approached to about promotions unwanted on my cell or computer?

So our task this week was to discuss if we had ever been targeted by a unsolicited promotion or offer on our cell phone or computer. Well my answer is no, though I am particularly careful as not to click on any pop-ups or spam I don't enter contests where I think my info is going places I don't want. The closest I think I get is spam by Rogers on my cell phone occasionally offering me deals on text messaging and picture messaging. A few of my IPhone apps have push notification on special offers and such if we want, but I always turn that off so it doesn't happen. I think I am of that older demographic that still doesn't trust the Internet with their money. I have entered a coke contest by a scratch card texting a code to a 5# to text to, but I did that once, and not since. I think part of the mistrust comes from those ads on TV for text such and such for ring tones or contest is you can see whats wrong with this picture or answer this ridiculously easy question, and lets not forget jokes of the day and such. All these have a charge and you keep getting charged until you request it stopped, sounds like a scam, so I think that's where my feelings of mistrust come from. So until they seem to become more mainstream or less spammy telemarketer like, I think I'll stay away.

no cable, no radio, no problem........no way

So i lasted about 4 days, once Monday rolled around I watched television for "Chuck" and "Spartacus" I guess I could have downloaded Spartacus, and watched Chuck online streaming. but I tried it with a few shows on spacecast.com and I guess my Internet is kind of lousy, cause they either would not load up or I would get no audio. It could also be that these sites are not Mac friendly. I guess I could get use to doing all my entertainment online if I had a decent Internet connection and a big monitor say about 42 inches? cause that is the other downside of watching shows on line my 15 inch monitor doesn't compare to my 42 inch television. I also don't like how on many of the sites a show is broken up into segments, like we have short attention spans or something. making you click on another part and be forced to sit through a commercial. Now I know that a student of advertising complaining about having to sit through a commercial sounds hypocritical, but online I'm forced to sit there and watch it, there is no free will, I can surf on TV when commercials come on, or it might just be the simple face that on TV I feel I have free will on whether I watch a commercial or not, online I feel like I'm held captive.

theres an app for that for some device somewhere whether you need one or not....

I think after looking around for several of these, and they range from locator's of stores, to updates of what the business or company is doing, is slightly ridiculous. I think its another example of "Oh everyone else is doing it we better too" syndrome. Do I really need a Starbucks locater ? They are on practically every block and chances are if I go to Starbucks i have a favorite one I go to and know where it is. And all the airline ones that are out or are coming out useless, they cant get a plane to take off on time if their life depend on it and they make an app to check for status updates for your flights????? wow an app that is never right, its not even as good as a broken clock it gets the time right twice a day at least. sure there is the odd useful one IPhone have one for restaurants in areas your in and offer reviews from other users so not bad, and theirs the one which tells you where every traffic cam is on your route as like a spy version of GPS, but is it legal? Or the one by gyco insurance which gives you updates of everything pertaining to your insurance with them and bloopers and funny videos of driving accidents and stuff? is that really appropriate? I'm waiting for some truly worthy business promoting apps to come out. How about ones from pharmacies or your Doctor with a reminder program for your med or appointments? or one from your news source local to the area? which you can set up for specific alerts relevant to your interests. I would love one that is a traffic report which is for you in your area and up to date say tracks all users on the road and their movement through the GPS that most phones have and use that data to give relevant traffic stats? Nope haven't seen that one yet guess I'll have to settle for an app which tells me where the nearest theater is and whats playing at it.........

still think the winner is......

So having revisited the sites I was on before and trolling around some more I still think the hurt locker is going to take best pic. At some recent European award show the hurt locker cleaned up and beat out Avatar. so this makes me think its got distinct possibility. Of course I still haven't seen either of these movies and cant put a personal opinion out based on me seeing both I have to go by what others are saying, but isn't that what is best about the Internet we can always fin someone with a opinion on any topic. I do get the feeling that most opinions are that the Hurt Locker has an actual story line where as Avatar is just a bunch of special effects, I don't thing that that is a reason to win best picture.

And the winner is.....

And the winner is…….(yes I know, a very cliché blog title)

So one site that I found had some decent discussion under it for all the nominees was a New York times blog at http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/oscar-nominations/. Another was http://oscar-watch.ew.com/. Which gets really annoying with all the pop ups, which with me using a MAC is really impressive in a bad way. I did read through this one (even with the damn pop ups) because this blogger offered his predictions on a few of the categories, not all but about ¼. And lastly for this day I looked at http://communities.canada.com/shareit/blogs/stonereport/archive/2010/01/29/my-oscar-nomination-predictions-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-james-camereon.aspx. Only commented on the first few catagories but at least gave some reasoning why he picked what he did.

I’ll be honest I have not seen a lot of these movies, so a lot of my reasoning for what I have picked initially is from what I have read online.

Best Picture 
“The Hurt Locker”
“

Best Direction 
“Avatar” — James Cameron

Actor in a Leading Role 
Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”


Actress in a Leading Role 
 ”
Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”

Actor in a Supporting Role 
 Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones”


Actress in a Supporting Role Mo’Nique in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”



Writing (Adapted Screenplay 
“Up in the Air” — Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner

Writing (Original Screenplay)
“The Hurt Locker” — Written by Mark Boal

Animated Feature Film 
“Coraline

Art Direction
 “Avatar” — Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg;

Cinematography 
“Avatar” — Mauro Fiore

Costume 
“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” — Monique Prudhomme

Documentary (Feature)
“Burma VJ”
“The Cove”

Documentary (Short Subject)
“China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province

Film Editing
“Avatar” — Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron

Foreign Language Film
“Ajami” — Israel
“El Secreto de Sus Ojos” — Argentina
“The Milk of Sorrow” — Peru
“Un Prophète” — France
“The White Ribbon” — Germany

Makeup 
“Star Trek” — Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow

Music (Original Score)
“Avatar” — James Horner

Music (Original Song)
 
“The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart” Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Short Film (Animated 
“The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)” Javier Recio Gracia
“Logorama”

Short Film (Live Action)
 
“Instead of Abracadabra” — Patrik Eklund and Mathias

Sound Editing
 Either “Avatar” — Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle or 
“Star Trek” — Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin

Sound Mixing Again either 
“Avatar” — Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson or 
“Star Trek” — Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin or even 
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” — Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson

Visual Effects
 And once more either “Avatar” — Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones or Star Trek” — Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton

Presidential twitter?

I have to say that well being Canadian I didn’t follow U.S. politics to a huge degree, but one could not be exposed to Obama’s presidential run (actually even John McCain had a bigger online presence than any past presidential candidate as well, but Obama owned it. He and his polical team spent about 2.5 million on online presence.). Obama had more fans following him on twitter, utube, and facebook than McCain did, did this cost McCain the election? Maybe it contributed to it. What it defiantly showed was that the world has gone viral, and for many people it is their first choice for information. I believe from what I have read through many online articles about Obama’s running is that everyone thought he had a stellar team working on keeping his online presence constantly current and up to date about everything, and many sites talked about how that might have been the one and only key to its success. A strong argument is on about if social media sites are replacing all other form of online information. Some say that corporate web sites and product sites might be better served by using social media like twitter and facebook to reach their consumer market. The other side argues that unless you make sure that you are constantly keeping the content fresh on a social media site it will fail and hurt you. Many companies have created a facebook site and get many members to join but leave it stagnant. This then makes people believe that the organization or company does not care, specifically about their customers by giving them a feeling of rejection. Obama’s political staffs are aware of this and are looking at reinvigorating his online presence. They want to have more bogging and twittering going on from the White House, They feel it is the new way of reaching the people of America. I actually believe in this case it will be successful, just for the fact Obama’s staff proved they could properly run social media sites during his campaign.

blogs for fun

so the blogs I follow are as follows; gizmodo, io9, dc comics the source, and marvel comic blog, looking for group, and pvp. The last two are online comics but their curators do a little blog under each strip, so you find out a lot about them. I'm a bit of a fan boy geek so all these sites are one of the ways I find out what's going on in the world with science fiction, comic books, movies, and all that fun stuff which is a waste of time. I highly recommend gizmodo if your a gadget person, the amount of neat "toys" being introduced. io9 is a bit of everything in geek stuff, so its great for seeing whats new in everything, I also find that io9 has the most for comments under their posts. in a lot of cases their ridiculous, but every now and again you get a worthwhile comment or shared link from someone that leads to a interesting thing.

The world of blogs

so this week I spent much time going through several blogs about adverting and marketing. There are a lot, and they all seem to cover a lot of the same thing. But a few offer insight to things around the world which we don't get to hear about normally, or see as adverting here in Canada. I found I like George Parkers rants quite good, a combination of straight talk with colorful language, which made it enjoyable and fun to read. The psfk.com was a good one with a lot of sections and I liked how you could pick to read through just advertising if you wanted. the adrants.com and adverblog.com were good as well. I must admit I have stayed away from reading blogs or even doing one outside of for school assignments. I probably will still stay away from writing a blog outside of it being required (until I have something regular to say which I feel is worth having people read.) But I do think after visiting these sites and seeing that they offer more than I thought, up till now I really thought blogs were places to either seek attention for them selves or just bitch about whatever, These sites showed a much richer value than I realized or knew. The idea of taking a quick look every day or two offers examples of adverting and what's happening in the industry which for well anyone going into it or in it should be keeping up on and looking at to see what's new what's been done and well see what is working or not, what's offending or being loved its almost like a tool to be used and in this industry we should make use of every tool we have.