Looking Back at 2010

The New Year is always a time of reflection. What went well the last year? What could have been better? This is where many New Year’s resolutions come from. Not only is the New Year starting you off with a clean slate but it’s a good reason to find things you can do improve on years past. In the spirit of reflection I took a little time to look at what our most popular blog posts from the last year in hopes of finding a little bit of insight into what we should work on or write about in the year to come.

1. Change the speed of video clips in VideoPad
   
2. Practice audio transcription files now available
   
3. NCH Software iPhone Software Update, see all the NCH Software iPhone apps
   
4. Make a Glee Music Mash Up with MixPad
   
5. Record audio playing through your computer
   
6. WavePad recognized as top mac audio editing software
   
7. Zulu virtual DJ Software now avaialable for Mac
   
8. The Secret Life of Tone Generator Software
   
9. Complete transcription quickly and easily with FastFox word expansion software
   
10. Radio World User report on BroadWave streaming Audio server software
    
11. PitchPerfect Guitar Tuning Software Now an iPhone App
    
12. WavePad Audio Editor Software Now available as an iPhone App
    
13. FTC Bans Unsolicited robocalls
    
14. MixPad Multitrack audio recording and mixing software now available for Mac
    
15. New Sound Effect Library Added to WavePad Sound Editor
    
16. Create unique sounds with MixPad and WavePad Audio Software
    
17. TempoPerfect metronome software is now also an iPhone App
    
18. Internet Use in the Office and Cyberslacking is costing employers millions
    
19. A movie maker solution for Windows 7—Videopad
    
20. CardWorks new free business card designer software
    

What I take from this is that not only are our big announcements such as the addition of the sound effect library and adding speed control into VideoPad important, but that our readers like to see more about how software is being used by other people in interesting and creative ways. There also seem to be a fair amount of Mac users looking for software solutions who will be pleased to hear that we are going to continue to bring more of our popular software over to the Mac platform. We are also going to continue to try to write about a breadth of different software topics. If there is anything in particular you would like to hear about, let us know.

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Slow September - Or Was It?

We were a little bit low on our blogging quota in September, but not without good reason. We have very busy with some exciting projects that left us with little time for blogging. For example we have just been finishing up the artwork for some bilingual English/French boxes for our first software products that will be sold in Canadian retail stores that will be sold soon starting out at Staples Canada. And that is just one of the exciting things that we hope/plan to see come to fruition in the not too distant future. We'll do our best to keep the blog posts coming and we hope to have more exciting news to share soon, so be sure to stay tuned for more updates on seeing NCH Software in stores in Canada and more.

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Blogging by Dictation

Earlier today I listened into a great webinar on Hubspot titled Vovici Blog Factory Delivers Customers lead by Jeffrey Henning of Vovici. One of my biggest takeaways from this session was getting more people in an organization involved to help you post more frequently, since studies show that posting more frequently can help make a blog more effective. More specifically, one comment from another attendee sparked a little light bulb moment that I wanted to share.

The comment was about a company executive who was short on time using a voice recorder to dictate for a blog post from the road and giving that audio recording to someone else to type up. The moderators mentioned how this could be very effective and how you could also even use that audio for a podcast. And while I don't think that words dictation and transcription were explicitly used it really made me think,

Why not take it this one step further and use dictation software for blogging?

Express Dictate is designed to email a finished audio dictation to a transcriptionist, but why not use it to send audio for a blog post to your blog's primary editor to polish and post, or send it to yourself to finish later, or even edit the audio to use as a podcast.

If you have a long commute what a great way to take advantage of that time using the mobile versions of Express/Pocket Dictate on your Pocket PC, Palm, or iPhone to help solidify your blogging ideas.

When I first started working in Denver I lived an hour south in Colorado Springs, and I can't tell you how many times the first thing I did when I got home was grab a piece of paper to jot down all the ideas and to-do list items that had entered my mind while I was driving before I forgot. How much more efficient it would have been to just dictate all these thoughts while I was still in the car. Perhaps this isn't an entirely new idea, but it really struck home with me as a simple way to make use of what would otherwise be downtime and help your blog at the same time.

This might be a good way to get someone in your organization with less free time involved in generating content for your company blog. They can just dictate and send from anywhere using a simple software solution like Express Dictate.

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