ESPA Creates Technician Marketing Tool Kit
By Jeremy Glowacki
As business begins to slow in this down economy, now is the perfect
time for employers to get their technicians trained and certified. By investing in your technicians, you're showing them that you care
about their career growth and you're demonstrating to your customers
that you demand the best from your techniciansIn that vein, the Electronic Systems Professional Alliance (ESPA), the group representing entry-level electronic systems technicians in the residential and commercial AV installation channels, has created a technician marketing tool kit for employers. The kit contains a sample ...
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Monster Responds to Mini Golf Backlash
By Jeremy Glowacki
Ok, I get it. You own a copyright and you have to protect it. Otherwise, it’s not worth the paper that it’s printed on. I still have a hard time siding with Monster Cable, even after the company posted a response to the backlash over its lawsuit with the owners of the Monster MiniGolf franchise.I was pretty tough on Monster Cable last week, but I wasn’t alone. Despite what Monster’s leadership says, they’re the big boys here and don’t need to flex their muscles and protect their brand against a mini golf franchise, even if they are both related to "entertainment" in some way. Maybe Monster ...
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Capitol Sales Offers Smart Business Tips for Integrators
By Jeremy Glowacki
So many times, business is all about common sense. But during an economic downturn it never hurts to revisit some key pointers. That’s just what Capitol Sales has done by issuing a list of helpful hints for dealers in the custom installation industry.Here they are:Manage Financials With Your CustomersMake sure your customers sign a contract before you order product or start work. Invoice before you start and secure 30 percent payment up-front.Collect a second down payment of 30 percent partway through the job.Collect a third payment of 30 percent when you're almost done with the job.Collect ...
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Monster Cable's Latest Victim
By Jeremy Glowacki
It's the not-so-secret dirty little secret in our industry. Monster
Cable views trademark infringement litigation
as a profit center for bullying small companies out of business. What we're talking about are not
simple patent infringement cases, though Monster has taken on those as
well (see www.bluejeanscable.com/legal/mcp/index.htm for one example). Worse
than that are the hundreds of examples like the one I
learned about today involving the Rhode Island-based owner of the
Monster MiniGolf franchise. Essentially, Monster Cable is making a
mockery of the legal system by suing ...
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Hacker Anger Toward Tweeter
By Jeremy Glowacki
Apparently not willing to let the folks at the soon-to-be-shuttered Tweeter corporation go quietly into the night a group of angry and industrious hackers offered their less-than-subtle redesign of tweeter.com this morning. Thanks to our friend Nick at Caster Communications for tipping us off. What do you think of this? Anyone looking for a new IT guy?? ...
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My Black Friday Experience
By Jeremy Glowacki
I've never been one for post-holiday early-bird retail sales. My family, however, loves them, having purchased much of their Christmas wrapping paper and decorations at day-after-Christmas specials over the years. Black Friday (named for day-after-Thanksgiving sales when most retailers finally make it into the "black" for the year) has never been as big an occasion for my relatives for some reason. This year my wife and I changed that tradition, having been suckered in by Wal-mart with the promise of a $198 door-buster deal for a Samsung BD-1500 Blu-ray Disc player.Last month I wrote about ...
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My Trip to Redmond
By Jeremy Glowacki
I worried that the appearance of my iPod audio recorder would raise a ruckus during my first visit to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, last week. But when the invited “bloggers” across the board room table from me whipped out their Mac Powerbooks, I knew I figured that they would probably take more flak than I would.Upon my arrival to Microsoft headquarters, I was excited to learn that a handful of press and I had been granted first-time access to several members of the Media Center team, even gaining a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at three testing labs.It is great to see the ...
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Welcoming Utz
By Jeremy Glowacki
So what do I think of CEDIA’s pick for its first-ever CEO? Easy. I think Utz Baldwin is a great guy and will be an excellent “face” of the organization.I’ve known all of the past CEDIA presidents (now called “chairmen”) pretty well since Mitchell Klein’s two-year term in the late 90s. During this “modern era” of CEDIA leadership, all of these men had unique leadership styles and all had affable personalities. Over the years, the role of the top board of directors member seemed to be reduced in significance by the growing strength of the association’s full-time staff and the development of ...
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Retail AV Hit Hard by U.S. Economic Woes
By Jeremy Glowacki
There’s always been a Catch 22 for the custom installation channel when
it comes to mass-market retail competition. On one hand, most retail
outlets -- particularly the big-box stores like Best Buy and Circuit
City -- often under-serve customers looking to make big purchases like
flat-panel TVs, computers, and digital cameras, because of their lack
of product training or simple apathy. Even the “installation
departments” of these retailers typically provide nothing more than a
hang-and-bang attitude with no customer service to speak of. On
the other hand, retail does provide the ...
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Green is Good with New Control Product
By Jeremy Glowacki
To adapt and improve upon an annoying catch phrase from the eighties, I’d like to state that "Green is Good." And although business is rough for many of us, I think a new product that launches next week from Agilewaves can give you a Green story and a positive pitch to tell your clients who may be reluctant to buy more toys from you as their stock portfolios continue to tumble.A couple months ago, Residential Systems columnist Gordon van Zuiden wrote about growing "Green" opportunities in the custom integration channel. In that story, van Zuiden cited Agilewaves, a designer of a "Resource ...
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Call Me Mr. RG6
By Jeremy Glowacki
After my first two days of CEDIA Boot Camp course in Indianapolis this week, I’ve become so knowledgeable about the ins and outs of terminating “coax cable” that you can now officially refer to me as “Mr. RG6.” Just think, only two days ago I couldn’t have told you what RG6 was… or RJ45, 16/4, or 16/2 for that matter. Coax? Sure! Cat-6 cable? No problem! But that other wire and cable lingo used to sail right over my head. Now, with two-thirds of CEDIA’s version of installer basic training under my belt, I can confidently identify, pre-wire, label, and terminate cable of all kinds, with the ...
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Bush Enacts Pro-IP Anti-Piracy Law
By Jeremy Glowacki
In what could be another blow for companies like RealNetworks and even consumers and integrators involved with digital media, President George W. Bush this past Monday signed into law a bill designed to increase protection of intellectual property (IP) such as software, films, and music by raising penalties for infringement and creating a national "IP czar." The Business Software Alliance, Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America all supported the bill.The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2007, or PRO-IP ...
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CBS Affiliate Leaves Me in the Dark
By Jeremy Glowacki
Given all that’s happening with the U.S. economy, it seems petty to complain about missing a couple of football games in high-definition over the weekend. However, an on-going dispute between my cable provider and the owner of the Indianapolis CBS affiliate has reduced me to doing just that.The Indianapolis-area cable provider, Bright House, cannot carry the station WISH-TV or CBS programming without retransmission consent from corporate owner, LIN TV Corp. That consent expired at 11:59 p.m., October 2, leaving about 125,000 customers, like me, without the station or its other stations in ...
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My Disneyland Dream Home Experience
By Jeremy Glowacki
The Innoventions Dream Home is located in the heart of Disneyland's Tomorrowland section.As I sat there, my flight delayed at Chicagos OHare Airport I
pondered the carbon footprint required to get me from Carmel, Indiana,
to Anaheim, California. I was on my way to attend the grand-opening
festivities for Disneys Innoventions Dream Home, and the only reason I
was going was because of my respect for the folks at Exceptional
Innovation whose Life-ware brand was one of the core technologies in
the home and one that is increasingly more important to the custom
installation channel. ...
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Hot from the Show
By Jeremy Glowacki
The second-most-often-uttered question at trade shows is, What have
you seen thats hot? My answer this year at CEDIA EXPO in Denver was,
Not much, and thats a good thing.
For the second year in row, my sense at CEDIA was that while we were
once witnessing monumental shifts in technology on an annual basis, now
weve reached point where incremental improvements are the norm. The
reason that this is not a bad thing is that now we might finally start
to make things work for consumers, instead of frustrating and scaring
them with bleeding edge gear that has not been debugged.
Im sure that this is ...
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