The most recent (and our favorite) way to solve the issue involves something dear to my heart-gaffers tape.  It seems that much of the problem caused by how you hold the new iPhone can be solved by putting a small piece of  gaffers tape over the part of the external antenna where you might normally touch the phone.  This keeps your hand from interfering with the antenna transmission.  (CBS News video of this solution)

Naturally, we are intrigued by the fashion statement that your choice of gaffers tape to stick on your new $300.00 smart phone would make.  Pink for Pink.  Neon green for Al Green,  and, of course,  black for Steve Jobs.

I was pretty excited about this potential new market, until I realized that a single roll of gaffers tape would be enough to handle every iPhone in North America.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Got an iPhone 4.  How did you fix yours?

Their most recent adventure is building a duct tape bridge, a potentially death defying project.  The episode aired May 12 and you can watch it online.

While it’s unlikely that any viewer would actually build a duct tape bridge fifty feet up in  the air (it took over 200 rolls of tape), this high profile promotion of the strength of duct tape might lead someone to take on a less challenging but possibly just as dangerous project.

One of the many things that the show fails to point out is that there are many different strengths of duct tape and some of the tapes most easily obtained are the ones with the least strength (and the lowest cost).  Failure to understand what these specifications related to strength mean could make a project like one you see on television turn out with very different results if you do it yourself with the wrong tape.

As long time sellers of duct tape (25 years and counting), we are always happy to see this lowly product get good publicity.  We don’t, however, believe that all publicity is good publicity.  It’s one thing to make a prom dress from duct tape and quote another to trust your safety to a product you know only generically as “duct tape”.

This Mythbusters episode has generated some interesting discussion in the physics community (real science!) about duct tape.  If you’re interested in following up, click here.

If you’re interested in the different specifications that are used to measure and compare duct tapes, take a look at this.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Bringing duct tape to the masses since 1986!

The real  point I am hoping to make here is it seems almost as odd to me that a business might have only one web site.  We’ve got about twenty, and some days that hardly seems like enough.

With the cost of domain registration below $10 and offers left and right for “free” hosting, there is no reason to limit the way potential customers might stumble across your company.

Our strategy has been to take the different names of the products we sell and simply add the prefix “buy” in front of the name.  For example, we sell tape at buytape.com, batteries at buybattery.com, etc., but both domains link back to our primary domain.

Even with the scarcity of good domain names, combining something you sell or do with a “call to action” prefix or suffix can often generate a memorable domain name that is still unclaimed.  A  search at any number of domain registration websites can quickly help you define this technique.

A small but informative site that deals with only one component of your business can link back to your primary site in a way that leads prospects to where you would like them to end up.

These specialized content sites are very attractive to search engines as well, so you might be able to gain an advantage over your competition by addressing a very narrow niche.

Next time someone asks you if your business has a website, tell them “No, we don’t have a website.  We’ve got a dozen!”.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Got a good web development strategy?  Share it with us.

So, what did I learn that I consider really valuable today?  I can coil cables, level stages, mix sound for live TV and focus lights from the top of a 20 foot ladder.  Those were all hard-won skills that served me well, but they don’t have a lot of value today.

The most valuable skill, by far, was being able to make decisions.   As a producer of large events and concerts, every day was a string rapid-fire decisions, all focused on the starting time of the show.  There was never a chance to kick around a lot of options or “sleep on it”.  There just wasn’t enough time.

Fortunately, these were not decisions of the life-or-death variety, and if I was able to get two out of every three right, I was usually a hero.  There was never the option of putting off the decision until later.  The show would be today whether I made a decision or not.  Choosing “not to decide” was the same as “choosing to fail“.

I reality, the more decisions I made in a day the more likely I was to get really good results.  Making a couple of decisions before my first cup of coffee always gave me new options that got me closer to an on time show.  That was the goal.

Actually providing good entertainment was the job of the performers and their hands on technicians.  My job was to make enough correct decisions to insure that they got to do their job.

Making lots of decisions can be risky, even painful.  Rarely will it do the sort of damage that is almost guaranteed by making no decision at all.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  I enjoy sharing good business ideas with our readers and customers. Let me know what you think.

An article in Pro Sound News about Harman International caught my eye over lunch.  It was about Harman’s finances and it was as dry as toast.  I read every word.

Why?  Because Harman’s customers are my customers.  This company that did almost $3 billion in sales last year sells some of the most desirable brands in pro audio.  If you use equipment from makers like JBL, Souncraft, Crown, dbx or lots of other well known brands, you are a Harman customer.

Harman reported a decrease in pro audio sales of 26% in their last quarter.  If your sound business is not strong enough right now to buy a new JBL line array, then you are probably not doing enough shows to need a lot of gaffers tape.  If a new AKG wireless mic is not on your shopping list, then you probably aren’t going to be ordering ProCell batteries for it.  No dbx processing gear means no Hosa patch cables.

Two years ago the stock price for a share of Harman International was $100.00.  Yesterday, it closed at $37.00.   That’s up almost 10% since the first of this month and a near doubling of the price since October of last year.

How goes Harman, so goes the pro sound industry.  We wish them well.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.   Click here to sign up for our newsletter.  Here’s a link to our new “How To” animation series.

A recent article in  the Telegraph highlights the discovery of bomber worms, an aquatic organism that lives in the Pacific ocean at depths of several miles.  These creatures, up to 3 or 4 inches in length, have the ability to release  fluid-filled balloons which glow in the dark as a way to apparently defend them from predators.  Once the balloons are released, the worms have the ability to regenerate more.

The chemical science of making glow tape is complicated and requires a multi-step process which creates some environmental waste disposal issues.  A way to do this organically would be a great advance.

Maybe someday the organic process used by the bomber worm will lead us to making glow in the dark products that can regenerate and dispose of themselves.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.   Click here to sign up for our newsletter.  Here’s a link to our new “How To” animation series.

We got lots of valuable comments from readers and it is a good way to work on my writing skills. Recently I started a new blog, written not for our customers and regular readers, but rather for search engine spiders that regularly scour the web for information based on key words.

We are posting information about one of our products every day in hopes that robots from Google, Yahoo and others will come across these posts and provide information to syndication services that push this data to subscribers. The idea is to place links to our products, accompanied by what I hope will be useful information, to potential buyers.

We’ll see how it works.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.   Click here to sign up for our newsletter.  Lots more good ideas at our Twitter feed.

It’s all but guaranteed that 30 minutes before the event is over, but well after dark, the bottom will drop out of the sky, promising a load out in the rain and a truck full of wet gear.

While the standard hardware store blue tarp is the industry standard for quick cover ups in the rain, they can really cause you some problems when the rain is accompanied by a stiff breeze.

A simple modification in a cheap tarp can make it many times more useful when the raindrops start falling.

Turn the tarp into a plastic bag.

Just take your tarps, fold them in half, and stitch up the edges.  If you’re not handy with a sewing machine, gaffers tape or even a stapler will work almost as well.

Larger tarps can be turned into bags that will cover up your entire PA stacks, and you can make smaller bags for covering up things like monitors.

Since the tarps can be easily cut and normally do not unravel, you can take one large tarp and turn it into a lot of custom covers for things like your consoles and amp racks.  No hemming necessary.

Since the tarps have grommets, you will have some tie down points, but you probably won’t even need them.  Since wind can’t get inside the bag, the harder the wind blows, the firmer the bag stays in place.

Make sure you label each bag with a large label (try using a Sharpie marker directly on the bag) in letters large enough to be seen in the dark.

At the first mention of rough weather, place each bag close to the location where it will be needed and instruct stagehands or volunteers how they are used.

This might well be the best piece of sound equipment you ever buy.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands. Sometimes we have some interesting ideas about web development too!  Click here to sign up for our newsletter.  Lots more good ideas at our Twitter feed.

Knol is an acronym created by Google, and it means “a unit of knowledge“.

Knol is a new content creation index from Google that has a lot of similarities to Wikipedia.  Individuals are allowed to post articles on any subject of their choosing and then the articles can be commented on and edited by other users of the service.  Unlike Wikipedia, knol will allow the creation and viewing of multiple articles on the same subject and the author can control how his or her work is edited.

I first came across it through an online posting by Jason Calacanis, a highly regarded web guru.  Mr. Calacanis went to great lengths to draw interesting and accurate between KNOL and traditional content creators like the New York Times.  These parallels led Calacanis to determine (and I agree) that this project was Google’s latest attempt (not unlike YouTube) to get into the content creation business.

It should be obvious that a business that has become the defacto provider of indexed search results faces potential conflict of interest problems if it is the creator and controller of the content it returns with its search results.

Since we are currently indexed at the top of page one for a number of  Google search terms,  I have created a couple of KNOL articles on microphone stands and gaffers tape to see how quickly Google might index them and how high they might rise in search rankings.

You can take a look at these articles here:

microphone stands

gaffers tape

If you’re interested in whether this test turns up any interesting results, check back here from time to time.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment ONe extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands. Sometimes we have some interesting ideas about web development too!  Click here to sign up for our newsletter.

The first several times we got online orders from “usfirst“, frankly we thought they were coming from a bank or other financial institution.  I’m glad I took the time to look a little closer.

First sponsors a national program for for middle and high school students who design and build robots  and then compete against other teams.

It turns out that they use gaffers tape to lay out the “arena” where the robots compete.  The lanes and end zones are marked with different colors of cloth tape.

You can see an example in this video.

First was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, a well known inventor and entrepreneur probably best known for inventing the Segway.

To date, First has awarded almost $10 million in scholarships.  This year they will work with over 196,000 students making up 1680 teams.

This year the national First championship will be at the Georgia dome in Atlanta April 16-18.  I hope they will take us along.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment ONe extension cords, OnStage Stand mic stands.  We are proud to be a supporter of our local schools here in Chatham County, NC.

We’ve had pretty good success with gaining Google Page 1 rankings for key words like gaffers tape, mic stands and extension cords. There is nothing better than gaining high search engine rankings for building your web business.

Most recently, we’ve jumped to page 1 for the search term “hoop tape“(tapes used for decorating hula hoops). This on the strength of one of the smallest and least useful sites we have ever published, www.hooptape.com.

Hooptape.com is a total of two small pages which link back to buytape.com. It took about 15 minutes to build and post this site and there is almost nothing there. Why do Google and Yahoo (#1 on on Yahoo today!) rank this site so highly.

While I’m no expert on search engine optimization, I believe that the success of this site’s results in search engines is primarily based on having found a niche. There simply is not that much real competition for the search phrase “hoop tape“, yet this is term most likely to be used by someone who needs tape to decorate a hula hoop.

We’ve had comparable results with the term “Route Setting Tape“, the tape used for setting routes on climbing walls. Route setting tape is simply another name for one inch gaffers tape. Using  a name more specific to our customers needs gives us a real advantage when search engines index our sites.

Need better search results for your web site? Find a niche and Google will find you!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Enterainment 1 extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables. Count on us when you need specialty tape items and sound advice.

Scientists at UCLA were able to build a simple tape unrolling machine that generated enough X-ray bursts to actually image one of the technicians’ finger bones on an dental photographic plate.

This phenomenon is not completely understood nor is apparent that there is any commercial application for such technology.  A charge is generated when the tape is peeled off the roll.  Sudden jerking of the tape seems to cause electrons in the tape to give off energy in the form of protons.  A slight glow is even generated.

Next time your flashlight batteries go dead, maybe you just need to unwind (really quickly) a roll of duct tape.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Enterainment 1 extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables. You can occasionally also count on us for some fairly useless, if interesting, information!

The article, by Mike Lawler, features Gideon Banner of the Green Theatre Initiative .  It is one that anybody involved in using or selling expendables to the theatre industry needs to pay attention to.

To date, the green theatre movement has primarily focused on infrastructure and on conservation.  Its great that new theatre facilities building is taking into consideration concepts like solar lighting, water conversation, and environmentally sustainable construction techniques.  Unfortunately, it takes generations for these sorts of changes to work their way through the system.  Theatre buildings last for decades, and quite often they are not able to easily be upgraded in an environmentally responsible way, even if funding is available.

More immediate results can be realized from simple conservation techniques.  Upgrading lighting fixtures to LED technology, using more efficient sound system components and addressing wasteful uses of energy and water are something that every theatre facility can address every day.

My concern, honestly, is how this green movement will impact our own business.  It is regrettable that the nature of expendables means that a lot of what we sell will end up in the landfill at the end of the show.  You can’t reuse tape, and rechargeable battery technology has not reached the point where sound techs are willing to trust them in wireless microphones.

We are always on the lookout for reusable solutions for cable management and we are working with Sanyo on their Eneloop rechargeable battery line in hopes of offering this product to our customers who buy batteries for wireless mics.

We are anxious to be part of the dialog and I welcome your comments.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Enterainment 1 extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.

Between the price of the petroleum derivatives in tape adhesives and the cost of trucking these very heavy products, the cost of oil impacts the cost of every kind of tape we sell. There has been some short term moderation in the price of a barrel of oil, so we are hoping that our suppliers can hold the line a little longer. It is hard to connect the price of filling up your car with what you pay for a roll of gaffers tape, but the connection is real.

After peaking at $4.00 a pound in April, the price of copper is down about 10%, closing at just over $3.60 earlier in the week. As our cable business expands, the cost of the most important, and heaviest component, in an extension cord or speaker cable has forced suppliers to raise prices several times this year. Maybe those increases are over for a little while. Hopefully, this decrease in will help battery makers hold the line as well

Unfortunately, it seems like what one market gives back, another takes away. Dow Chemical’s announcement that it will raise chemical prices by up to 20%, effective this month, is going to impact much of we sell. Tape adhesive resins, battery components and cable jackets all have chemical components, and even if Dow isn’t the supplier, most other major suppliers are sure to follow.

We are grateful to our loyal customers and will do all we can to work with major suppliers to address pricing pressure.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.

We’ve been working with the US Volleyball Assoc. over the last year to help develop some new floor marking products. Volleyball matches are often played on basketball gym floors and this means that a temporary playing court must be laid out over the existing basketball lines. Its a lot of work!

Gym floors require a tape that won’t damage the floor finish when its removed and we have been supplying Shurtape 724 to a number of college programs for their floor.

Laying out a playing surface on a synthetic floor requires a different product. Vinyl tape works better and this is where a really clever technique comes in.

Our friends at USA Volleyball put their vinyl tape in the refrigerator. They learned that when the tape is cold it doesn’t stretch, meaning that the lines are straighter and the tape is less likely to contract and pull up from the floor. It’s a great idea and it really works.

Need some tape to put temporary markings on the floor? Check in the refrigerator!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands , Dance Floor Tape and “value added” customer service. Check withus for all your temporary floor marking needs.

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“Marley” has become the generic name for portable vinyl flooring, even though there are lots other companies that make similar products. Almost any stage manager or lighting designer will refer to the “Marley” when talking about a stage surface to dance on.

It took me a while to come up with any info on “Marley” but I eventually was able to learn that Marley was a German manufacturer who has been out of business for at least 20 years. Even though there are probably very few genuine Marley floors still in use, their brand name is still the generic term for portable vinyl dance floors. Today’s versions of this dancing surface works much better than Marley’s product but none of the current manufacturers have been able to change the term used when talking about dance floors.

I guess we will continue to call our dance floor tape “Marley Tape” as long as this is the term the dance industry uses. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands , Dance Floor Tape and “value added” customer service.

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I recently came across an online ad for duct tape that listed this information under “roll length”.

60 Yds.-180 Ft.-55 Meters

Yes, a standard roll of duct tape or gaffers tape is 60 yards, or 180 feet, but that is not the same as 55 meters. 55 meters is longer than 60yds. Just a little longer, but nonetheless, it helps me make a point.

Tape manufacturers seem to constantly mix standard and metric measurements at will, usually to serve their own purposes.

The width of a roll of gaffers tape was two inches for decades. Simple, easy to remember, and true. About ten years ago, all the major manufacturers of this and other cloth tapes changed to a metric standard for width, and reduced the width of a roll of tape to 48 millimeters. The change was hardly noticable on a single roll of tape but when you spread that size reduction over literally millions of rolls made by a major manufacturer in a single year, the difference was huge. It adds up to almost a full roll of actual tape in a case of 24 rolls.

By using the metric standard for width they reduced the roll size by 4%, but by not adopting the metric measure of 55 meters for length, they didn’t have to increase the roll length.

To confuse things further, the thickness of tape is measured in “mils” with “mil” meaning a thousandth of an inch. Here the mix standard (inches) and metric (thousandths).

If you’ve got any good ideas on how to standardize this system, let me know.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We’re your first choice for “Satisfaction Guaranteed” tape products.

Its a lot easier to get video exposure for your band than it was a few years ago. You Tube, cable and satellite TV, and other online channels mean that performers using musical equipment have tons of opportunities to be seen. If you are interested in the possibility of getting some sort of endorsement deal, try using a little well placed gaffers tape to cover up the logos of any equipment that might appear in your video.

You can be sure that if someone from Marshall or Fender sees you using their equipment with the logo obscured they will realize that they are missing an opportunity to put their name in front of lots of eyeballs. With a popular YouTube video getting millions of views, this type of exposure can rival that of a 3 minute performance by a popular artist on a network program.

Equipment manufacturers pay lots of money to popular performers to use and be seen with their gear. There’s no reason that you should miss out.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We’ve got gaffers tape in 13 colors!

Unfortunately, those who moderate these forums (a thankless task, I know) have become so concerned about members using their forums to sell products that they are denying their membership the chance to take advantage of some of the most expert opinions available in the marketplace.

We have a very large product user base of stagehands and theatre techs, and almost every problem they face is going to cost them something to solve. Why deny these hard working technicians access to information from those who know these problem solving products the best.

I tried for a while to post solutions and start legitimate discussion on some of these forums, but I was constantly being threatened with banishment because the moderators did not want any links in their forums to any commercial sites.

Here’s a couple of quick examples.:

A number of theatre techs were discussing how to best remove adhesive residue from cables. I’ve done a lot of this and we sell a product that does the job really well. A link to this product on one of our web sites might have saved somebody a lot of time. Not Allowed!

I came across a post from a church sound technician who was concerned about poor battery life in her wireless microphones. It turns out that the church was using old-style carbon batteries in an attempt to save money. A simple link to buybattery.com where we sell the most highly regarded wireless mic battery around at very competitive prices might have been of real use to this person. Not allowed!

I understand the need to control spam and prevent postings from people who are selling something completely irrelevant to the discussion, but as long as these forum moderators attempt to block information from those who have the most to offer, they are not serving their members the best they could.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

I bought a new can yesterday and was amazed to see that they still attach the nozzle to the side of the can with a piece of cellophane tape. The same as they have done for 40 or more years. Its not a good solution.

Believe me, I’m all for anything that uses tape, and the makers of WD-40 must use miles of the stuff, one inch at a time, to attach these removable nozzles. The nozzle (just a plastic straw, really) is necessary to get the lubricant/solvent/penetrant into hard-to-reach places but there’s no place to put it when you want to put the cap back on the can. So, you lose the nozzle long before you use up what is in the can.

Rumor has it that the WD-40 company is preparing to release a new type of can with a feature called “Smart Straw“. I hope it works as well as WD-40 does.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. We’re here with great supplies for work and home.

Shurtape now has a new 130,000 square foot distribution facility in Hickory, NC . That’s room for a whole lot of tape. This new center has 45 foot ceilings, 33 loading docks, and there is room to grow. The Shurtape facility is the anchor tenant of the Catawba Industrial Business Park a 45 acre development in Catawba County.

Shurtape’s acquisition of the Arts & Entertainment division of Permacel, along with their strategic alliance with Pro Tapes and Specialties assures that they will be at the center of these rosy growth projections.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Count on us to meet your pressure sensitive tape needs.

More and more lawyers offices and courts are struggling with the technical demands of media coverage and the need for tech savy technicians in the courtroom. Many courthouses date back to the earlier half of the twentieth century and they are woefully behind when it comes to providing the kind of support that is now expected by the legal profession, the media and the public. Its not unusual to enter a courtroom now and find mic cables and extension cords held down with gaffers tape all over the room. If the proceedings are high profile, this tangle of cables may stream out the door, down the stairs and out into the street.

The need for audio visual supplies now often extends back to the attorneys’ offices as well. Many law firms have whole departments that are involved in preparing presentation materials for courtroom work. This now extends far beyond the realm of flip charts to include professionally produced videos, wireless mics, enhanced audio recordings and computer-based presentations.

While it is unfortunate that these technical demands may be overwhelming the courtroom, its a great thing that high tech tools are available to participants in the cases.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your audio visual supply needs.

I had a chance to attend the home opener for UNC’s Womens Volleyball Team (congratulations on your win over Villanova) as part of the Carolna Classic at Carmichael Auditorium.

We have been working closely with Joe Sagula, UNC’s coach this fall, and he has graciously helped us to test Permacel 724 Paper Tape for temporary gym floor marking. He’s been a great help.

The floor at Carmichael is an historic one. This is where Michael Jordan led a UNC team in their home games as they marched toward the 1982 NCAA mens basketball championship. Floor damage would be out of the question.

I watched several matches on Friday and the Permacel 724 seemed to hold up very well. The temporary lines were amazingly straight and the end lines (the ones that really take a beating) held up to heavy foot traffic. This gym floor also serves as the home for UNC’s womens basketball team, so it sees a lot of temporary floor markings.

Thanks in part to the thorough testing at UNC, we have tentatively arranged for the US Volleyball Assoc. to endorse this product and we have seen sales to lots of other NCAA volleyball programs.

It was frustrating for us when the makers of SafeOff were unwilling to stand behind their product, but we did not hesitate to drop them.

We are grateful to Shurtape, the makers of 724, for stepping up to the line.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your floor marking needs.

We’ve been selling tape for a long time and the change in width came about 5 or 6 years ago. Rather than raise prices, all the major US domestic tape manufacturers changed their standard from being two inches wide to 48 mm wide. For most users, this did not really impact their ability to use the tape and they never noticed the change.

Unfortunately, the tape makers changed the width but did not change the description. The metric equivilent is usually marked in parentheses on the box (each 1 inch in width is actully 24 mm) but this info rarely appears in the tape description and some manufacturers fail to acknowledge the disrepancy at all.

Odder still, while tape makers converted to metric equivilents for tape widths, they continued to use the imperial measuring standard for lengths. Most tape continues to be offered in the industry standard of 60 yds. Nobody really has an explanation for mixing the two standards. It really servers the manufacturer and no one else.

We have include info on this width standard in our website, but as long as the major manufacturers continue to label standard gaffers tape and duct tape as being two inches in width, we’ll have to stick with their standard.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your gaffers tape needs.

Today, one of our favorites, a local hooper named Julia dropped in to get some tape. Julia is well known in the hooping world and works both as a teacher and performer. I’ve been particularly interested in following her career since finding out about her trips to Haiti and how much the children she works with there enjoy what she does.

She posed a question that got me to thinking. Most of the products we sell are not intended for long term exposure to your skin, nor are they intended to be used by children. Julia wondered if we had any information regarding whether the vinyl tapes she purchases from us could be potentially toxic to a hooper. I regret to say, I had no idea.

I’ve written before about the problems with the quality of counterfeit Chinese batteries, and, while our electrical tape would not be considered counterfeit, it is an import and may not be subject to the same sort of quality controls that domestic products face.

So far my research has led me to the 3M web site (they are probably the largest manufacturer of vinyl tapes in the world) and the MSDS (material safety data sheet) for their premium vinyl electrical tape indicates that there are no safety issues related to its use. I realize that this is not the final answer but it is a start.

Its great when a different type of customer opens up new sales opportunities, and if we are going to serve the hooping community, we want to do it right.

Check back here for some follow up information.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

Jump over to a site like Technorati and you’ll be amazed at what you might find. Sites that index blogs (like Technorati) are great equalizers. If the blog posting you are looking for has been keyword enriched, then the writings of a small-time blogger will get the same attention as someone who writes for The New York Times.

We are currently tracking the news regarding the possibility that Protor & Gamble will sell its newly acquired Duracell division. What happens here will have a big impact on our battery sales.

The speculation that P&G will spin off this brand is getting lots of notice in the news and the blogosphere has much speculation about what might happen. Its time consuming to subscibe to blogs and newsfeeds, but Technorati lets you use simple search technology to find what you need when you have time to read.

If you want to know what customers or contacts might be saying about your company in their blogs you can quickly search your own name to see if you have gotten any mentions. There is probably no quicker way to preempt some bad information to to respond to a customer issue than to be able to quickly respond to a blog posting.

Another good source for blog searching is Googles Blog Search.   Just enter the same sort of search criteria you would place in a regular Google search field, but your seach will look at blog postings instead.  You’ll get different results than Technorati but both blog search engines return lots of interesting results.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your microphone accessory and battery needs.

Justin Timberlake’s Future Sex/Loveshow has taken the concept of staying connected to a new level. As reported in the July 2007 edition of PLSN magazine, the Timberlake summer tour is saving thousand of dollars on telco costs by carrying its own internet based phone system.

WANetics LLC is providing the hardware and technical expertise that lets the Future Sex/Loveshow skip the costs of having the venue provide expensive temporary phone service and hardware. Not only do they not incur local telecommunications expenses, but details like phone and fax number remain unchanged, regardless of where the tour is performing.

Each of the tours five departments (promoter, production, accounting, crew and tour management) has its own dedicated road case that accomodates phones, cables, a fax machine, batteries, wifi and an ethernet switch. All voice and data services are provided through a broadband internet connection and then distributed on a frequency that will travel well throughout the production area of the venue and will not interfere with WIFI frequencies.

According to the PLSN article, the tour reported that voice quality was excellent and that overall service was good even in venues where internet quality was less than perfect. Best of all, the whole system worked no matter what part of the world they were in. The system even provided special phone capabilities like voicemail and conferencing.

Personally, after having paid lots of these telco bills myself while working as a promoters rep, I’m not shedding any tears for the local phone companies that will lose this revenue stream. They consistently overcharged and underperformed.

Look for this service to become the standard for large touring organizations of all sorts in the near future.

Want to know more about WANetics tour support? Here’s the link!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. All the supplies a major entertainment tour needs.

Along with this interest comes an interest in reading the sports page. Some of the best writers for our local newspaper, The News and Oberver (Raleigh, NC) appear in the sports section and I have found myself drawn there every day. That may be about to change.

Yesterday’s front page of the sports section was really incredible. Out of six lead stories on the first page, only one was really about playing the game, whatever that game might be. Every other story was about some level of corruption in yet another major sport. The dog fighting scandal involving Michael Vick, Barry Bonds steriod use, doping allegations in the Tour de France, and gambling by an NBA referee all stole space from scores, trades and activity by local teams. It was more like reading a tabloid than a major newspaper sports page.

I grew up idolizing big league athletes, but my children have little interest in big time sports. This may or may not be related to the level of scandal, but, regardless, it means that they, and lots of their friends, won’t be buying tickets and purchasing merchandise.

We’ll continue to work with our customers who are involved in supporting major league sports, but if things don’t improve dramatically on the front page of the sports section, this is an industry heading for a major fall.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your microphone accessory and battery needs.

Now a new question has arisen. Who, among the major tape converters and distributors, is going to be the first to totally abandon the name Permacel and go with the designation Shurtape 665. We have played with different labeling designations includeing Permcel/Shurtape 665, Shurtape-Permacel 665, and just “665 Gaffers Tape” but nothing has taken hold. Most of the resellers of this product continue to call it Permacel 665 and the primary converter continues to call it Permacel 665 on their own web site.

Furthermore, Shurtape has been slow in updating their own web sites to show the correct specifications and colors for the products that have been rebranded Shurtape.

We work with many high volume customers who base their purchasing decison on maufacturers specifications and it has been difficult to convince them that the products are unchanged. When we tell them the product are the same, yet the Permacel and Shurtape web sites disagree on the specs of the tape, it is difficult to support our position.

It will be interesting to see if individual resellers are allowed to make the name change at their own pace or if the manufacturer (or Permacel) will force an accelerated adoption of the new name. More later!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands. Look to us first to meet your gaffers tape needs.