Friday, December 31, 2010

WEBSITE OF THE DAY - Sales Diary


WEBSITE OF THE DAY ? Sales Diary  . Online, WebsiteoftheDay, Websites, Software  0

If, like me, you watched the news last night through a half-drunken, mince pie-addled haze and wondered what the hell right-minded people were doing queuing up all day and night to get into the sales were thinking of, then read on.

If not, you’re probably already out on the high street and you’re a lost cause.

Yes, I know there’s something to be said for the thrill of the hunt, but seriously, if you really want to bag the bargains, go prepared. If you’re not doing the actual shopping online, then at least do the research.

At www.www.moneysavingexpert.com/deals/high-st-sales-diary you get the latest on who’s selling off their winter stocks at the best prices. It’s a mix of online and high street retailers that’s listed, so you can plan what you want to get and from where.

It’s a good idea to get in before the VAT increase next week, but there’s no need to lose your marbles entirely. Stay in the warm for goodness sake.

Another mince pie anyone…?

Tags: Online Websites Software WebsiteOfTheDay

WEBSITE OF THE DAY ? Sales Diary  . Online, WebsiteoftheDay, Websites, Software  0 

WEBSITE OF THE DAY ? Sales Diary originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:00:00 +0000

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Spanish Cablegate: Microsoft and BSA Overlap, Microsoft Exempted From ?Piracy? Tax in France

Cablegate/Wikileaks material reveals that Business Software Alliance (BSA) employees can be Microsoft employees simultaneously; new French law may tax Linux-powered devices but not Windows-based ones

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BarMax, The $1,000 App (That?s Actually Worth It), Hits The iPad

It was just about a year ago that we first wrote about BarMax, an iPhone application meant to help law student pass the Bar exam. But if you've heard of the app, it's more likely because of its price: $999.99. And now you'll be able to part with the $1,000 at the click of a button for the iPad too. BarMax, which, believe it or not, actually seems to be a good deal at $1,000, has just launched the iPad version into the App Store this evening. Specifically, the California (each state has different Bar exams) version is ready to roll.

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Drunk TechCrunch Is Drunk. (Happy New Year!)

It's New Year's Eve and you know what that means ? an adult beverage or two might be had by many people around the world this evening. That includes many TechCrunch staffers. And while drunk blogging is generally frowned upon, it would be interesting to see what the site would look like if everyone wrote while intoxicated. (Yes, yes, insert the NOT THAT DIFFERENT joke here.) Luckily,�Zaraguza Digital has created a web app to allow us to see such a site without any of the risk (or the hangover). Simply visit this link and start moving the slider along the bottom to set the blood alcohol level. Obviously, at 0.0, things look normal. At 0.5, things look fine for the most part with a few more typos. At about 1.5 to 2.0 things start getting fun. And clearly, our developers would be getting in on some hardcore drunk coding action as well.

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I'll Plug You On The Radio

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11 Best Web Analytics Tools

When considering the different web analytics tools that your business requires, the plethora of available options can be overwhelming for businesses that may not understand how to use them. And that’s where hiring someone to really dig into all of the reports can be vital.

The rule that is often referenced in this regard is the 90/10 rule, so if you have $100 to spend on analytics, spend $10 on reports and data, and $90 on paying someone to filter through all of that information. Because without a proper understanding of the information these services will provide you with, it remains just raw data.

“Investing in people and the tools that those people need to be successful is key,” notes Bryan Eisenberg, author and marketing consultant. “But it’s the people who can understand that data that really matter.”

You obviously won’t use all of these tools all of the time, but it’s beneficial to know about some of the top options and how they fit into your overall web strategy. And using multiple tools only gives you further levels of insight into your customers and your success rate.

According to Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, “the quest for a single tool/source to answer all your questions will ensure that your business will end up in a ditch, and additionally ensure that your career (from the Analyst to the web CMO) will be short-lived.” So in short, it’s of extreme importance to focus on multiplicity.

For larger businesses, the more robust analytics tools can be great to really dig in, but for small and mid-sized companies, there are many free or relatively cheap offerings to help you understand this information.

We interviewed Eisenberg, Christopher Penn of Blue Sky Factory, Caleb Whitmore of Analytics Pros, June Dershewitz of Semphonic, Eric Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified, Linda Bustos of Elastic Path Software, Jamie Steven, Rand Fishkin and Joanna Lord of SEOMoz.org, Trevor Peters of Critical Mass and Justin Levy of New Marketing Labs. These experts know the tools inside and out and this guide contains their recommendations on the best services for you to use.


11 Best Web Analytics Tools: What is Web Analytics?

But before digging in to the tools themselves, let’s start with exactly what web analytics is? As Kaushik states in his book with the same title, Web Analytics 2.0 is defined as:

1. The analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your website and the competition

2. To drive a continual improvement of the online experience of your customers and prospects

3. Which translates into your desired outcomes (online and offline)

Web analytics 2.0 is a three-tiered data delivery and analysis service for small and big businesses. The first is the data itself, as it measures the traffic, page views, clicks and more for both your website and for your direct competition. The second is what you do with that data, or how you are able to take the information gathered via these services and apply it to your customers, whether new or existing, to make their experience meaningful and better. And the final tier is how it all circles back together to meet your overarching business objectives, not just online but offline as well. Data by itself is a great way to see how you are performing, but without applying what you’ve learned, it has little use.

Dig Deeper: Three Ways to Get a Web State of Mind

11 Best Web Analytics Tools: Clickstream Analysis Tools

Google Analytics (google.com/analytics) - Free

A completely free service that generates detailed statistics about visitors to your website, Google Analytics is the simplest and most robust web analytics offering. Currently used by over 50% of the top 10,000 websites in the world, according to the site’s usage statistics, you can find out where your visitors are coming from, what they’re doing while on your site and how often they come back, among many other things. As you get more involved in the site’s analytics, you can receive more detailed reports, but it’s that ease of use that makes it one of the most popular services.

“There’s really only one tool for small businesses need and that’s Google Analytics,” notes Penn. “It's so incredibly robust in terms of what it offers and if someone tells you that Google Analytics isn't enough for a small business, then frankly they have no idea how to use it properly.”

Google Analytics was the unanimous favorite of all the web analytics experts we talked to.
-Recommended by all experts

Yahoo Web Analytics (web.analytics.yahoo.com) - Free

Once you’ve mastered Google Analytics, Yahoo’s similar offering gives you a little more depth in your surveying. It offers better access control options and a simpler approach to multi-site analytics, raw and real time data collection (unlike Google, you can import cost of goods data), visitor behavior and demographics reports and customized options as well. Yahoo Analytics is a bit of a step up from Google in terms of profiling, filtering and customization, so for those looking to dig a little deeper, it’s a great option.
-Recommended by Whitmore, Bustos, Eisenberg

Crazy Egg (crazyegg.com) – $9-$99/month

In short, Crazy Egg allows you to build heat maps and track your visitors every click based on where they are specifically clicking within your website which is a long way of saying that you’re exploring your website’s usability. It allows you to really see what parts of your site users are finding most interesting and clicking on the most. It can help you to improve your website design and in essence conversion. Setup is quite simple as well, and their 30-day money back guarantee on all accounts is a nice touch.
-Recommended by Whitmore and Dershewitz

Dig Deeper: How to Use Google to Improve Your SEO

11 Best Web Analytics Tools: Competitive Intelligence Tools

Compete (compete.com) – Prices vary

Perhaps best known for publishing the approximate number of global visitors to the web’s top one million websites, Compete is a great complimentary tool to clickstream analytics offerings. Compete gives you creative intelligence on what your competitors are doing or how your users ended up on your website in the first place (what their clicks were both before and after). There is a free offering that includes traffic volume data. But where Compete is different is in their search analytics, a paid service that lets you track what keywords are sending users both to your website and to your competitors.

“The deeper digital insights you have, the better understanding you have of your customer,” says Aaron Smolick, senior director of marketing at Compete. “By using Compete products, you will have all of the information that you need to make educated decisions to optimize your online campaign, increase market share and dominate the competition.
-Recommended by Dershewitz, Eisenberg and Levy

Dig Deeper: How to Keep Tabs on the Competition

11 Best Web Analytics Tools: Experimentation and Testing Tools

Google Website Optimizer (google.com/websiteoptimizer) – Free

Another free tool from the folks at Google, their Website Optimizer is a complex testing service that allows you to rotate different segments of content on your website to see which sections and placement convert into the most clicks, and at the end of the day, the most sales. You can choose what parts of your page you want to test, from the headline to images to text, and run experiments to see what users respond best to. And of course, with GWO being free (you don’t even need Google Analytics to use it), it could be the only A/B (a technical term for multiple versions of the site running at once) and Multivariate (MVT) or complex testing solution.

“While not web analytics proper, Google's Web Site Optimizer is the perfect companion to measurement and allows small business owners to test simple (A/B) and complex (multivariate) variations of their site, content, and landing pages using powerful statistical methodologies,” says Peterson. “While set-up is somewhat involved, the user interface is delightfully easy to learn and, of course, the service is available at the best of all prices --- free.

Google Website Optimizer was another unanimous favorite from our panel of web analytics experts.
-Recommended by all

Optimizely (optimizely.com) - $19-$399/month

A relatively new service (launched in June 2010), Optimizely is simple to use but its results can be quite powerful. In essence, it’s an easy way to measure and improve your website through A/B testing. As a business, you can create experiments with the site’s very easy-to-use visual interface. The beautiful thing about this service is that you need absolutely zero coding or programming background, as the tools are easy for anyone to use.
-Recommended by Whitmore and Eisenberg

Dig Deeper: How to Use Google Apps to Improve Your Business

11 Best Web Analytics Tools: Voice of Customer Tools

Kissinsights from Kiss Metrics (kissinsights.com) – Free to $29/month

One of the easiest tools you can implement (it literally takes a one-time Javascript install), the idea behind Kissinsights is to provide businesses with an easily implemented and customized feedback form for website visitors. On the businesses end, you can manage all of the questions you’re asking customers through a single and simple dashboard. The best part of Kissinsights is that your customer feedback comes in via very simplified and short comments.
-Recommended by Whitmore, Eisenberg, Levy, Steven, Fishkin and Lord


4Q by iPerceptions (4qsurvey.com) – Free

A 100% free online survey solution that allows you to truly understand the “Why” around your website’s visitors, the premise behind 4Q is basically to learn what people are doing while on your website. Surveys are a powerful way to glean important insight from your customer’s actual experiences on your site, and they offer short and simple surveys that answer the four key questions you want every customer to answer:

• What are my visitors at my website to do?

• Are they completing what they set out to do?

• If not, why not?

• How satisfied are my visitors?

-Recommended by Whitmore, Dershewitz, Bustos and Eisenberg

ClickTale (clicktale.com) – Free to $990 (3 months free on paid plans)

A qualitative customer analysis, Clicktale records every action of your website’s visitors from their first click to the last. It uses Meta statistics create visual heat maps and reports on customer behavior, as well as providing traditional conversion analytics.

“One of the things that Google Analytics doesn't do particularly well is tell you what visitors are paying attention to on a page and highlighting where those visitors are getting stuck during their visit,” says Peterson. “ Clicktale is essentially a video recorder for web site visits and provides great detail about mouse movement, scrolling, and dozens of other critical visitor behaviors.”
-Recommended by Whitmore, Peterson, Eisenberg, Steven, Fishkin and Lord

Dig Deeper: How to Make the Most of Customer Feedback

11 Best Web Analytics Tools: Social Analytics

Facebook Insights - Free

If you’re using Facebook for any part of your business, this is the simplest free offering from Mark Zuckerberg’s team in terms of analytics. It provides very detailed information about your follower counts, likes, comments on posts and more. There are two different types of Facebook Insights, based around both users and interactions with your content. Really, this is the best and only tool you’ll need if you’re using Facebook content to help engagement with your customers.
-Recommended by Dershewitz, Peterson and Bustos


Twitalyzer (twitalyzer.com) - Free

The most complete application for measuring impact, engagement and influence on your Twitter usage, Twitalyzer is a free analytics dashboard with detailed metrics. Similar to Facebook Insights, Twitalyzer gives a higher view of your account’s impact on customers, based on followers, retweet level, how often an account replies and engages in conversation, and more. Simplicity is key here, as you can just look up a Twitter username and get instant information.
-Recommended by Peterson and Bustos

There are plenty of additional analytics options out there, including Piwik, Feedburner, Percent Mobile, Mongoose Metrics, AdWords, Klout, Topsy and plenty more. It really depends on what you want to focus on most with your business and that’s what you need to analyze before digging into this process, but these cheap tools are a great place to start.

Dig Deeper: How to Use Location-Based Social Networks for Your Business



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SocialFlow Tries to Crack Science of Twitter

doctor examining Twitter bird

Social media experts are a dime a dozen. Self-proclaimed gurus boast of their ability to manipulate the blogosphere, to make anything go viral--or, in the words of one social media satirist, to "jack the strat." But is there really a science behind having success on social media?

That's exactly what SocialFlow hopes to prove. The New York-based startup, a sister company of Bit.ly and Chartbeat under Betaworks, claims to have cracked the puzzle of real-time conversation, and boasts that it can "take the guesswork out of what to say and when to say it on Twitter, Facebook and Google."

SocialFlow's aim is to determine the best time and content for a tweet or Facebook message. It provides analytics to monitor what's resonating with online users, and uses that data to refine future posts. Metrics include clicks per tweet, clicks per follower, performance of retweets and mentions and shares--all using an algorithm integrated with Bit.ly's monthly clicks--all five billion of them.

For media companies, if a particular subject or topic has seen high resonance in the past, SocialFlow will suggest optimized times to publish that content and send out tweets and Facebook messages about it. For example, users can compare how social media performance ranks on Tuesdays ...

... with Fridays.

A tweet's success can be monitored by overall performance or by click distribution charts. Essentially, the idea is to measure content consumption patterns on a microscopic level, rather than just follow the common metrics of volume and quantity.

"There's a fair amount of guess work whether people will pay attention to your social media," says Michael Chin, SocialFlow's VP of marketing. "We want to maximize return on everything you send out."

[Image by Andrew Hur]


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Groupon Insiders Take $345 Million Off The Table In Latest Funding Round

As we first reported last night, Groupon has already closed $500 million of a whopping $950 million funding round. Now the SEC filing is out showing that the first sale occurred on December 17, and that there is still $450 million worth of securities available to be sold in the current round. The new round gives Groupon a valuation of $4.75 billion. We noted that most of the proceeds of the round is going back to founders and existing shareholders, with DST leading the round (Fidelity and Morgan Stanley also participated). Now we know exactly how much. The filing specifies that $345 million of the proceeds (from the $500 million raised) will go directly to "executive officers, directors or promoters."

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App-vent - day 22: Fuzzle Christmas

A nice little taster
App-vent - day 22: Fuzzle Christmas. Mobile phone apps, Puzzle games, Fuzzle, Fuzzle Christmas, Appvent Calendar, App of the day,  0

Everyone enjoys a little taster, whether it's at your local delicatessen in order to try a couple of choice cheeses; at the cinema, viewing the trailers for upcoming films or trying out the latest console title at your local games retailer.

Our app-vent calendar carries on this theme by bringing you a taster of a cracking iPhone puzzler; warning, this may well get you hooked on the full-fat version.

Fuzzle Christmas

Format
iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
Price
free
Where
iTunes?

High on the Christmas puzzle action, Fuzzle brings a lovely balance between complexity and simplicity as despite its straightforward rules there lies beneath plenty to challenge even the most committed.

Move the balls around the board to create lines of five balls of the same colour, thus removing the balls; after every other move you make, more balls are added, with the goal being to keep the board from filling up as long as possible.

Everything still looks very nice, just with a Christmas theme laid over the top. And with six difficulty levels and multiple game modes this should keep you busy until the news year.

We definitely recommend giving this free version a go; you'll be limited to 150 points and will have to play on the easy difficulty level, but no doubt you'll become horribly addicted and end up forking out the 59p for the complete game (when tested we were granted an extra 50 points for getting to the points limit super-quickly - we'll let you decide whether it was our genius or their generosity).

Tags: Mobile phone apps Puzzle games Fuzzle Fuzzle Christmas Appvent Calendar App of the day

App-vent - day 22: Fuzzle Christmas. Mobile phone apps, Puzzle games, Fuzzle, Fuzzle Christmas, Appvent Calendar, App of the day,  2 

App-vent - day 22: Fuzzle Christmas originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 18:00:00 +0000

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7 Tips for Business Forecasting


What is your business going to spend next year? What do you think you'll bring in? When do you think that money will actually reach your bank account? How are sales going to flow and ebb? Forecasting for sales and cash flow is never simple, and the shaky economic recovery is making attempting to create an accurate forecast even more perplexing. We've talked to CEOs who say it's not impossible to forecast effectively, and we've compiled their smartest advice from Inc. articles and Inc.com guides.

1. Plan for the worst, but project for the best, too.
To be prepared to at least break even in tough times, but also be ready for growth, Orb Audio CEO Ethan Siegel makes three different spreadsheets for his high-end speaker manufacturing business, Donna Fenn reports. "We try to walk the fine line of making sure we are profitable if the worst case comes true, but also have enough product and staff to support the best case predictions," says Siegel, whose company is based in New York City. This year, the company grew by 30 percent, with growth fueled largely by foreign sales driven by a weak dollar. "We never would have guessed that we'd grow that much," says Siegel. "But because we also planned for best case and built up inventory, we weren’t caught with our pants down." In the short term, Siegel looks carefully at the month-to-month growth rate in the previous year to predict revenue in the coming months. "It's been very accurate for us since speaker sales do tend to follow a seasonal pattern," he says. "People are more likely to spend their money on indoor entertainment in cold months." Read more.

2. Out with the old, in with the new.
Don't let your annual forecast go stale, recommends Seventh Generation's Jeffrey Hollender. He says a once-a-year forecast doesn't hold up well in uncertain economic times. It might be wise to "consider pushing your annual forecast back to later in the year," he says. "We used to do our forecast in August but now have pushed that all the way back to November. And in the past six months, we've created a new forecast almost monthly. Creating that many new forecasts can take a lot of time, but sometimes it's necessary. In the end, you don't want to run a business off of a forecast you no longer have confidence in." Read more.

3. Keep your customer terms updated.
"For the first four and a half years of this business, we'd have the occasional customer who ran into a slowdown. Now, that unstable group is much bigger," says Dennis Brown, CEO of Logistic Dynamics, an Amherst, New York, logistics coordinator. "This year, we are a lot more conservative in our methodology because of the unknown. We've tightened our credit terms to our customers. We know this year, somebody significant is going to file bankruptcy on us. Statistically, it's going to happen. Therefore, our forecasts have to be more conservative, because we need to be able to subsidize that kick in the pants we know we are going to get. It may be only $30,000, but it may be $300,000. That would hurt bad. We're hoping it's $30,000." Read more.

4. Plan discounts ahead of time
There are two primary types of discounts a retailer might take: Promotional discounts during the season and clearance markdowns as the season winds down. Planning these discounts goes hand in hand with planning sales and inventories if you are using retail value as your unit of measure. "A discount, just like a sale, decreases the retail value of your inventory on hand," says Ted Hurlbut, the principal of Hurlbut & Associates, a merchandising and inventory management consulting firm based in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Keep in mind that any retailer needs to protect gross margins and cash flow when planning clearance markdowns. "If you plan the date of the first seasonal markdown before the season even begins," Hurlbut says, "you can plan the inventory you want to have on hand at that point in time, and thus your markdown percentage. If you've planned sales by month, ending inventories by month, and discounts by month, it's easy to calculate how much inventory to bring in each month, by category. Hurlbut says retailers need to bring in enough to cover that month's planned sales, planned discounts, and planned ending inventory, less the prior month's planned ending inventory. "In this way, for example, a buyer can know before a season begins how much inventory to plan on bringing in each month of the season," he says. Once inventory receipts have been planned, the next step is to plan how to execute those receipt plans. Ask yourself: How much of my receipt plan do I want to commit to buying now, before the season begins? Read more.

5. Keep your sales team constantly involved.
At the beginning of each fiscal year, the leadership team at T3, a $35 million Austin-based advertising agency, takes a stab at forecasting sales for the entire year. But every month, the company adjusts those numbers based on input from eight to 10 account directors. At the end of each month, Charles Kiley, the firm's CFO, sits down with those directors to compare invoices to the forecast, plots a trend line, and reports back to senior management, including chief executive Gay Gaddis. At that point, the team makes a "buy, hold, or sell" decision on hiring and expenses. Read more.

6. Know thyself, and know thy customers.
The secret of a good cash forecast is knowing your business: knowing your customers' payment habits and your own, writes Denise Bedell, as part of Inc.com's Business Owner's 2011 Budgeting Tool Kit. When gazing into the crystal ball and attempting to forecast expected incomings and outgoings, cash flow rarely—if ever—ends up acting exactly how you expect. But the better you know your own business and your customers, the more accurate the forecast will be. Read more.

7. Pay attention to the small stuff. Like paperclips.
"I've always felt that the office supply business is a pretty good bellwether of the economy. If people are buying lots of supplies, then businesses are doing pretty well," Rick Israel, co-founder of Complete Office, a Seattle supplier of office products, told Inc.'s Kasey Wehrum. "If they are buying new office furniture, then they are doing even better. Our furniture business has dropped by about half, but right now, we're not seeing huge declines in supplies. Supplies are like food: People still need to eat, and businesses still need to run copies and go through toner. But we are starting to see a trend of businesses buying just the things that are absolutely necessary. If you want a fancy binder or a cool new pen, you're not getting it." Read more.



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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Lomography Sprocket Rocket

Will the latest analogue snapper really take off?
Lomography Sprocket Rocket

Analogue camera maker Lomography (or Lomo, to those in the know) has been driving the public's desire for retro cameras for a while now. Following on from the sucess of its first product (the LC-A+) and it's popular Diana F+ and Diana Mini models, the brand has introduced the Sprocket Rocket.

The latest addition to Lomo's fast-expanding lineup of analogue snappers, the new model uses an extra-wide lens to capture panoramic shots and, as the name suggests, the camera uses the full size of the film including the sprocket holes and numbering at the edge. The additon of a rewind dial makes it possible for you to wind the film backwards as well as forwards between frames in order to get some really interesting effects. We recently reviewed the Lomo 360 Spinner - a 360-degree panoramic camera. While it's a great piece of kit, it is slightly bulky and cumbersome, while the newer Sprocket Rocket offers panoramic pictures (albeit not full 360-degrees) in a much more compact product.



Some models in the Lomo range use 120mm film that's notoriously hard to track down, unless you're lucky enough to live near one of the Lomo stores. Thankfully, the Sprocket Rocket uses conventional 35mm variety that can be picked up easily from anywhere that sells camera film, such as the chemist. If you're used to the simplicity of popping an SD card into your digital camera, then the idea of loading a film might sound mildly scary, not to mention ridiculously old-fashioned. Rest assured that getting your film in place is absolute child's play on the Sprocket Rocket. All you need to do is remove the back door of the camera, lift the winding knob, pop the film in, attach to the take-up spool on the right and wind on slightly to make sure it's firmly attached. If you follow the enclosed instructions, then you really can't go wrong.

The camera itself is a thing of beauty, with its stylish black finish and 1940s styling, its looks like something out of a spy film or a Dick Tracy comic. Although predominantly plastic, the camera's chassis is reassuringly sturdy, and certainly more robust that some of the brand's cheaper models such as the Diana Mini.

Before you start shooting, you need to decide on what film to use. You already know that you need 35mm, but what speed is it best? The camera's settings have been designed to use with ISO 400 film, but we think that ISO 800 is probably more suitable as it's more light-sensitive and more likely to give you better (and brighter) results. Once you've selected your film and loaded it up you need to adjust the camera's basic settings. Don't panic, as there only a few things to tinker with and once you know what they are, you'll be up and running in no time. Firstly, you need to adjust the shutter setting, using the lever located on top of the lens. The N setting (1/100) is what you need for daytime snapshots, while the B setting (Bulb) is for unlimited indoor and nighttime exposures - simply keep your finger pressed down on the shutter release for as long as you would like to expose.

Secondly, you can adjust the aperture setting using the lever on the bottom of the lens. The Cloudy option (F/10.8) is for shooting indoors or with low light outside, while the Sunny setting is for when it's, er, sunny. We found it best to keep it on Cloudy pretty much all the time, unless it's a really, really bright day. Thirdly, you can tweak the focus using the ring on the front of the lens. You can choose the? 0.6-1 metre setting for when you're taking close-up shots or opt for the 1 metre to infinity position for normal, mid-range and long-range shots.



In theory, as the camera uses 35mm film, you can get it developed anywhere from the local chemist to Snappy Snaps. If you do go down this route, then you'll need to let them know to expect panoramic shots, rather than the usual 36 shots. Ask them not to cut the negative, which you can then scan yourself. You'll also want to ask them for "no colour correction" when you drop your film off. If possible, it's best to get your film developed at a Lomo store. This isn't the cheapest option, but you can choose between basic processing, or having your pictures printed or put onto disc (or both) and at least you'll know that the Lomo peeps will know what to expect and won't tinker with or try to colour correct your film.

If you don't want the sprockets to appear on your pictures, then the camera comes with a small plastic frame mask that can be left inside the back of the camera to block them. This means that you'll simply get the panoramic snaps without the holes and numbering along the edge, and it'll probably take less time to develop them too.



The image size you'll get from the Sprocket Rocket is 72 x 33mm, or 72 x 24mm if you're using the frame mask. While the wide-angle 30mm lens lets you take cool, panoramic shots that are wider than conventional snaps, obviously that means that you won't get as many snaps from your film as you usually would. You should get around 18 shots on a normal 36-exposure film (we actually got 17 snaps from one of our test films and 21 from the other).

Sporting a hot shoe adaptor on the top of the chassis, the camera enables you to hook up a flash for shooting in low-lighting conditions. Be warned though, the flash only really works on fairly close-up shots, usually around 1-2m, depending on the flash you're using.


When you first load the film, you need to make sure that the white dot is visible in the film-stopping reference window on the top of the camera. If you want to take regular panoramic shots, without any multiple exposures, you can then use this as a reference - when winding on the film between snaps, you simply need to keep going until the white dot is visible again each time. Alternatively, you can experiment with double and multiple exposures, either by not winding the film on between two shots or by winding it backwards and forwards as much as you like before taking the next photo.


We found the Sprocket Rocket very easy to use - it was was comfortable to hold and the shutter release lever has a very satisfying click to it. Likewise, the winding motion is extremely smooth and pleasing to use. There doesn't seem to be anywhere to attach a camera strap - not a deal-breaker, but it could possibly be a camera-breaker if your new Sprocket Rocket slips from you hand. Although, hopefully that won't happen, as the textured finish provides plenty of grip for your sweaty mitts. Unlike a digital camera, the Sprocket Rocket, along with many other analogue models, will still let you take a picture, even if you haven't removed the lens cap - so make sure that you double check before you start or you could end up collecting a series of disappointingly blank snapshots.

Verdict:

There's no denying that the Sprocket Rocket is a beautifully designed camera and it's sure to appeal to analogue shutterbugs and newcomers alike. At ?79, the camera isn't exactly cheap, but it's not prohibitively expensive either and it does offer some a host of innovative features, such as sprocket photography and panoramic shots, all in one place. It can be more expensive and time-consuming to get sprocket films processed and while you do have the option of using the film guard to block the sprockets from shot, this slightly defeats the point of the camera. It's important to highlight the fact that the results from the camera are excellent and there's a lot of scope for experimentation.

If you're already into analogue photography or you're thinking about giving it a try, then the Sprocket Rocket is unlikely to disappoint - unless you forget to remove the lens cap before you start shooting.

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Tags: Cameras Lomography Lomo Lomography Sprocket Rocket

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Lomography Sprocket Rocket originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:16:00 +0000

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