Small Business Video Tip | How to Select (or Make) a Teleprompter

---

During the current presidential election season (2016), there has been a lot of talk about “teleprompters.” One candidate likes to speak off the cuff and have no teleprompter when addressing an audience. The other candidate likes to use a teleprompter and be precise when addressing an audience. When you are creating a video for your business and are going to be looking straight into the camera, you have the same choice: (1) To use a teleprompter and be precise, or (2) Look into the camera and start talking, trying to remember what you were going to say.

---

Unless you are a stage actor or stand-up comic, it's probably a good thing to use a teleprompter.

But reading from a teleprompter doesn't feel natural the first few times (or few dozen) you try. It will take practice to learn how to speak naturally when reading the words scrolling on the screen. But once you practice and get comfortable with the process, you'll be far more effective and precise in delivering your message.

How does a teleprompter work?

A teleprompter is simply a piece of glass angled at 45 degrees. The camera is placed behind the glass. Text is placed under the glass. The text is reflected 90 degrees and appears to right-side-up to the person reading it. (The source of the text could be a roll of paper, but the source we are referring to in this post is an iPad or Android tablet.

 

 (1) Video camera; (2) Shroud; (3) Video monitor; (4) Clear glass or beam splitter; (5) Image from subject; (6) Image from video monitor (Image: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0)

You can make a Do-it-Yourself teleprompter

The do it yourself corner of the web is packed with great ideas for creating a teleprompter on the cheap. Here's one from the website VideoMaker.com that is made from two picture frames.

 

(via: VideoMaker.com)

If you are desperate and have the name Angus MacGyver, Instructables.com has a DIY teleprompter you can make from a cardboard box. (But don't leave it out in the rain.)

(via: Instructibles.com)

How much does a 'real' teleprompter cost?

While a professional teleprompter  like the one used by presidents delivering the State of the Union Address can be extremely expensive, a newer generation of tablet teleprompters with sturdy construction range from about $150-$500.

Here are two examples available on Amazon.

Glide Gear Adjustable iPad Smartphone Teleprompter ($199 | Amazon)

OneTakeOnly Pad Prompter ($375 | Amazon)

How to manage the text scrolling?

There are dozens of teleprompter apps that allow you to load in your text and then use a handheld remote device to control the speed of the text . While many of the apps make it seem that all you need is their app and an iPad, they are best used with an actual teleprompter.

---

Photo: WikiMedia Commons

 

 

 

The FEMA App is a Must-Have Tool For Every Small Business

---

Disasters come in many forms and sizes. And they come no matter what the season. Currently, there are major floods and major fires impacting small businesses in different parts of the U.S.

---

While you can't change the weather, you can prepare for it and other types of emergencies. One way is to download the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) app for your smartphone or tablet device. (Links to the apps below.)

FEMA App features

• Alerts from the National Weather Service | Receive severe weather alerts for up to five locations across the U.S. and see information about how to stay safe.


• Disaster Reporter | Upload and share photos of damage and recovery efforts.


• Maps of disaster resources | Locate and receive driving directions to open shelters and disaster recovery centers.


• Apply for assistance | Easily access DisasterAssistance.gov to apply for federal disaster assistance.


• Custom emergency safety information | Save a custom list of the items in your family's emergency kit, as well as the places you will meet in case of an emergency.


• Safety tips | Receive safety and preparedness reminders and learn how to stay safe before, during, and after over 20 types of hazards, including floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.


• Information in Spanish | Easily toggle between English and Spanish for all features of the app.

---

Promotional video via FEMA.gov

---

Download app

| Android 

| iOS

What You Can Learn From The Classics About Running a Small Business

---

In a Harvard Business School course called, “All Roads Lead to Rome,” HBS Professor Frances Frei and Harvard history and classics professor Emma Dench, have surfaced a wide array of insights into the age-old issue of leadership, according to the HBS website Working Knowledge.

---

For example, in a section of the course called, “Not Forever,” the class reads Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's chapter in her book Lean In about her husband, Dave Goldberg, then his obituary and Sheryl's reflections on his unexpected death.

“That comes close to Marcus Aurelius thinking about his own mortality in Meditations; Augustine's account of his mother's death in Confessions; an extract from the historian Polybius's writings on witnessing a friend weep over Carthage, the enemy city he has just destroyed; and a reading from Plutarch on how his fellow Greeks should deal with not being an imperial superpower anymore,” says Dench.

If you know something is not forever, what would you do differently?

A lot of things, it turns out, and not all of the analogies are as poignant as the death of a loved one.

Our customers love us. But that's not going to last forever. So what's the next thing we're going to do? The obvious answer: “Cherish our time and relationships, be proactive versus reactive; those are the lessons we learn from the classics,” says Dench.

---

Also on SmallBusiness.com | Monday Morning Small Business Motivational Mashup: Goethe & Star Wars

---

via | HBS.edu That's Classic: Modern-Day Business Lessons from Ancient Rome

Statue |  Marcus Aurelius

FAA Commercial Drone Rules Will Create Business Opportunities (But Not Yet for Amazon)

---

Today (6.21.2016), the Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration announced that it has finalized the first operational rules (PDF) for “routine commercial use” of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS or “drones”). But don't look for your Amazon order to be flying to your house or business anytime soon.  “We are part of a new era in aviation, and the potential for unmanned aircraft will make it safer and easier to do certain jobs, gather information, and deploy disaster relief,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “We look forward to working with the aviation community to support innovation, while maintaining our standards as the safest and most complex airspace in the world.”

---

According to industry estimates, the rule could generate more than $82 billion for the U.S. economy and create more than 100,000 new jobs over the next 10 years.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx

---

The new rule, which takes effect in late August, offers safety regulations for unmanned aircraft drones weighing less than 55 pounds that are conducting non-hobbyist operations. (“Non-hobbyist” means “commercial.”)

But don't look for Amazon drones delivering packages yet

According to Verge, while this change will bolster the rapidly growing young industry, the new rules did not make room for any new kinds of autonomous flight. That means Amazon's ambitious plan for drone delivery still won't be legal anywhere in the US.

Verge:

“Operators are required to maintain a visual line of sight with the drone at all times and can't operate more than one mission at a time. For drone delivery to make sense, a fleet of fully autonomous units would have to operate well beyond line of sight, with a single operator managing dozens or even hundreds of drones at once.”

However, the FAA is providing a potential pathway for  future adjustments to the regulations that should keep Amazon working on its project. “The FAA is offering a process to waive some restrictions if an operator proves the proposed flight will be conducted safely under a waiver,” according to the announcement.

“With this new rule, we are taking a careful and deliberate approach that balances the need to deploy this new technology with the FAA's mission to protect public safety,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. “But this is just our first step. We're already working on additional rules that will expand the range of operations.”

Under the final rule, the person actually flying a drone must be at least 16 years old and have a remote pilot certificate with a small UAS rating, or be directly supervised by someone with such a certificate. To qualify for a remote pilot certificate, an individual must either pass an initial aeronautical knowledge test at an FAA-approved knowledge testing center or have an existing non-student Part 61 pilot certificate. If qualifying under the latter provision, a pilot must have completed a flight review in the previous 24 months and must take a UAS online training course provided by the FAA. The TSA will conduct a security background check of all remote pilot applications prior to issuance of a certificate.

---

Before today any for-profit entity flying a drone - from real estate agents to farmers to photographers - had to have a pilot's license. The updated regulatory framework replaces that license with a knowledge test and certificate specific to flying a drone - allowing companies a much cheaper, faster, and simpler path to getting in the air.

FAA

---

Some areas of potential commercial use of drones

• Agriculture


• Search and Rescue


• Aerial photography and video


• Wildlife management


• Security & Monitoring


• Scientific and Environmental Research


• Mapping


• Real Estate Development


• Communications

---

Photo: ThinkStock

YouTube Launches an iPhone App for Creating Small Business Video Commercials | 2016

Today (6.16.2016), YouTube is launching YouTube Director for Business, an iPhone app for shooting, editing and uploading videos for your small business. While similar to other smartphone video editing apps (notably, Apple's iMove app), YouTube's app is being positioned as a tool for creating commercials that can be run on YouTube. While the videos can be posted to a free account, the app provides a link to advisors who will explain how the commercials you create can be a part of a YouTube advertising campaign that you purchase.

---

YouTube says that with the free app (available for iPhone today in the U.S. and Canada) anyone can create a video ad for their business quickly and easily-right from their phone. “No editing experience required.”(Note: Editing experience is not the only thing that goes into creating great video. Talent and creativity help.)

We will be trying out the new app in a future post.

---

Promotional videos via YouTube Director for Business

---

Learn More | YouTube Director Help Center

Download | YouTube Director for Business

---

Photo: YouTube.com

How to Get Siri to Read Aloud Books and Articles on Your iPhone or iPad

---

Sometimes it's helpful for someone to read you the words that appear on your iPhone's screen. For example, there may be a long news article that you would like to listen to while driving into work. Or, perhaps there are instructions for setting up something that you'd rather hear than read

---

The iPhone has a feature called “Speak Screen” that is designed as an assistive feature for those who have a vision impairment. The feature can also come in handy for anyone who needs their phone to read text aloud. While not as dramatic as a performance by Will Patton reading the latest Steven King novel, the Siri voice that reads Speak Screen aloud is clear and understandable.

How to enable Speak Screen and make your iPhone talk

To enable the speaking feature of your iPhone, follow this trail:

Settings > General > Accessibility > Speech. Then, enable “Speak Screen.”

Once enabled, any of these options will launch the reading:

Two fingers swipe down | Swiping down from the top of your screen will start the narration of the words on the screen.

Siri command | Tell Siri, “Speak Screen.”

Highlight text | When Speak Screen is enabled, whenever you highlight a section of text, in addition to the options like “copy,” you'll see an option to “speak the highlighted text.”

Tips

Minimize content on the page | Speak Screen works best when the screen has long blocks of continuous text. In other words, as few ads as possible. The best way to accomplish this is by using the Safari iOS browser and clicking on the “read mode” icon at the top-left corner of the screen.

It works with Kindle books | However, as noted before, the Siri-read version of a book is not the experience you have when listening to an audible book performed by an actor.

Experiment with the speed control | Individuals with vision impairments who are experienced “listeners” can often develop the skill to understand text read at high speeds. For this reason, a speed control panel will launch when you start listening. Experiment with the turtle or rabbit to see how the speed of the reading affects your ability to understand the content. Also, you can use the |<<  or  >>| icons to skip back or forward to blocks of text.

 

---

(via: How to Geek)

Illustration: ThinkStock

The Eight Top Customer Complaints About Local Merchants | 2016

---

Mike Blumenthal, our favorite expert on anything related to Google My Business and local search, recently published the findings of a survey on what causes complaints among U.S. consumers. “Handling customer complaints is one of those areas where most local businesses drop the ball,” writes Mike, “Yet it's an area that has disastrous downsides and such an incredible upside for the business when handled properly.” Mike's complete post appears on GetFiveStars.com.

---

When dealing with a local merchant, what will cause you to complain?

In this survey question, a representative sample of U.S. consumers (n=499) gave the following answers to the open-ended question, “When dealing with a local merchant, what will cause you to complain?”

.,2% | Dirtiness

..2% | Lack of Knowledge

..3% | Lack of Selection/Out of Stock

..5% | High Prices

..8% | Too Slow & Long Lines

..8% | Low Quality Products

23% | Rudeness & Bad Attitude

34% | Lack of or Poor Customer Service

15% | Other

The silence of the dis-satisfied customer

According to Mike, most consumers don't express their complaints and will often just stop frequenting a business when dissatisfied.

Quote:

This in itself is all the more reason to proactively engage your customers in a feedback process. And yet repeat customers are really the life blood of any business generating significantly more lifetime value and at a lower cost. Understanding the pain points of your business is needed to outline a path to correction. If a local business can understand the most common areas of consumer pain, they can then work to minimize them.

 

 

 

(via: Get Five Stars)

---

 Photos: ThinkStock

News Anchor Gives Heartfelt Apology To Dog He Saw In Hot Car

A Denver news anchor gave an impassioned account Thursday of what happened when he saw a dog sweltering in a car on a 90-degree day.

“I thought about putting a rock through someone's car window today,” Kyle Clark of 9News said, describing finding a dog inside a parked car outside a frozen yogurt shop. The dog was crying in the heat so loudly, Clark said, that he could hear it across the parking lot.

He opted not to break the window, but when the driver hadn't come outside 10 minutes later, he called Denver 311 for help, who put him on hold. When the driver came outside and the news anchor “politely” confronted the stranger, the person “blew [him] off” and even laughed about the situation, Clark said.

“So there's an apology in order,” Clark said on air. “Not for you, no. For your dog. I am sorry that your dog does not have better humans."

Leaving an animal in a hot car in Denver County is a crime that can bring a fine of $999 or a year in jail, according to the DenverGov.org.

Though this dog survived, hot cars can be deadly for pets - and children. As the American Veterinary Medical Association explains, temperatures inside a car can skyrocket, rising 20 degrees within just 10 minutes. And dogs and children are more susceptible to the heat than adult humans. Dogs can't sweat, and children's bodies produce more heat relative to their size than adults do. That means that leaving children or pets in hot cars can result in death from heatstroke.

While some Facebook commenters are saying that Clark should have broken the window, we're just glad that he used his experience to spread the word about the importance of keeping pets safe in the summer. 

H/T The Dodo

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

How To Test Your Website's Performance on a Mobile Device

---

We've shared many reasons why you should be concerned with how fast and friendly our website is when viewed on a smartphone. According to research by Google, nine out of ten people will leave a mobile website if they can't find what they're looking for right away.(1)

---

Recently, Google launched a simple tool to test your website's mobile chops. Type in your website's address and Google will instantly score these three factors:

Mobile-friendliness | This is the quality of the experience customers have when they're browsing your site on their phones. To be mobile-friendly, your site should have tappable buttons, be easy to navigate from a small screen, and have the most important information up front and center.

Mobile speed | This is how long it takes your site to load on mobile devices. If customers are kept waiting for too long, they'll move on to the next site.

Desktop speed | This is how long it takes your site to load on desktop computers. It's not just the strength of your customers' web connection that determines speed, but also the elements of your website.

If you provide Google your email address, they will email you an indepth report with suggestions for ways you (or more likely, your webmaster) can improve your site's performance with mobile phones.

(Confession: Using the tool, we discovered a glitch that is slowing down SmallBusiness.com.)

(1) Consumers in the Micro-Moment, Wave 3, Google/Ipsos, U.S., August 2015, n=1291 online smartphone users 18+

(Via: Google)

---

 

How To Determine if Your Unpaid Internship Program is Legal

Ah, summer. The season of student internship programs at many small businesses. But if you think the term “student internship program” means “free summer worker,” it's very important that you read on-if you don't, you are risking a lot of legal hassle down the road.

Use this six-part test to determine if your internship program can be “unpaid”

Unless your internship program meets this six-factor test below from the Department of Labor, you may be breaking state wage laws and the Federal Labor Security Act. Even if your company passes, if you have unpaid interns, make sure to seek guidance from your professional and legal advisors, as laws and regulations can differ by state and local jurisdiction. You should also have clear and thoroughly written descriptions of your internship program, which describes the training offered by the program and clearly discloses that the position is unpaid.

1. The training must contain a significant educational component.


2. The training must primarily benefit the intern.


3. Interns may not displace regular employees but work under the close supervision of existing staff.


4. Your company must not derive an immediate advantage from the intern's activities.


5. The intern should not necessarily be entitled to a job at the conclusion of the program.


6. There must be a clear understanding that the intern is not entitled to wages.

Bottomline

An unpaid internship must clearly benefit the intern and contain a significant educational component. Unpaid internships are not summer employees you don't have to pay.

(via AndrewsKurth.com)

(Photo: Thinkstock)

He Who is At Sea Sails. He Who is on Land Judges.

This reminded us of one our favorite quotes; one previously featured on SmallBusiness.com. “It's not the critic who counts…” from Theodore Roosevelt.

---

He Who is At Sea Sails.

He Who is on Land Judges.

(Click illustration for a poster-size version)

(Click illustration for a poster-size version)

---

Photo: ThinkStock

Six Famous People With Strange Sleeping Habits

Earlier today, we shared some suggestions for healthy ways to fall asleep. As we explained in that article, there is plenty of evidence showing that an adequate amount of sleep has multiple benefits. After publishing the article, we were reminded by a user of SmallBusiness.com who recalled that we have previously shared this post about several famous people throughout history having unusual sleeping habits. So to provide equal time to the non-sleepers, here is our list of six famous people with strange sleeping habits. 

1 | Leonardo Da Vinci

(Image: on Flickr via MAMJODH)

Though Leonardo Da Vinci excelled in multiple genres–he was a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, inventor, mathematician, etc., etc.–he had a tendency to leave products unfinished. This could be attributed to his sporadic sleep schedule, which consisted of taking short naps throughout the day instead of sleeping at night.

2 | Napoleon Bonaparte

(Image: via wikipedia)

When at war, Napoleon was a model of energy for his soldiers, fighting alongside his troops and developing war strategy for days on end. Though he seldom changed his clothes or slept through the entire night, the emperor was known for his ability to nap. Though an insomniac during times of stress, he occasionally managed to catch up on his sleep: After campaigning, he was rumored to sleep for at least 18 hours straight.

3 | Nikola Tesla

(Image: via wikipedia)

Renowned inventor and electrical engineer Tesla gained notoriety as a “mad scientist” for his unusual sleep patterns. He claimed that he rarely slept more than two hours a day and reportedly once worked 84 hours in his laboratory without sleep.

4 | Martha Stewart

 

(Image: via wikipedia)

Successful business magnate Martha Stewart sets aside little time for sleep, claiming she needs less than four hours of sleep each night.

5 | Winston Churchill

 

(Image: via wikipedia)

Churchill believed napping was crucial. He never compromised his afternoon nap, which he referred to as “blessed oblivion” and an indispensable part of his daily routine. However, after 11 p.m. the great wartime leader stayed awake, committed to work until morning.

6 | Marissa Mayer

(Image: via wikimedia commons)

Mayer, Yahoo CEO, has admitted to needing only four to six hours of sleep a night. She relies on week-long vacations every four months to catch up.

(Featured Image: on Flickr via Janine)