First of all I am going to have to be upfront and admit this is one portable device I don’t have…yet. I’m talking about the Flip video camera. If you haven’t seen it you would not think it was a video camera. You would think it was a very basic point and shoot still camera. I saw someone at my local Mac User’s Group showing it as well as the video she had shot earlier at her house.

I’ve also been seeing example popping up all over the Internet from local users like Phil Yanov sharing why he won’t visit a certain fast food chain for a while, or Ponzi Pirillo meeting her husband, Chris at the airport and surprising him with the Flip purchase.

I’m excited about this video camera for three reasons; 1.) It’s size - if something is too big most people will not take it around, 2.) It’s very usable and easy to use, offloading is as easy as plugging the camera directly into the USB port on your computer and 3.) For a camera it’s size with limited features the quality of the video is great especially for impromptu recordings. Do you have a Flip or have you thought about buying one? I recommend checking into this device as a way to share compelling content with those you are trying to reach with your business or organizations message. Of course the example linked to above were more of the the “fun variety.”

My wife and I are members of a core group who wanted to establish an Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in the Northern Greenville County area.

As you can imagine the normal cost of sound production in a church can quickly get expensive with microphones, amplifiers, mixers and recording media. I had approached the church leadership about buying this device I had heard about but they wanted to know if I had first hand experience with it and to tell the truth I didn’t but I had heard the results of another podcaster, Cliff Ravenscraft use it both in remote situations and as his recording device in studio.

About three weeks ago we decided to buy an Edirol R-09HR (A high end portable digital recorder) to use both for our own podcasts as well as recording the sermons and other speaking events for our church, Travelers ARP Church. Travelers ARP is a mission church which means we are a new, we don’t have our own building (but another church in the area is letting us use a small chapel on their campus) and of course because of the current small membership we don’t have the money available for a full scale sound system but even if we had the budget for a system at this time the fact we don’t have our own building is another factor to consider.

I invite you, especially if you are in a position where a professional sound studio or full system set up is not possible to listen to the sound quality of two recent sermons I recorded at our church using the Edirol.

Visit http://www.travelersarpchurch.org/category/podcast/ to play the samples by clicking on the gray play button. As you can tell pastors voice remains very level and we were able to cut out most of the background noise. The device was running of battery power and I was able to start the recording discretely from my seat in the congregation via a very small remote. The Edirol basically combines a portable mixer with basic functions, two onboard high gain microphones and storage in one device the same height and width as the iPhone and double the thickness. I described the Edirol to someone as a the audio version of a prosumer digital SLR Camera. You will find a lot of cheaper mp3 recorders which are fine for taking audio notes and interviews but if you need something that will produce files ready for mass distribution like podcasts, sermons, seminar speakers or even capturing ambient sounds for video projects.

I mentioned that I heard about this device from podcaster, Cliff Ravenscraft. I also bought the Edirol from Cliff as well. Cliff is a full-time podcaster and former pastor. Cliff personally tests all the equipment he sells and I highly recommend him for his service, support and recommendations. If you are with a church and especially with a new church without a full sound system I would urge you to contact Cliff Ravenscraft, The Podcast Answer Man for you sound recording needs. If you need a web site and online presence that will effectively promote your business, organization or church we would love to talk with you about the opportunities in new media and how they might help your business or organization grow.

A while back we decided on the phrase, Harmonious New Media, as our company “tag line.” As of today, June 21st, 2008 I have decided to make that the official name for this blog as opposed to the more generic “SpinningSilk Multimedia Blog” as it’s a part of our company web site. You might not notice a change much on the web site immediately but the RSS feeds, and the way we link from blog comments, etc. will start using that title. Official the “long title” will be - Harmonious New Media - The blog of SpinningSilk Multimedia. The reasons for doing this are as follows;

• Showing the difference between the blog and the web site as a whole
• I want to keep that mantra in my head and also the heads of my readers
• Harmonious is part of our consistent branding promise and I want to communicate that on a daily basis
• I want to showcase the fact that “New Media” is our core focus, not just web design per se but how that is a hub for graphic design, photography, podcasting and online video.
• It’s my desire that the majority of posts will focus on the concept of harmonious new media
• As we get ready to produce a podcast associated with this blog I want to focus of it to be the same

I also plan on changing the header graphic slightly for the blog portion of this web site.

We have received the comment more than once that we do a lot of different things and people have commented that we appear to be a “jack of all trades”. That not quite true. Our name is SpinningSilk Multimedia and we do employ different form of media to help our clients get the word out about their products and services but we have definitely boundaries.

I remember as a child I would visit the home of an aunt and uncle and across the street a man had a sign in his yard the advertising Tax Preparation and Lawn Mower repair. To this day that sticks in my mind as one of the oddest combination of business services I have seen. Maybe the guy was very skilled at both lawn mower repair and tax preparation but advertised together it looked very odd and naturally I would have a hard time trusting the same person who repairs my lawn mower with also preparing my taxes for the simple fact they are two very diverse disciplines. This doesn’t mean a person can’t be good at two completely different things but they should certainly advertise them separately if nothing more than on two separate signs.

I have to admit however when we first started out business we verged on doing exactly what the guy who did taxes and fixed lawn mowers although not at those extremes. Originally we did everything through the SpinningSilk.com domain and promotes two different things; web site design and piano and voice lessons. We were just starting out and both services were very part time but since we have gone full-time in the past few years we split up our business into three active divisions; SpinningSilk Multimedia which is our core business featuring web, print, photography and other business marketing tools, SpinningSilk I.T. - covers the more technical end of our business however most of the business through that is outsourced or residual income through selling service. It’s technically not a lot of stuff we “do” in the sense we don’t provide services where we will fix your computer or come to your place or business but we are working with other contractors in the area who we feel provide the best service in the arena. Finally my wife who was a music education major/graduate from Furman University teaches piano and voice lesson as well is available for performing at events. You can find out about those services through SpinningSilk Music.com .

For the sake of argument, why would someone come to this web site and think we were a “jack of all trades?” The services we offer on this web site include, web design, print design, photography and podcasting. It does sound diverse but in reality it isn’t. Web design alone is all about being multi-disciplined, that is if it’s done right. A web design should know about back end programming of web development, graphic design, SEO, usability, e-commerce as well as various forms of visual and audio media. It’s just a fact of life. Maybe designing print documents vs. web documents looks very diverse and at one time it would have been but with software like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign those skill barriers have narrowed. The important thing is knowing what is media needs in terms of graphic quality, fonts, document dimensions, etc.

Are we a jack of all trades? In the area of media production we provide a lot in terms of our services but we definitely are disciplined in “all trades.” Here is a very short list of things we don’t do in terms starting with things people think we do but don’t;

• Repair computers
• Fix printers
• Setup Quicken finance software
• repair lawn mowers
• prepare taxes
• Windows (neither the kind on your building or the operating system)
• groom pets
• paint your house
• clean viruses of your computer
• mow your lawn
• cut down trees

Their is a reason we offer the services we do and believe it or not that are very connected to each other and conform to our motto, “Harmonious New Media.”

As time progresses we will look at what we do to make our business and how we market ourselves better based on customer demand and feedback as well as trends in the marketplace. We have changed some broad categories into more focused niches. We are also making the fact that we are about providing marketing services for our clients and are committed to consistent branding more obvious. We used the word, “share” to describe the final part of our 4-step work flow and now we have replaced it with the word, market or marketing. Our new motto of “Harmonious New Media” also reflects this.

We are making our photography service more prominent and instead of covering the broad category of “portable media” with are going to focus on Podcasting as a service. We will continue to explore other areas for future products and services but those will be feature and discussed in a “labs” section to be announced at a later date. You will probably see those innovative explorations at our portal site, SpinningSilk.com . One new service we are offering is an enterprise level/server based e-mail service via MXLogic. You can find what we are offering at our SpinningSilk.com Marketplace.