The Customised director on speaker envy, Jamie Oliver and being a tweetaholic
What is your favourite website?
My favourite website of the moment is definitely www.flickr.com/photos/artcoustic. Artcoustic make the coolest speakers on the planet, with the sound performance to match. These are the speakers I would have in my own dream home cinema.I get speaker envy every time I visit.
What is your worst digital habit?
My wife continually tells me off for tweeting too much - I鈥檓 a tweetaholic. I need to learn to put my phone off after working hours but I can鈥檛 bear to miss out on any exciting Twitter activity.
iPhone/Blackberry/Android. Which side are you on?
iPhone, 100%. I currently have the 4S but will be going for the 5 or 5S soon. I love the way everything syncs perfectly between MacBook, iMac and iPad without connecting the devices, it is perfect for people like me who are constantly on the go. I also use AirPlay to wirelessly stream my music around my office and home which I love.
Are you into social networking?
Massively! At Customised, we use Twitter as our weapon of choice for digital marketing and networking. We created a hashtag to allow us to use Twitter as our virtual shop window, #liveinstall and it has been hugely successful. We started receiving requests from custom installers around the country to start using the hashtag and we now have over 90 businesses in the LiveInstall community. We tweet pictures of our installs as they happen, providing other custom installers with tips and inspiration and consumers with an insight into custom installation.
We are also hosting a social media meet up in our Customised showroom soon where local businesses will come along and share their social media successes and get some tips from each other. It is a great networking opportunity and a chance to learn what has worked for other businesses. We will also provide wine and tapas 鈥� what more could you ask for?
Who do you recommend to follow on Twitter?
If you are interested in learning more about custom installation and smart home technology, follow @LiveInstall. I also run this twitter handle alongside @customised. My personal favourite account to follow is @MrGeorgeClarke from Restoration Man. He always tweets great pictures of building projects and architecture and the odd bit about football.
What is your favourite app?
Instagram. I love the cool pictures you can create and the new 15 second video function opens up a whole new range of possibilities for work as well. always posts great videos and pictures of yummy food which inspires me to get in the kitchen.
What is your preferred means of communication?
Texting. I find lengthy calls very time consuming when I am working on site. A text gets all the info to the person quickly and efficiently and takes 30 seconds. I don鈥檛 like my customers thinking I鈥檓 running my business from their home and spending most of the day on phone calls rather than completing their install.
What did you last buy online?
HomePlugs from Solwise. Homeplugs create a network in your home without running cables. The network allows you to stream video, audio and enable functions like Smart TV, WI-FI and network printing. It is great for retro-fits or period homes when having cables on show is not ideal.
PC or Mac?
I changed to Mac in 2009 and will never look back. My Mac helps me keep on top of all my work. I get consistency in performance on all their products - the battery life is the same on my macbook air now as it was on day one of purchase. I never got this level of reliability with a PC or laptop.
Guilty pleasures: Most played tunes from iTunes/Spotify?
Ben Howard - Every Kingdom is my favourite album that has been released in the last year or so. The chilled out music stops me getting stressed when the workload gets hectic.
Kris Gamble is director of custom installation company
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