We love hearing stories about how our customers are using FloPrompter!

David Stallings, president of Texas County Line Productions, wrote us recently with some very kind words:

“Just a note to let you know that we think that Floprompter is fantastic! We recently began producing a weekly Country Music television show and have tried several prompter programs.  Because we like to include bio information on the artists we feature, it is essential that we use fairly extensive dialogue from the host of the show.  The other programs were not user-friendly, including the one which came with the prompter hardware we purchased.  Your product was easy to use and includes features which were not included on the others.  We purchased a presentation remote device at Staples and our show host is now able to control the scroll rate while actually speaking.  Yesterday, we filmed the host’s dialogue for 6 upcoming shows in only two hours without any major problems.  We downloaded your free trial version on Friday, spent only a short time learning how it works, used it yesterday at the shoot, and placed an order through Amazon this morning for the product.”

Thank you, David! We’re glad to hear that FloPrompter may help in some small way to make your video shoots smoother & easier. We’ve checked out a few episodes and they’re looking great!

We’re also delighted to hear that our product is being used by Emmy Award Nominated Actor Brad Maule. “General Hospital” was a <ahem> guilty pleasure of ours in the distant past…

How are you using FloPrompter? Please write and let us know!

Even U.S. Presidents love FloPrompter!

William and Sue Wills are actors who bring to life 32 American presidents and their wives. Everyone from Abraham and Mary Lincoln through Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and many more. We love their approach of mixing education about these great leaders and their spouses with entertainment. Anyone can benefit from such an educational message, from students of any age to adults who could use a refresher course.

Based in Winter Park, Florida, the Wills travel across the country bringing their great presentation of American presidential couples to schools, libraries and special events. The Wills also sell a line of DVDs that appear to be reasonably priced. (And they use FloPrompter to help in producing the DVDs!)

The Wills recently wrote to us and said, “We chose [FloPrompter Standard Edition] because the price was right and it had the features we were looking for.” We would like to think that Mr. Wills was dressed as George Washington, the Father of our country, when he wrote that…  🙂

Thank you for purchasing FloPrompter, “Mr. and Mrs. President”! (Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?)

For more information about the Wills and how to book “The Presidents and Their First Ladies, Dramatically Speaking,” visit their web site:

www.presladies.com

FloSpace is always delighted to hear how our products are being used. How are you using FloPrompter? Let us know!

We always enjoy noting who is buying our product and if a business web address is provided, we like to see what that business does. Another data point we like to note is where our customers are coming from.

So today, we were delighted to note our first sale of FloPrompter to Chile!

And please keep an eye out for those free updates, Rodrigo S., because we are planning on releasing FloPrompter en Español sometime in the first half of 2009.

¡Gracias mucho!

Every now and then, one gets a fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant that actually contains a good message. Check out the one that I got the other day:

“Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.”

I think this one is particularly relevant to FloSpace because or software teleprompter, FloPrompter, can help people train to be better speakers. We even have a number of professional and motivational speakers as customers!

This is why we also market to members of Toastmasters, which are excellent local clubs for learning how to become better public speakers. For regular folks who want to improve their professional speaking skills, we strongly recommend joining your local Toastmasters club — especially in the current economy! There are clubs sponsored by many large companies, as well as in most cities and towns. For more information and to find a Toastmasters club near you, visit their web site:

www.toastmasters.org

We just released the lastest update to the innovative program that turns any PC into a studio-quality teleprompter, FloSpace FloPrompter!

Version 3.0.3 offers one new feature that a number of customers had been requesting: faster scrolling.

True, the old version already was pretty fast, scrolling 1 pixel as often as every millisecond. That’s dang fast! But many customers found that they needed even faster scrolling to keep up with their actors and voice talents. We solved this issue by adding a new setting: Scroll Smoothness.

(Click the screen shot to see a larger image.)

The Scroll Smoothness feature controls how many pixels the teleprompter moves the text with each scroll action. By default, it scrolls just one pixel for maximum smoothness. You can change the setting to scroll as many as 5 pixels per tick of the scroll timer. That’s up to 5 times faster than the previous version of FloPrompter!

TIP: To achieve the best possible effect for your needs, you may wish to adjust both the Scroll Speed and Scroll Smoothness settings to achieve the desired results.

Of course, you can set a default Scroll Smoothness value in the program Options dialog, as well. And if you so choose, the Scroll Smoothness value can be saved with each file instead of the default.

Thank you to our customers for requesting this feature. FloSpace listens to your feedback, and FloPrompter keeps getting better and better with each release!

Update recommendation: If you wish. This is a “soft recommendation” to update. Only the Scroll Smoothness feature is new, so most folks won’t notice the difference.

If you decide to update your software, this is of course a free update for all FloSpace FloPrompter customers!

www.flospace.com/downloads.htm

Several customers have asked us to make the scrolling feature even faster. So we’re going to start working on adding this feature.

Currently, the highest speed setting (30) scrolls 1 pixel ever 1/1000 of a second. That’s 1,000 vertical pixels every second!

But in some film and video applications, they need it to be even faster. So we’ve started looking into how to add in even faster scrolling, but still with acceptable performance.

We have a few techniques in mind which we’re starting to look into. We expect to take a month or two to design, implement, and test this solution. But have no fear: existing FloPrompter documents will continue to work just fine if you’ve opted to save scroll speed settings in them.

When the new version of FloPrompter with faster scrolling is available, of course it will be a free update for all existing 2.xx and 3.xx customers!!

Hi, folks —

We just published version 3.0.2, available for immediate download on the FloSpace.com/downloads page.

Version 3.0.2 has a few minor bug fixes and one minor feature enhancement. In addition, this update improves the the installation experience for new users. The following are now packaged together in a single ZIP file:

• Improved installation instructions (FloSpace Installation Instructions.pdf)
• The FloPrompter installer (FloSpace FloPrompter Installer.exe)
• The patcher utility for Windows Vista PCs (FloPrompter Vista Patcher.exe)
• A sample file (Great American Speeches.fsd)

Why the repackaging?

Windows Vista makes it difficult to figure out how to unzip ZIP archives. On Vista PCs, a ZIP archive looks like a regular folder (nice!), except that it doesn’t act like a regular folder (bummer!). The result is that a lot of people had difficulties not only installing FloPrompter to begin with, but also running the patcher utility.

Solution: We packaged the installer and patcher into separate “self-extracting archives.” That’s techno mumbo jumbo for, “Just double-click on the file to get the party started!” So the result is much easier installation and patch experiences.

Update Recommendation: If you wish. This is a “soft recommendation” to update. The bug fixes and enhancements in version 3.0.2 were fairly minor, so most folks won’t notice the difference.

If you decide to update, this is, of course, a free update for all FloPrompter customers!

Download the update: www.flospace.com/downloads.htm

Scribe Media posted a great little video to YouTube showing how to build a very low cost teleprompter. What’s cool is that it looks wicked easy to set up, and of course the materials are very cheap. (Excluding the camera…)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsszWVOakKA

Scribe Media uses a competitor to FloPrompter which they said was free. However, when I checked the web site today, it looks like the software  is $89 — not free! FloPrompter Standard has way more features, including rich text, spell checking and a thesaurus, and is just $50!

Oh well. We’ll forgive them because their how to video is great. And we like their web site!

And Scribe Media — when you’re ready to make the switch to a truly good and easy to use product, give me a call. I’ll totally hook y’all up with a great deal!  😉

Customers ask us from time to time how to set up a camera and monitor for the best results. I ran across a blog posting today with some great tips on how to do it on a budget. This blog posting was written by a Journalism and Media Technology teacher at a school near Houston, TX:

http://teachj.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/diy-camera-mount-teleprompter/

And an update on the topic:

http://teachj.wordpress.com/2008/03/24/hacking-up-old-tripods/

It should be noted that Mr. C is using PowerPoint on Macs for their teleprompter software. Since FloPrompter isn’t available for Macs (yet), we’ll forgive him.  🙂