When it comes to marketing and advertising, it’s generally accepted that you want to portray your company in as positive a light as possible. After all, the goal is to attract (and retain) your customers, encouraging them to spend more money with you.

What do you do, then, when you are faced with criticisms from either your competitors, your customer base, or both? In general, you can take one of two divergent paths when it comes to critical impressions of your company, its products, and its branding.

On the one hand, you can ignore the critics. You can keep pushing ahead with a “positive” ad campaign, selling people on why they would want to choose your products and services. You can focus on what is good. However, you could be “called out” on ignoring the issues, further exacerbating a negative public image.

On the other hand, you can address the critics. You can respond to these allegations, saying either how they are incorrect (or unfounded) or how you are going to rectify the situation. You mention the negative, but you can turn it into a positive. However, you could be perceived as defensive.

Both tactics have their respective pros and cons. For your company, which strategy would you choose?

You probably use your smartphone to do a lot of the things that you previously needed a computer to do. You can use your smartphone to check your e-mail, update your Facebook status, and even watch a few YouTube videos.

Just as there are applications available for the Apple iOS platform, there is the official WordPress for Android application for Google Android smartphones and tablet devices. This isn’t just to view WordPress blogs; it allows you to do just about everything that you could do on your computer.

With this open source application, your Google Android smartphone can be used to write new posts, edit content, and manage comments on the go. It may not look as robust as the desktop counterpart, to be sure, but it provides more than enough functionality for your mobile blogging needs.

To download WordPress for Android, you can scan the QR code on the official download page on WordPress.org. Alternatively, you can find it directly through the Android Market, which is now allowing for web-to-device downloads.

When you are in business, it only makes sense to pay attention to the bottom line. It only makes sense to devise strategies that would help you increase your revenue, but some of these strategies may not be well-received by the general public.

One of the more prominent examples would come in the mobile phone market. You’ll find that a large number of phones sold through traditional carriers do not allow for custom ringtones. By locking out the ability to upload and activate their own ringers, the carriers are “encouraging” customers to purchase the premium ringtones from them instead.

Similarly, you’ll find that certain sought after devices can only be purchased (on subsidy) if the customer agrees to a contract of a minimum length with a minimum monthly fee. In the case of the iPhone 4, it appears to be common practice not to sell the subsidized device without a monthly service plan of $50 or more.

This helps to increase revenue (ARPU) for the carriers, but it can leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many customers. For this reason, it’s important to find the delicate balance between these two goals.

While it may not necessarily be all that discreet, the uCorder IRDC150 Wearable Video Camera is probably much more discreet that whipping out a regular camera and holding it out in front of you.

The idea here is that you can clip the uCorder to your pocket and let it record everything that you see. It’s being marketed as the most portable video camera and recorder combination available, measuring just 3.5-inches high, 1-inch wide, and 0.5-inches thick.

The uCorder has 1GB of internal memory, giving you a decent amount of storage for the VGA quality videos that it records at 25 frames per second. This isn’t industry-leading, to be sure, but it’s inexpensive and very portable. If you need more storage, there is also a microSD memory card slot with support for up to 8GB.

For more information and pictures, check out the uCorder IRDC150 on Amazon.ca. It is currently on sale for $68.00, which is 43% off the regular price of $119.99.

“Leaders can’t be successful without a clear and compelling strategy.” Yes, that’s true. “No strategy, however brilliant, can be successful without effective leadership.” Yes, that’s also true.

Helping you on both of these fronts is Cygnus Management Consultants, Inc., the company that serves as the BlueFur customer of the week. The firm works directly with executives and their teams to clarify business strategies, determine leadership implications, and strengthen team dynamics needed to drive results.

Some of the more notable clients who have used Cynus services include BC Hydro, TD Canada Trust, Public Works Canada, Pirelli Cables, CP Rail, Toyota, UBC Faculty of Medicine, and the City of Victoria. Check the Cygnus website for more on what they do and how they can help your organization achieve greater success.

Do you use BlueFur to host your websites? Let us know and we can feature you in a future blog post. Send an email message to blogfeature@bluefur.com with your name, website URL, and a brief description of what you’d like to see highlighted.

Given the increasingly short attention span of the average Internet user, it is more important than ever that your blog load as quickly as possible. If a site takes too long to load, a visitor may just click away and never come back.

You don’t want that. Instead, you might want to think about using the Swift Theme for WordPress. This theme has been designed from the ground-up to be one of the fastest loading, SEO-optimized, server-friendly themes on the web.

Going through the rest of the options, we find a clean magazine-style layout with large thumbnail images, six custom widgets, two featured post sliders, a tabbed interface, and a built-in import/export function.

The free download link, along with the live preview, can be found in the Free Themes Directory on WordPress.org.