Health Upgraders

This holiday season has seen an upsurge of one of the
oddest (to my mind) campaigns to keep Christmas in the
season. Emails are flying around the internet about
Christmas trees and there are Christian groups having hissy
fits about people saying “Happy Holidays.”

Yes, for the Christian community all over the world, it IS
Christmas. But, Christians are not the only group
celebrating Holy Days this time of the year and they need
to remember that.

December 25th this year also marks the beginning of
Hannukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. It begins three
days before the moon closest to the Winter Solstice, which
just occurred the 21st. It is the time of rededication for
them in remembrance and celebration of when the Macabees
retook the Temple of Jerusalem from the Syrians and
rededicated it.

December 26th marks the beginning of Kwanzaa, an African
American celebration of the family and the self. While it
is not considered a political or religious holiday, it does
include some spiritual aspects and being of the family,
should be honored.

That day is also Boxing Day, or Saint Stephen’s Day in the
United Kingdom. Since Stephen was the first martyr for the
Christian cause, I’d say it’s pretty holy.

Ramadan is in the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and
happens to fall now, too. It is a time of submission to
Allah for the Muslims. A month-long celebration with
fasting and prayers. Holy times, indeed.

There are many more celebrations that fall now that are
holy to those that observe them. The Winter Solstice (12-
21), Bodhi Day (a.k.a. Rohatsu–the day the Buddha found
enlightenment–12-8), Day of the Holy
Innocents (the victims of Herod’s attempt to exterminate
the Christ were all male children under the age of two–12-
28).

The largest complaint going around is against the retailers
like Target, WalMart, K-Mart, etc. for not keeping
Christmas in their advertising or, supposedly, not letting
their employees say, “Merry Christmas.” As one of my co-
workers said, “The holiday season begins at Thanksgiving.
By the time Christmas comes, you’re so used to saying Happy
Holidays, you don’t say anything else.”

I know for a fact(as a former employee) that WalMart does
NOT forbid the use of Merry Christmas, but as a Christian,
I will not intentionally offend those that are not
Christians. Did it once and got my ears pinned back–and
rightly. So, I am more circumspect about it.

It is not even about being “politically correct” (what an
idiotic term–not much correct about the politics of this
country, but that’s another article). It is about having
care for your fellow humans and honoring their right to
observe their beliefs, just as they should honor ours.

This country was founded on a desire for religious freedom
and tolerance. Why are we so intolerant now? Why curb the
freedom of others to enjoy their religion?

So, what is wrong with Seasons Greetings or Happy Holidays?
Well, these groups claim to be fighting to keep Christ in
Christmas, but it seems to me that they might better direct
their efforts toward keeping God in our everyday lives.
For instance, the atheists fighting in the courts to remove
“In God We Trust” from our currency are a greater threat to
the Christian beliefs this country was founded on than
‘Happy Holidays’ is.

Not being able to display the Ten Commandments in public
places is a greater threat. Not being able to display
religious symbols publicly in squares or public traffic
areas is a greater threat as well. Why make an issue of
“Christmas” versus “Holiday?” Seems to me there are
greater battles to fight.

For the non-Christians, we ask that you tolerate us if we
do wish you a Merry Christmas. It is simply our way of
expressing the joy we feel at this time of the year. Wish
us a Happy Hannukah or Blessed Ramadan or Great Kwanzaa
back. We won’t be offended–usually. At least, I won’t.

The majority of religions in existence today honor a
supreme being. Whether you call it God, Goddess, Allah, or
whatever, the basic tenet of all the beliefs I’ve looked at
seems to be love for others. So, why not express that love
at this time, rather than enmity? Why separate ourselves
further from our fellow humans just because they believe a
little differently? This seems to be a jihad being fought
on the internet and about issues I don’t believe Christ
would advocate.

But, that’s just my opinion.

C. Rogers Upson is a published author on several websites and in
several anthologies. This article can be published on your website or in your newsletter, so long as the resource information is intact and nothing is changed. Her website is http://www.edragonmarketing.com and she has a blog at http://edragonmarketing.blogspot.com.

For corporate communicators brought up on printed publications, the immediacy of on-line communications is a breath of fresh air. But just as we have had to adopt our writing style for the net, we should also be thinking differently about how we take and edit photographs.

Why? Internet and intranet images are used very small – often no bigger than about 250 pixels wide. This immediately throws up a problem. On printed pages where we had a whole page to play with we could afford to be clumsy with our cropping and composition. Not any more.

Photographers should adopt a different shooting style for intranet, one that involves much tighter composition and adherence to the common shapes that are used.

Take a look at your on-line news service and you will see that most imagery tends to be landscape shaped. The more enlightened will have adopted portrait-shaped images too, which seem to give the viewer more to look at when placed alongside copy, while still leaving space for a decent column width for text.

But, with a few exceptions, I bet you don’t use cut-outs, or full-screen shots that whack the reader right between the eyes. And you don’t have too much room for picture stories that tell the tale across about 10 images either.

So what we need is a single image that has impact, even when only two inches wide.

The answer then is to brief your photographer carefully about the space you wish them to fill. If possible, show them a typical page or send a print-out. If you don’t brief your photographer carefully how can you expect to get the results you require?

If you’re taking the pictures yourself then try to a) get a lot closer to the action and b) compose your shots to maximize the area you have. I have one consultancy client who nicknamed me “Phil the Frame” as apparently that’s all I kept saying to them! I don’t care – the message seems to have struck home!

But how can you compose your shots better?

The first trick involves heads. If you are shooting a group of three or four people don’t just line them up, stagger them so that their heads are closer together. The same with a shot of a couple. OK, it may feel a little strange for them to be so close to their neighbor, but you can lose that irritating space between their heads and so come up with a tighter image.

You can use the same technique if photographing someone with an object, such as an award. Get them to hold it up against their face, not on their chest.

When using the viewfinder or preview screen really work hard to fill every pixel, moving people around if need be.

Once you have the shot there is a lot you can do to improve it. I have yet to see any image straight out of a digital camera that couldn’t be enhanced.

First, make sure you are viewing the image on the type of monitor that everyone else in the organisation is going to use. If using a Macintosh, change the gamma setting from 1.8 to 2.2 (the Windows standard). Images displayed on a PC are inherently more contrasty than they look on a Mac if you don’t.

In Photoshop, adjust the levels using the histogram as a guide. This is better than using the brightness and contrast controls. Sometimes it can help to boost the saturation by +10 too, depending upon what camera you use.

Then crop the image to show what you want, bearing in mind how it will be used on the screen. Once cropped, resize the image down to 250 pixels or whatever you normally use. If you resize and then crop you will end up with something totally the wrong size!

The final step is to apply some Unsharp Masking to the image to put back some of the definition lost through resizing. It is amazing how many people don’t do this. Typical settings in Photoshop are Amount: 30-100%, Radius 1.5 pixels and Threshold 5-7 levels.

Don’t overdo the sharpening. If it looks too gritty, cut the Amount down by half.

Finally, save as a JPEG file (not a GIF, which only uses 256 colors, instead of the JPEG’s 16.7 million), choosing an appropriate level of compression. When all internet connections were via a modem it was important to get the file size incredibly small, but with most intranets you can afford to make them a little bigger.

Using the “Save for Web option” you can play with the “Quality” control to get a good balance between file size and image quality. You should be able to get a 250 x 200 pixel image down to around 10k with no sign of degradation or artefacts – these are the strange squiggles you see in over-compressed images.

Voila! You now have an image that is well composed, tightly cropped, optimized, sharpened and ready for use.

Videos on the Web are a critical instrument to market your firm’s products and services. Of course there are dozens and dozens of other sorts of marketing strategies which include content writing to blogging, from public relations to podcasting. Nevertheless, nothing says “cool, connection, & creativity” like a short format video.

Each day more & more companies of all sizes are making short format videos about their products. They’re not only just adding them on their business sites, but they are putting them on their blogs. To gain universal 24/7 visibility, promotional videos are being posted to various video-sharing websites like You Tube & Metacafe. And why not ? it’s economical, easy-to-do, and can have a massive difference, in some cases, on the traffic it brings to your businesses site.

There are several other reasons why Web videos are a superb way to advertise your business. Vidify’s online video distribution partnerships ensure your video commercials generate awareness and impact within the right circles, fast.

Video commercials enjoy a far reaching circulation: Videos by their own nature are easy to “package” which makes them easy to slot into a range of different distribution channels. You can post them on your businesses site or blog, you can load them onto your notebook & show them over & over again at a chosen event. You can add them to several Internet video-sharing social media sites. You can copy them onto CDs and give them away or sell them. You can even dispatch them by email.

Videos are an exceptional way to communicate. As our use of technology develops, so do the methods in which people like to interact with others. Most individuals are visually oriented meaning that is how they best understand & interact with their world. This makes short format videos the supreme advertise strategy to speak with today’s clients.

These are just some of the many reasons why Web videos might be an outstanding way to advertise your businesses products and services. Discover more about this area to see how you could exploit your time, finances, and energy to talk to your target clients in a fresh & fascinating way.

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