Volume 10, Issue 13 — July 16, 2021

rAVe HOW [House of Worship] — Volume 10, Issue 13

July 16, 2021 | Volume: 10 | Issue: 13

Woo hoo, it’s Friday! Hope you had a great week. This newsletter is on the smaller side, but that’s OK — our columns will keep you busy! My favorite product news for this week is the PPDS (Philips) Air Quality Sensor Monitoring System article. This could be a game-changer in this COVID-recovering world!

Our first column is “Are You A Dragon Fruit of A Banana?” by Omar Prashad. Dragon fruit may be an eye-catching snack, but if you don’t know how to eat it, will you buy it? I wouldn’t! This article is an interesting example of how we can make sure to gain clarity and confidence before we rent or buy AV equipment. Here’s my favorite quote: “Scale the level of guidance to the level of commitment (monetary and emotionally) of the AV system(s) your customer needs.”

Next up is a column about the advancement of AV tech and design. “USB Headaches” discusses how the creator of the USB thinks its original design is hard to use. When choosing AV equipment, we should look into how much the design and usability have changed over time. USBs have a lot more uses now and are much faster than their creation in 1995! Who knows how they will look in another decade?

Check out Viking’s new amplifier, Bluestream’s wireless presentation switch, the YoloBox Pro and more below. I hope you have a fantastic weekend, and I’ll see you next time!

— Katie Clark

COLUMNS

+ Are you a Dragon Fruit or a Banana? [Omar Prashad]

One day at the grocery store, my daughter and I saw a dragon fruit. It looked so cool: pink, oblong-shaped and sort of soft and spiky (all at the same time). We were sold — but we didn’t leave the grocery store with a dragon fruit that day. However, after admiring the dragon fruit for a little while, we put it down and continued along. We didn’t buy the dragon fruit — think about that for a second. Though we wanted to buy it, we stood around and looked at it, only to put it down and continued toward the bananas. That’s precisely the problem most of our customers have with just about every kind of AV system we sell them. Our customers buy AV relatively infrequently; we’re the dragon fruit of their weekly trip to the supermarket.

+ USB Headaches [Tony Sprando]

In 2019, Fox News reported the following: “Ajay Bhatt, who led the intel team that created the Universal Serial Bus [USB], told NPR the design of USB ports used to plug in devices such as keyboards, mice, printers and thumb drives is a bit annoying. Frustrated users have created several memes over the years mocking USB devices.” Even the inventor of the original USB thinks they’re hard to use … How far has USB come since?