MY Top Ten invites media practitioners to identify their top ten websites, apps, software tools and gadgets, etc, and here it is the turn of Sandy McGhie, managing director of Edinburgh-orientated events website, 7ahead.com. Before, he worked in newspapers – and also for the charity, Erskine – as a graphic designer.
1. iPad – gadget – Probably the first tablet to really come onto the scene, it’s just a piece of design and ergonomic genius. We’re now starting to see more and more of them as a standard form of communication: are paper publications being demoted to historical novelties?
2. Hootsuite – software tool – Twitter, Facebook and the likes are potential ‘monsters’ that can take over your day! With Hootsuite (there are other brands available) you can keep it all under control.
3. Photoshop – software tool – It must be about 20 years since I first discovered Photoshop. I’m stuck at the CS5 version, I’ve no idea where it is now. So flexible and powerful for almost any image type or format I really got to grips with it when I worked at News International on The Sun, The Times, Sunday Times and a small piece of history called The News Of The World. Now I have to say the only form of manipulation that I carried out while working for them was of the image variety with Photoshop.
4. Soundhound – app – How often have you heard a song, waited until the end for the DJ to tell you who it is and then… they don’t! No need for that any more, whip out Soundhound, tap the great big button and nine times out of ten it’ll identify the song and artist for you. Now you can even easily add the discovered song to your Spotify playlist. Having said that, has anyone, ever, actually listened to every single song they have in playlists?
5. InDesign – software tool – I started with Pagemaker, at the time it seemed amazing what it could do, then Quark came along. Simple: magazines, adverts, posters, newspapers… all quickly and easily put together. Then InDesign appeared on the scene; at first, they were close then, as Adobe integrated everything, it was…wow! Technically, you can ensure so much just works before you print or publish.
6. Spotify – digital music tool – What can I say? Yes, there may be some artists not happy, but it’s a great form exposure. From a personal perspective, it’s a gateway to so much new music and a wonderful archive of our past.
7. Wired – magazine – Okay, so maybe it is just a glorified ‘lads mag’, but, hey, it does deal pretty well with the future. It’s all going to be very rosy with lots of labour-saving devices, very fast eco-friendly cars, wearable tech, superfriendly innovative people looking after our futures and, best of all, we’ll be able to travel to space! Yes, we can go there soon! Never mind the budget, that doesn’t matter when you’re day-dreaming.
8. Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 – gadget – I go to a lot of concerts in small venues and always feel very cumbersome and almost arrogant waving a full-size DSLR around. This camera is great, it has a huge aperture, F1.4, Leica lens and it fits in my hand. For being able to take images without being noticed in relatively low light that will go on to the web, it’s perfect. Having said that, I must stop using the auto focus as much, it sends out quite a strong red beam that whoever I’m pointing the camera at invariably notices and then looks directly at the camera… maybe not such a bad thing.
9. Facebook – social media tool – Yes, there may be criticisms of it, but I still love it. I’ve moved around a lot and had lost touch with so many people, then along came Facebook. I’ve now got back in touch with so many great friends and have met up with quite a few via Facebook in one way or another. Reading the Newsfeed is great, you can choose to interact or just spectate but there’s always loads going on. I’ve recently started using it more for business and again, it’s fantastic: promotions can go out to thousands of people for just a few quid. One note of caution, I would definitely make sure I didn’t mix my personal Facebook up with the business side… potentially catastrophic!
10. Kindle – gardget – Not much to say about this, it’s just perfect! I do most of my reading on my iPad or Kindle. Easy, fast, portable… just great.
