You Tube has gained extraordinary popularity.

If you haven’t been there yet it is a huge collection of video clips that you can view and search.
It has become quite a controversial site because anyone can become a member and upload video and so content has caused concern particularly for parents.

But the phenomenon of putting video online is one that business can embrace and the uses of video for marketing and education are boundless.

You Tube is only one way of putting video online, and even though it is well used by business today I want to chat particularly about podcasting in general.
The important aspect of podcasting that sets it quite aside from simply making video or audio available online is that people are able to subscribe to syndication services which will find the material for you and automatically deliver it to you.

Large-scale syndication started in 2001 with online games.

Podcasts can be delivered to computers and portable media players such as iPods or other MP3 players.
Radio stations such as the ABC podcast a lot of their programs as do other radio and television stations.
Podcasts can also be used for marketing of products and services, providing a way to get marketing material to people who want to receive it, and keeping your products and services fresh in your customers minds.

You can create a podcast with a minimum of a computer and microphone – this would allow you to create an audio file. Many modern computers have a web cam on them, and simple video can be created this way.

Often they are not expensive productions as the important thing to remember is that you are better off creating a simple podcast every week rather than spending money on one really great one. The nature of the podcast is to receive small bites of information that is fresh and regular.

Blackberry is yet another wireless technology that is in popular usage.

Blackberry is a wireless handheld device that began in 1999 as a two-way pager system. By 2002 it had expanded its uses to embrace the smartphone Blackberry supporting email, mobile phone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless services. Instead of simply having a number pad for dialling it had a full “qwerty keyboard” (same layout as your computer) and a multi-touch screen. It could use both the mobile phone service and a wireless network.
It also includes software that allows an address book, calendar, to-do lists etc but was primarily known for its email capabilities.

The modern Blackberry contain an Intel processor (like many computers have), flash memory (a memory card type of memory) and RAM (the temporary memory used for processing information).
Blackberry devices are popular in business to provide roaming email access to employees who travel.
One of the differences in how they handle email is called push-email. This means that new emails, contacts and calendar entries are automatically sent out to the Blackberry device instead of relying on synchronising the device to your computer.
Most modern Blackberry devices also now include a function with online maps and your current location using Trilateration, which is less than the service received by GPS.
Another feature that makes the Blackberry attractive to business is that the devices can include a full-featured database management system, which can be used for customer relationship management and has the potential to manage large volumes of complex information.

Anyone with a modern mobile phone like the iphone may read this and think that it sounds like the Blackberry has much the same as any other modern phone. To a degree this is true, however they were in the frontline of developing some of these technologies and still today hold a large share of the market.

There are two computing terms that people find confusing – memory and storage.

I’ll use an analogy to help define the two terms.

Storage is like having a toy box. You can only store your toys in the box, so the number and size of the toys you can possess are limited to the size of your toy box.
However, you don’t play with your toys inside the toy box, you get them out in your playroom and play with them there.

Now the size of your playroom will dictate how many toys you can have out in use at any one time.

If your playroom is small, you will have to pack up your car track and put it away before you can get your building block set out. If your toy box is full you may spend a day making beautiful paintings but have to throw them out because you have nowhere to keep them!

Your toy box is your storage or hard drive on your computer. The size of your hard drive will determine how many programs you can fit on it, and how many files you can save.
Memory is the playroom and is called RAM. When you open a program on your computer it is loaded into

RAM. Whilst you work on a document it is held in RAM and does not go into storage until you save it. If you have not saved the document and the power goes out, you lose your document as memory is completely erased when a computer is shut down.

If you have a lot of files and programs open on your computer and notice it slows down, your playroom is not big enough to have all that stuff out at once.

So storage and memory work together to allow you to have lots of toys and the space to play with lots of them at once.

Thinking about storage space is on a computer system, and how efficiently you can share data within the business, the most common solutions sit inside your building.
Choosing an offsite storage system has some advantages that are worth consideration.
One obvious advantage is that they are not vulnerable to being stolen or lost if there were a fire.
Other great advantages are that you can access those files from any computer that has internet access. This may be particularly beneficial if you have multiple sites or staff that regularly travels.
Access is limited through password security, so being online does not make your files accessible to the public.
There is a wide range of services available that should tailor to any need.
Some systems allow for many levels of access so that you can allow your clients to upload files directly to your system, and you are notified when this happens.
Many services are available for Windows, Apple or Linux.
Some services allow you a web type interface to work with your files whilst others allow you to log in so that you receive a computer desktop to work from and you would barely know that you are not working on your own machine.
In fact there are so many choices out there that it pays well for you to sit down and do an audit of where your business technology is currently at, what upgrades may be needed and what needs are not being met currently. Now make a list of what needs may arise in the near future and even what I call the ‘wish list’ – all those things you would just like to have.
Once you start searching in google you may even feel overwhelmed so be sure you have someone who can translate for you what all the fine details really mean against your list of needs.