Aaron Ewer
Aaron Ewers thoughts about everything

Forgive me for bragging a little bit, but I have always been so proud of my son for his work as a DJ. Our family has always been involved in the music business. My grandfather was a piano player for the silent movies back in the 1920’s and played the piano for thousands of events, like variety shows, beauty pageants, juke joints, and all kinds of dance jobs from weddings to sweet 16 birthday parties. My father played every instrument out there until he damaged his fingers on his left hand and couldn’t hold down the chords on a guitar anymore. So he played mostly piano and put together an orchestra aka the Ricky Ricardo Orchestra of the 1950′2. Later on, he managed several bands and handled the entertainment for a large pizza chain.

I took piano lessons for years but worked as a DJ for years for extra money. When possible, I would take along my son to help tote the gear into the venue and if it was an event for kids, I would let him choose the music, cue up the tapes, and eventually do some work on the microphone. When he got older, he started his own DJ company and has been thriving ever since. So that makes 4 generations of music in our family so far.

My son pays a lot more attention to the mechanics of music than I do. He actually mixes his own CDs and does editing, voice overs, and other technical things using the computer. He’s a big fan of a new software called MOV that lets him convert video files to MP3 format and lots of other features. It works with video, CDs and DVDs.

The mov converter does other cool things, like video editing, 30+ special effects and color adjustment operations. If you are into these technical things with video and audio, you should probably get this converter or at the very least check out their site. Even with the little bit that I know about this, I was impressed.

I’ve been percolating on a business idea that involves advertising for small businesses and I think the time is getting ripe to launch it in the next year or two. I won’t go into the details here, but it involves a custom made display for use in regional malls and I think I finally came up with the design that would work for my idea.

I’ve been looking at the mall kiosks and pushcarts and know that what they have available at the malls now won’t really adapt well for my use. So I started looking online for companies that make displays and found the Godfrey Group. I like their web site because it has lots of photos and good ideas of what other people have designed and use for their businesses. Of course, most of what is out there was designed for trade show displays. But I think it can be easily adapted for use in the malls, too.

I clicked on their tab for custom designs and found a lot of good information. And the Godfrey Group has a best price guarantee. So I can’t go wrong working with the Godfrey Group to fine tune my display design and get my new business launched early next year.

I’ve always liked maps and I love Google Maps. I even learned how to use Google Earth and love the way you can tilt and rotate the satellite version to get a different perspective on the locations.

There have been a lot of interactive maps developed that are based on Google Earth, which must be very gratifying to the people at Google who have been developing and working on this really cool feature. Some of the west coast newspapers have created maps of the California fires and making clickable information balloons to give details of each fire, such as acreage affected, percent contained, and links to photos. There are also earthquake maps and user generated multi-location maps of a variety of topics, such as all the NASCAR tracks, the most popular theme parks, and other cools things.

Finished the web site for the lawyers radio show, called “Legally Speaking,” and it’s up!

That was quite the process. I met with each attorney in his own office to write the biography and copy. Then I had a photo shoot of them during a live show. I just took my pocket digital camera, no extra lights, and shot about 100 photos - some posed and some candids.

I think it turned out great. And now I listen to the show as much as I can on Saturday nights, and I’ve even called in a few times to pose questions for my microphone shy friends.

I’ve been working on a web site for a group of local lawyers who have their own radio show on the AM talk radio station here, 1510 WLAC. The cool thing about AM radio is that late at night the broadcast signal goes really far and this show can be heard in 33 states and 3 countries on a regular car or truck radio. Plus it is broadcast live on the internet, so it can actually be heard all over the world.

It’s an interesting show - the lawyers take calls on the air from real people and help them explore their options and explain their legal standing. You can learn a lot from listening every week.