VR and Drones : New Business Photography

Of the digital mega-trends one is the internet is becoming increasingly visual.  Whether it's through the media of Instagram, Snapchat or emojis, all appeal to our seemingly endless fascination with pictures.

It should then be no surprise that there is a constant arms race to visualise the business that you do. We've covered previously Infographics if you're in the business of sales or statistics. Though many businesses are what I would call location based businesses; restaurants, cafes, car dealerships, hotels, galleries, markets, music venues, gyms and sporting venues etc. All of these rely, at least in part on their location to function.

We held a business seminar that demonstrates the benefits of these new opportunities.



I know though experience that creating great visual assets is a challenging task for most businesses. Everything from logos to videos are a major undertaking, as they require a good deal of thinking and a good producer to make them look professional enough to pass muster in today's visual landscape.

This is where new Business Photography comes in!

The use of internal 360 Virtual Reality and Drone Photography offer fresh, interesting and above all useful images for most location based businesses.

Below is an example of an indoor climbing venue. You'll agree this really works in showing off their business. Click and drag the image around to take a VR tour. Amazing really.



From the outside you can also capture fantastic drone footage and create a series of stunning visuals that illustrate your location in relation to the landscape. This example is also very powerful.

I really love this - click through for an even more amazing example of this image.

Click to access the 360 animation - image thanks to Bravo Drones 

Is your CMS a hand brake?

Using a content management system of CMS to manage you organisation's web information is a no brainer, yet are yesterday's CMS really keeping up with your demands?
Content management is such an amorphous term these days, as is the case with so many tech terms CMS has become an anagram with it's own life. The CMS has joined such capitalised giants like OS , SMS, FTP & PC. The CMS used to do what it stood for, 'managing content', simple, easy to understand and a great step forward from direct coding of html. The CMS used to be a small miracle too, in that it opened up the editing of online content to an army of new players to use and publish. Content expanded massively as a result, as witnessed by blogs and wikis. Content production exploded! Indeed it could be argued that today's social media systems are simply great big CMS with some pepper and spice thrown in. Revealing the publisher's long held secret that people love news and  people love an audience, even if it's their own 'virtual' audience.
These days you can sign up and grab a free CMS from a myriad of open source or commercial sources. Weird and wonderful names such as Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke, Liferay and Moodle have established footholds in their geography of the internet. WikiPedia, itself a BIG CMS lists dozens of CMSs. WordPress indeed has become de rigour on the web as a open source industry in it's own right. With the ever promising 'template' producers selling a million look and feels (strangely never quiet what we're looking for).

Though as we've discovered over the years a CMS is only a starting point to an online strategy it's not an end point!

From humble CMS to Super CMS

A CMS can be also be a full business process re-engineering tool. It can be the basis for everything from customer feedback and reporting to an intranet style form replacement for tablet of mobile computing. More advanced functions that allow complex data flow or financial calculations can harness the use of cloud computing. Then a CMS can be used to closely integrate with your existing internal or external data systems.

Fast, Flexible Alternative to off the shelf

OI has been researching and developing it's CMS Syntara for 6 years as a alternative to off the shelf CMS packages. It's been built for extreme flexibility of use, enabling it to effectively become an innovation platform without the full expense of a pure coded application.


A team of developers and business analysts are constantly improving and developing Syntara through the latest technology research and feedback from the pool of trusted clients. What other system is improved on a weekly basis with upgrades and updates happening automatically? Features of Syntara include:
• control: full add/ edit/ view/ delete control over all data records
• usability: search, quick-find, backup and restore
• integration: full import/ export capabilities, links into your existing website, can integrate into your current PC-based systems
• website: full WYSIWYG editors, email, website and performance statistics, file upload and an image library
• communications: integral email and SMS communications, post, scheduled communications, and complete transaction logs
• administrative: reporting, concurrent users, multiple user permissions levels
• calendar: with weekly and month activity views, transaction and activity logs, task and project scheduling
• secure: firewall and IP restrictions, user passwords and definable access levels
• invoicing: sending via email or post, scheduled and automated invoicing and payment reminders, recurring billing, and MYOB / Xero integration
• Streaming video or video on demand integration
• Full cross device interoperability - tablet, phone of specialist device.
• Plus more… with much more to come.

If your CMS is not keeping up with your demands, it may be worth considering a transition to a secure, fast and flexible system such as Syntara.