Multi-media CD plays on PCs and, with a little extra effort, on Macs
The Greater Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce is trying a new way to promote its members and the community where they do business.
It's a cutting-edge CD that includes classical-guitar music played by Queen Anne resident Andre Feriante, along with printable content that covers the chamber's mission statement and the history of Queen Anne, as well as a bio on Feriante.
The brainchild of Queen Anne resident and former Microsoft employee Tolga Ural, Imagine CDs.com more importantly includes sponsored ads and advertisers' Web pages that can be found by clicking on individual ads or on business categories. The categories also include schools and other information such as the latest on the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Ural said.
"These are hybrid CDs," he said, explaining that music on the CDs can be played on car stereos, as well as on computers. There are also automatic on-line updates of sponsors and information about the sponsors' businesses, Ural said. "The sponsors are loving it."
Imagine CDs.com is only a year old, and the company turned a profit the first year, he said. "We have a patent pending for intelligent design," Ural added.
Other Imagine CD clients include the Columbia Tower Club's fourth-annual Monte Carlo Casino Night and silent auction benefiting the Make A Wish Foundation and Rise N' Shine, he said.
The Queen Anne chamber CDs is billed as being both PC- and Mac-compatible. "On PCs, it's flawless," Ural said. For the roughly 5 percent of people who use Macs, not so much.
The music plays automatically, and the cover and the CD itself direct users to click on "home.htm" to launch the text files. Unfortunately, the link doesn't work on Macs.
Users need to click through a couple of other files to get to the content, and users can find out how to do that by calling or e-mailing Imagine CDs, Yural said. The company's 1-800 number and e-mail address are on the cover.
Leilani McCoy, the chamber's director of marketing, said the organization had 1,000 of the CDs made, and plans call for their distribution at the chamber's office and hotels, among other places. The Mac issue doesn't appear to be a problem so far, she said: "We handed out 200 at the chamber's (March 11) awards dinner, and I haven't had any complaints."
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