretch. I can see this being a great ice breaker or party game. You pick a style of music, sing anything – pretty much it doesn’ matter. Jam generates music and publishes your song.  They’re at http://jamapp.com.au/ and it’s currently Free. Yay!

Singers, musicians and even voice talent will appreciate the offerings from AirTurn, http://www.airturn.com/ With their solutions, you can automatically turn pages on your iOS or laptop (Mac or Windows), if you’re attempting to go with a paperless solution. It even works well as a teleprompter.  There is a large and growing list of compatable software for the AirTurn, that includes CoolReader, Loopy, Music Binder, Music Podium, NextSong, OnSong, Set List Maker, Teleprompt+, and  the Virtual Sheet Music App for the iPad.

Winners of several awards for design, Rain, at http://raindesigninc.com/ have a number of very good looking and functional products for holding, propping and otherwise working with iPads, Macbooks, monitors, etc.

I don’t think I caught everything and I’ll be honest, there was a lot more to write about after visiting MacWorld 5 or 6 years ago, but all-in-all, I’ll probably go back again next year. The fact that I live about a half hour from where the hold it certainly plays a big part. I don’t think I would travel more than 50 miles to get to MacWorld, but living in San Francisco, I do tend to be spoiled a bit. IO hope that these blogs have been helpful. please let me know. Leave a comment and if you think this was a worthwhile read, share.

Apple Macworld/ iWorld 2013 – A Few Things That I Liked.

Well, it’s been several months since I attended Macworld at San Francisco’s Moscone Center and the fact that I’ve waited until now to “report” on it may be more telling than anything else.

This was the third Macworld since Apple has pulled out, and the first one since Steve Jobs passed away. Apple’s lack of presence in any way, shape or form was glaringly obvious. Obvious too, is the fact that they are gone for good, with respects to both Macworld and many other events where Apple would formerly have some kind of presence. Another very noticeable thing was the “lack of Mac”. This might have been better described as “iOS World”. We see the not-so-subtle shift in the oh-so-subtle, title of the event, “Macworld/iWorld”

And after walking around the place, I think it could better be called, “I had absolutely no idea they sold this much crap for iPhones and iPads”. I saw Hercules walking the floor in an attempt to accomplish his 13th labor, counting the variety of iPhone cases for sale.

Still, there were actually some pretty cool apps and some decent gadgets being shown and a few good deals to be had. There was scant little to be had for the Mac however. A couple of booths were offering various cable options and some storage devices. A few other booths had the odd keyboard or mouse for sale, but the choices and value seemed about the same as aisle 8 at my local Office Depot.

Invariably, what floats your boat may not be what floats mine, so I’m going to mention a few things that tickled my fancy and a few other things that didn’t appeal to me, but may be something you like. Then again, by the time you read this, we could be on to hardwired phones and tablets embedded into our brains. Double check the deals, free offers, prices, etc. as they are all likely to change and certainly keep an eye out for anything new from these folks.

Right now, the folks at QUE, who make cool books, tutorials, ebooks, etc. are offering 40% off with this little discount code, “IWORLD” (no quotes needed). They are at Que Publishing or the link from Macworld/ iWorld may still work at Que Publishing/ iWorld

I also enjoyed some of the things that the folks at Hypershop.com were showing. In particular they had a remote control device that works with Canon and Nikon DSLR cameras that allowed you to both monitor and control camera functions remotely (to Android, iOS, MAC or PC). It’s a $300 item that could be worth a heck of a lot more. HyperDrive

Fab, whose incredibly crisp, sharp, colorful and interesting offerings of the ubertrendy, gotta have it items, offers a really great sensory experience for the iPhone, iPad and Android, although on an iPhone 3 with that dynamite retina screen, I tend to salivate just a little more. You can download their app(s) at Fab.com

Here’s something that is exactly what it says, it’s the Daylight Viewfinder. With more and more people using their phones as cameras, here’s a little solution for seeing what you’re shooting outdoors on a sunny day or in high glare areas. Daylight Viewfinder

There were a bunch of people going to town with ArtRage Studio , running 2 to 5 bucks, this is a great creation tool for iPad and iPhone. There’s a more powerful version for MAC and PC, for $50 called ArtRage Studio Pro. ArtRage

Until June 30,2013, Schneider Optics is running a sale on professional lenses for your iPhone. They are pretty reasonable considering the quality and if you use the code, “MACWORLD2013”, you get 10% off until June 30th. Who knows, maybe if you ask nicely they’ll extend that discount for you. FInd them at iPro Lens

If you’re not hip to xTuple, then check them out at xTuple. They are an opensource solutions company for Customer Relationship Management, CRM and ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning. This may actually be the best piece of fruit on the whole darn tree. Their “Postbooks” solution isn’t just free, it’s actually pretty incredible.

I’m thinking about taking CrashPlan out for a spin. Currently my backup solutions are a little convoluted and tend to still incorporate “sneaker net” as an integral part of the equation. I tried Carbonite and almost turned to stone waiting for a few megs of data to trickle to their backup program. Take a look at They have a ton of features and a pretty reasonable pricing structure. CrashPlan Let me know what you think.

Of all the booths offering tablet and phone accessories, the one that stood out as having items with a somewhat better “fit and form”, were at Scosche. Visit their site at . As of this writing, the Macworld discount code was still working for 25% off. Hopefully they’ll keep it going a while longer. It’s “MACWORLD13” (no quotes) They’re at Scosche

One of the few exceptions to this not being an event about MAC’s was the OWC booth. Catch them at They’re at OWC – MacSales.com. They have a huge assortment of peripherals, hardware, memory, etc. for Mac’s, and iOS devices. Data doublers, SSD drives, expansion chasis and lots more.

Well, maybe I did find more than just a “few” interesting things at Macworld/ iWorld 2013. I’m only about half way through the list and realizing I should save the rest for a Part II.

You can find Part II here: http://jsgilbert.com/best-of-macworld-iworld-part-ii.html

Please let me know what you think of my “picks” so far and if you think there’s something noteworthy to add, please leave a comment. Heck, leave a comment anyway, just so I know you stopped by and don’t forget to share.

I attended GDC, the Game developers Conference again and a highlight for me are the GANG awards (Game Audio Network Guild), and the big party held afterwards at Pyramind. They hold a raffle and I was lucky enough to win a few prizes this year. The biggest and best among the bunch was Cinesamples Cineperc Full Bundle, which has a value of $999.

I’m not a musician, although I am a trained engineer and of course a voice talent, but since I don’t compose or do music, I thought I would re-raffle this item off through a Facebook raffle.

Here’s how to enter.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

If you don’t know what this prize is, check out Cinesamples site. Cinesamples. This is for ALL four – Core, Pro, Epic and Aux.

A big thanks to Cinesamples for supporting GANG, GDC and audio people. I hope they don’t mind my regifting.

While you’re here, I’d appreciate you listening to my voice over demos.

Good Luck!

Sadly it would seem that not enough people know or recall John F. Kennedy’s monstrous blunder when he uttered the words “Ich bin ein Berliner”. In June of 1963, President Kennedy gave what was considered by many to be one of the most powerful and dramatic speeches of all time. It was the U.S.’s way of puffing out their chest to Communism and a salvo across the heads of the Russians and East Germans.

The problem is that today, most people speak of that speech more for the “faux pas” than anything else. The phrase when delivered in President Kennedy’s Massachusetts manner would have been odd enough, but what was sadder is that the phrase actually translates to “I am a jelly doughnut”.

You may be one of millions of people who are tasked with having to take your message or your company’s message from whatever language it was originally crafted in, into any one or more of several other languages. Mandarin to English or English to Italian or it may be a bit trickier, such as needing a particular dialect, such as Tarik or Dari.

The problems that can and do happen are far more common and aren’t always very complicated. At one time, only big businesses would create multi-cultural sales, marketing and other materials. Even with massive budgets and knowledgeable staffs, there are plenty of stories where the message was screwed up. And as we can see, even the White House isn’t immune.

It would seem that many people tasked with these challenges are moving further and further away from “best” solutions. In the recent past, Localization and Globalization specialists would be used. These individuals had experience with the pitfalls and problems involved in taking a message from one language to another. They worked with highly vetted professionals that assisted with translations, voice over, voice over direction and cultural and other considerations.

I worked in Localization for many years. If you’re not familiar with the term Localization, I pulled this from Whatis and it seems to work rather nicely. “Localization is the process of adapting a product or service to a particular language, culture, and desired local “look-and-feel.” Ideally, a product or service is developed so that localization is relatively easy to achieve – for example, by creating technical illustrations for manuals in which the text can easily be changed to another language and allowing some expansion room for this purpose. This enabling process is termed internationalization. An internationalized product or service is therefore easier to localize. The process of first enabling a product to be localized and then localizing it for different national audiences is sometimes known as globalization.

It seems though that with regards to localization, there aren’t enough people who either see the benefits of doing things right or otherwise get caught in issues of office politics, budgets, timing and so forth which causes the foreign language work they do to suffer.

Recently, I have seen English language voice talent (and I use the term “talent” loosely) and others who seem to be lacking the proper experience, posting in chat groups, etc. that they are helping a client find talent who can translate and record English scripts into Russian, Arabic, German, Dutch, Thai, pretty much any language you can think of. This just strikes me as asking your local butcher to help you write a report on the Keirkegard. Although your butcher may surprise you. One has to think that “convenience” and “cheap” are weighing in and nudging out “quality”, “effectiveness” and “performance”.

It reminds me of a long defunct French restaurant named “Coup de Fusil”. It got its name years before the restaurant opened, when the restaurant owner was employed at another French Restaurant. He had served a French couple and when the man looked at the bill he exclaimed “coup de fusil!” The waiter asked what that meant and the Frenchman, quickly replied, “It’s a shotgun blast – It means the BEST”. While the literal translation indeed is “gun shot”, the idiom in French is slang for rip off, and it is a common term.

These days, posting a localization job on one of the internet “cheap work” sites, leaving the details in the hands of inexperienced people, trusting someone who is 10,000 miles away because they are cheap or any number of shortcuts designed to make your job easier or get the work done for less, almost always translates into “This is something that shouldn’t be done”.

The saying, “Garbage In – Garbage Out” takes on a new meaning when the project is in a language you don’t know, done by individuals who are willing to participate in bidding wars or left in the hands of people who are not “localizers”. Best case scenarios leave you with a product that simply doesn’t do much and worst case scenarios leave you with a product that shows your companies ignorance for cultural uniqueness, and embarrasses you in the marketplace.

Every job is unique, although the “checklist” for accomplishing the work is somewhat similar. Or if I may paraphrase something a colleague said about something similar, “the fact is that localization is filled with a complicated series of “absolute wrongs”, while there is no “absolute right”.

I could quite literally sit here and write a 400 page book that would cover many of the mistakes that are made and would make a great case for hiring trained and experienced professionals to guide you, and most would embrace said book as a “how – to” guide. But that would be a lot like somebody reading a book to learn how to perform a root canal on themselves – painful and messy.

What I will do is mention a few pitfalls and then make some suggestions with regards to hiring professionals.

1. A translation is not a translation is not a translation. Translations will vary widely based upon the educational level of the person doing the translation, their understanding of both the original language and the language it is being translated to. There are many phrases and sayings that don’t translate well. (Hence the term “Lost in the translation”). Many of the people who claim they do translation services rely heavily on Google Translate or other tools that simply tend to not give you a very good product. In a project that went from English to Thai, the client wound up with a fully produced product that took the term from English, “under the weather” and had it translated loosely into Thai as “beneath changing atmospheric conditions”.

If this isn’t for collateral and is destined to be something that will be spoken and may accompany an existing video, you probably should redo parts if not all of your video, if you didn’t take localization into account beforehand. We discussed this earlier and it’s called “Internationalization”. Things such as landmarks, signs, the ethnicity of the actors or other people in the video, graphics and so forth need to be considered, as do other aspects that might be affected due to cultural differences. For example, videos that are destined to be viewed in Saudi States tend to be produced with a different eye towards the male/ female relationship than a video that may be viewed in France or England. But getting back to your narration, words are very different from one language to another, as is the pace at which narration may be read. A video in English, demonstrating how an expensive fan intended for factories is used will have issues if it is going from English to Italian. In Italian, the word “fan” becomes “ventilatore”. Thus a one syllable word becomes a 5 syllable word. If this video is instructional in nature, you can imagine the problems you might encounter.

2. Maintaining brand continuity across multiple languages takes a lot of work and integration and other specialists. This type of quality requires specialists who can work with and/ or help develop briefs and work with other professionals who can interpret them across broad multicultural and multilingual borders.

3. Minimal checks and balances need to be in place. One person does the translation and they are given relatively tight parameters and direction for getting it done. They are provided with a description of your core client, so that they can determine the appropriate sophistication and other considerations for the translation. In many cases, this translation is then looked over by other individuals who may be examining it to make sure it meets appropriate legal needs, that it properly conveys the corporate message, or simply that the translator didn’t miss something or misinterpret something. Talent is then carefully cast. This means that if something is designed for the marketplace in Beijing, the narrator will be a native Mandarin speaker. Here, you can fall into traps, as there are many individuals who speak Mandarin that may have been raised in Taiwan, America or elsewhere. They may seem like good candidates and even have decent existing credits and references, but they may not be appropriate for your needs. In Hispanic marketing, mistakes such as having a voice talent with a somewhat recognizable Mexican accent perform narration, for an upscale South American Market are done all the time. In situations like this, it’s even more critical to get the right translator, as many Spanish words vary from region to region, even within countries. Some countries can identify class systems by the way people speak, even with each class system having slightly different pronunciations or different words for common things. Even within the United States, thought often goes into whether the voice should have a Southern or New England or Western accent, or be as “neutral” as possible. In other cases, colloquialisms and regionalisms are purposely sought to make the target audience more comfortable. Talent may be directed to say words like “wash” as “warsh” or to say “jewlery” instead of “jewelry”. There are similar considerations when we get into foreign language production”

As I mentioned earlier, I could probably write a book and it still wouldn’t cover what one really needs to know about marketing in other languages and to other cultures. And even if your needs don’t come close to being as sophisticated as some of the things I have mentioned, this is a real D.N.I.Y (Do Not Do It Yourself) project. The difference between going the cheap route and having professionals help you, in almost every case can more than be justified by increased efficacy and profitability.

If you are looking for resources to assist you with foreign language projects, please write or call me and I would be happy to give you FREE advice and referrals. I have had the privilege of working with some of the most knowledgeable people available for foreign language, localization and globalization needs. Even if your budget tends to be somewhat humble, get a hold of me. Don’t wind up among the so many people who simply don’t even know that their foreign language materials suck. Just like the waiter, turned restaurant owner, turned bankrupt, had no idea that the cool name of his restaurant meant “Rip off” in French.

Oh and if you need help in English, I still do quite a bit of that and trust me, there’s a lot of sucky stuff being done in English for English, regardless of large or small budgets.

For marketing and general advice and things of interest, please visit and LIKE the Gilbertism page at http://facebook.com/gilbertarian and on Linkedin at  http://linkedin.com/in/gilbertism

If you aren’t familiar with the term “low hanging fruit”, it is a commonly used metaphor for doing the simplest or easiest work first. In sales, it often means the most obvious opportunities because they are readily achievable and do not require a lot of effort.

 
And yet, I see so many people making cold calls and plowing through tough terrain, while there’s low hanging fruit all around.

Perhaps one of the most glaring and odd examples I can provide regards a former client that I did voice over for. The work I did was somewhat straight forward, corporate narration for an individual who was the in-house media producer for a fairly large retailer. Every 3 or 4 weeks or so, I would take a short trip to their offices. I would spend an hour or two at most, where they would record me narrating everything from sales training programs for employees to corporate policy and procedure videos to “how-to’s”, such as dealing with shoplifters.

It was a nice gig and they paid the going rates. As I said before, the work was pretty straight forward and I’m sure that there were any number of voice talent that might have been able to fit the bill, although I did everything I could to make sure that they’d never want to look elsewhere.

Usually our recording sessions didn’t include much time for socializing; a few words here and there as you might expect. One day however, there was a technical problem and power was out. My producer asked if he could take me to lunch while they fixed the problem. How could I say no?

During lunch we discussed quite a few things. We talked about hobbies, discussed the fact that I also did production and writing and that the two of us shared a common interest in both woodworking and cooking. Basic male bonding 101, without the beer and football.
At perhaps the midpoint of our lunch, the discussion turned to him asking me about how I got into voice over and some specifics. I’m not exactly sure how it came up in conversation, but I happened to mention some other work I was doing and as I was queried, I dropped a few names of some of the other voice talent I had worked with on the project. One in particular caught the attention of my lunch companion. He repeated the name and then asked me to describe this actor. As I was concluding my description, as though I was being interrogated by a police sketch artist, my producer friend’s head whipped back and he asked, “is he married and have two kids?”  I then said “Yes, I guess you know him.”

Well, it turns out that this particular actor was the brother-in-law of the producer I was having lunch with. Interestingly enough, the producer had no idea that his brother-in-law was a voice actor. In fact, he hadn’t been keeping up with his brother-in-law at all, having totally skipped his last 2 or 3 jobs.

Now, this was in the days before social media, but this wasn’t pre pony express. This actor, who spent time every day sending out demo tapes (okay, I am dating myself) to strangers, making cold phone calls and otherwise busting his hump trying to get work, had a brother-in-law who was routinely hiring voice talent and on-camera talent as well.

And here is where the good news/ bad news starts. Several months went by and I didn’t get a call to do any work for that producer. Had I any idea, I would have ordered a much more expensive lunch. I casually called my actor friend and said “Well, I guess you owe me big time for telling your brother-in-law to hire you.” An awkward pause revealed the ugly truth.

I did manage to get a few “gimme” gigs from that producer but I did learn a couple of big lessons.

The first and foremost lesson is that almost all freelancers benefit from having “advocates”. This simply means that we need people who, for whatever reason, want to see us do well and are in a position to contribute to our bottom line in some capacity. (hiring, referrals, support services, etc.) Blood being one of the thickest of advocates. Nepotism tends to rule in this department.

The second lesson I learned is to make sure that nobody else is picking off my low hanging fruit and to make sure not to point out to my potential competition any low hanging fruit of theirs that I have been feeding from.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to my blogs and visit my facebook page at http://faceboook.com/gilbertarian and please hit like. Also, don’t forget to leave a comment here.

For the past 21 years, Sennheiser has owned Neumann and have been cranking out some incredible microphones (and other audio products) under both names. While I own a coouple dozen microphones, the two I turn to most often are the Sennheiser 416 shotgun and the veteran Neumann U87.

Not only do I trust these guys for the most part, but with the microphone market so cluttered at all price points, they must be doing something right to still command the leader board.

In Septemebr of 2012, Sennheiser got Geert Verdickt to start making a series of video tutorials to help filmmakers and videographers. The tutorials are quite good, as well as being quite entertaining.

They live at http://en-de.sennheiser.com/microphones/topics/sennheisers-audio-for-video, although the videos are also online at YouTube.

Here’s  the first of the videos.