Bill Cosby using media outlets

The New York Times reported that Bill Cosby is using media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to promote his new album. Cosby has included 8 outlets on his site billcosby.com. Facebook has an application that allows its users to try Cosby’s familiar sweaters. In his album “Cosnerati state of emergency”, the veteran comedian tries to create a more socially conscious hip-hop. I appreciate what Mr. Cosby is trying to do because hip-hop today isn’t like what it used to be. Back in the late 80s early 90s, music that had a message was a popular thing. Yes, there were some rappers that promoted violence and the use of drugs.
But there were also other artists that portrayed a positive message in their music during those times like Tupac and Public Enemy. These artists provided music that contained a positive message. Tupac created a song called “Dear Momma”, which is considered by many to be Tupac's most emotional and most respected song, and is praised by many artists, (Eminem mentions it as his favorite song) even by many artists who are not into the hip hop business. Public Enemy’s song “Fight the Power” had largely served as the political statement of purpose for the group, and is their biggest single.
I feel that this marketing scheme by Cosby could provide him with a younger fan base that would make his music more popular. Being the fact that people who listen to hip-hop today would rather listen to lyrics from popular artists like 50 Cent and lil Wayne. Using media outlets like Facebook and Twitter would bring younger fans to Cosby’s music.

iPhones taking over the Gaming industry????

Mobile phones are bringing some rapid changes to the gaming industry, there has even been some controversy over which company (Apple, Nintendo and Sony) would bring the best games. Apple has even stated that the iPhone app store has more games than either Sony or Nintendo. Mashable.com conducted a vote that nearly 2000 people participated in, and concluded that more people voted for the iPhone. The iPhone secured 704 votes, Sony’s PSP got 639 voters, and the Nintendo DS received 482 voters.

Gaming for have come a long way since the days of corny cell phone games like Snake and Pacman. I think the only reason why iPhone games are more popular than the regular hand held’s because the iPhone has its own touch screen graphical interface. Also during game play you’re able to turn the phone, and use it as a directional button. This could be a new marketing scheme by Apple because, now their bringing the iPhone into everything. Now that Apple’s gradually taking over the gaming industry, it makes you wonder what will happen next.

The GiO bringing back the idea of home studios?

In 1969, Jimi Hendrix climaxed the Woodstock festival with his rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. At Woodstock the audience peaked at over 500,000 people. Hendrix had a wall of amplifiers that blew everyone’s minds with the rocking sounds that emanated from his guitar. Now, Apogee has unleashed a guitar interface called the GiO. According to futuremusic.com, The GiO can provide the same quality sound like what Hendrix did at Woodstock.

Musicians are able to access different sounds and control the recording process from your feet with the GiO. The GiO also gives musicians the chance to be mobile by having the ability to manipulate both the guitar and the computer at the same time. Mac created a program called Logic Studio that gives musicians 25 simulated amplified sounds for $500. With the advent of this new computer software musicians are now able to provide more of a quality sound with the GiO than what Hendrix ever could with regular amplifiers.

This could be a possible trend in the music industry because more artists are starting to produce their own music at home and USA Today also reported that music software sales are booming, according to the National Association of Music Merchants, which represents music shops. Also that their revenue has grown to almost $500 million in 2008, from $140 million in 1999. Guitarists, who do session work or collaborate with others, don't even have to bother re-recording a track later. With the advent of the GiO would the regular recording studios lose money? Tony Berg a veteran music producer believes that the GiO is the future of the recording industry. And with all these attachments for Macs who knows, maybe the next big thing is to connect a pot to the Mac and see if it could cook something. Who knows? The possibilities are endless.

iPhone app helps passengers overcome fear of flying

Has ever been a time where you’ve gotten nervous from being on a flight? Well there’s an app for that. Virgin Atlantic partnered with Mental Workout has created a “Flying without fear course” on the iPhone and iPod touch. This fear iButton was designed so that people would be able to overcome their fear of flying. The app lets people become familiar with the types of unsettling noises that stem from the plane, also the sounds you hear when the plane loses control.

Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, stated in an article, “Our first iPhone app will bring the benefits of our successful flying without fear course to millions of people around the world who are now using mobile technology to make life better”. Stan Schroeder from Masable.com said that the panic button has a 98% success rate and then he goes on further to say that that the app would be really useful to people with a legitimate fear of flying.

I agree with Schroeder because a lot of people become unsettled after a flight. And I believe that if I was in that situation, I would want something that could relieve my fear of flying. This could be a new marketing scheme by Apple because the company uses customer fears as a way of forcing people to buy the iPhone and iPod touch. But it should be good anyway, the app is available for $4.99 in the Apple App store.

Walmart finding a new adversary in Amazon.com

Wal-Mart and Amazon.com have been fighting over online pricing for their products. This fight started a couple months ago, with Wal-Mart and Amazon competitively fighting over who had the lowest prices on anticipated books and DVDs. The National Retail Federation predicted that sales would decline by one percent to $437.6 Billion during the Black Friday holiday sales. They also stated that sales would not drop as much as they did last season.

Wal-Mart continues to dominate the affordable pricing industry making $405 billion dollars in sales last year. Amazon.com doesn’t provide the retailing aspect for consumers like Wal-Mart, but it does provide an online option, Amazon.com has made 20 billion from its online sales asccording to the new york times. It seems like more customers are leaning towards online shopping more than anything else because purchasing items online makes life a lot easier. Could this be a possible trend in the media?

Consumers tend to follow things that are more convenient to them, and Amazon.com does this by providing all of its products online. The online market is a good thing to get into because more people would rather click on the item that they want, rather than actually going out to the store to purchase, it’s less time consuming. Online businesses produce a revenue of 4 billion dollars monthly according to wordpress.com

Online purchasing is the way of the future because people are becoming more technologically inept and these are trends that Wal-Mart should follow. If Wal-Mart isn’t careful they could also suffer the same as Block Buster, where the company lost most of their customers due online movie rentals with Netflix. So ultimately I feel that Wal-Mart should try to improve their online purchasing methods by following Amazon.com and try to figure out what they’re doing to attract their customers.

If you want to take a look at the sources that I based my post off of just click on the links below:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/HolidayShopping/wireStory?id=8842129

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33347048/ns/business-consumer_news/

Windows 7 finally gets the basics right

In an effort to satisfy customers, Microsoft has developed a new version of Windows. The previous taskmaster Window’s Vista, was creating some problems for consumers. They complained that Vista, offered a flashy new interface, but the performance was poor and it had a lack of compelling features made it dull. Vista made people regret that they upgraded and others just refused to leave Windows XP. So Windows 7 is supposed to make up for the previous mistakes by Microsoft. Windows 7 is hardly flawless; some of the features are still unfinished. The long standing annoyances in Windows 7 are similar to the ones of Vista.

The new taskbar replaces some of the old small icons, and text labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. In the past you could get one-click access to programs by dragging their icons to the quick launch tool bar. Windows 7 is supposed to eliminate that, by adding the quick launch as part of the taskbar. Another new feature from the Window 7 taskbar is a feature called jump lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones you get when you right-click within various Window’s applications, except that you don’t have to be inside the app to use them.

Overall, Windows 7 is decent. I wouldn’t recommend that you go out and buy one because to me, it’s the exact same thing as Vista. There are a few new applications on the taskmaster that would attract consumers and make things a lot easier to maneuver around, but it isn’t necessary. I feel that the only time that should upgrade is when you are truly having difficulties with their with computer. There’s a video at the bottom, that shows the basic functions of the of Windows 7

Swine flu declared a national emergency

On Thursday, President Obama signed a proclamation that declared swine flu a national emergency. On Saturday, the white house made a statement to the press saying that “The proclamation enhances the ability of our nation’s medical treatment facilities to handle a surge in H1N1 patients by allowing, as needed, the waiver of a certain standard federal requirements on a case-by-case basis.

Sixty million people have gotten the winter flu vaccine – probably because they’ve been paying more attention to flu warnings in general, caused by the current outbreak of swine flu. There have been an unprecedented number of seasonal flu shots for October, but usually they don’t administer the vaccine until later in the fall. There are 85 million doses of the seasonal flu vaccine available now; usually there aren’t as many vaccines available so early in the fall. Roughly 100 million doses are used during the fall season.

The swine flu has caused more than 1000 deaths in the U.S. so far, also the flu has been more widespread than it has ever been in previous years. CDC Director Dr. Thomas Friden told reporters on Friday. “To be in the peak of flu season in October is extremely unusual”. He went on further to say that “We expect that the influenza will occur in waves and we can’t predict how high, how far of how long the wave will go or when the next wave will come. At the press conference on Friday, Friden said that the government doesn’t test everyone to confirm swine flu, so there aren’t an exact number of infected people.

Forty-six states now have widespread flu activity. The only states that don’t have swine flu are Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, and South Carolina. Friden said that there a re at least two different types of flu causing illnesses; test from about 5,000 patients suggest that nearly all flu cases are swine flu. This year’s seasonal flu vaccines won’t protect against swine flu; a different vaccine is needed. Vaccine production takes several months to be produced. Some scientists say they have already started working on vaccines when swine flu was identified in April. But apparently, it was to late in the season for scientist to include swine flu in any of the seasonal doses.

Because of all the vaccine delays, the government has updated their optimistic estimate of 120 million vaccine doses that would have been available by mid- October. There have only been 11 million vaccines available for health departments to distribute. Dr. Friden stated that “It’s frustrating to all of us. We wish there are more vaccines available.” The World Health Organization reported more that 414,000 laboratory confirmed cases of H1N1 worldwide, with nearly 5000 deaths.

I believe that if people take time out to truly practice proper hygiene, you wouldn’t have H1N1 spreading all over the place. Today, people can be really disgusting, and I have experienced this first hand. For example, last year I took a trip to Albany. When I was on the plane, it was very crowded and hot; usually I would be able to go to sleep and forget how uncomfortable I was, but something compelled me to stay awake. I turned my head, to find this man sneezing without covering his mouth. At first it didn’t bother me, but then he started sneezing repeatedly without covering his mouth. Then his final sneeze ended with a long string of mucus emanating from his nose. He then rolls the snot in his hands and wipes it on the seat next to him. I was never the same again, and hopefully that man changed his ways as well.

Hopefully you guys have learned form my experiences and try to improve on what you already know. I’ve posted three videos about swine flu prevention with a little rap video form Dr. John Clarke which I thought was funny.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33458709#33459468

Gas Guzzlers: gaining consumer interest????

This month gas prices are a dollar lower than how they were a year ago. Some experts say that the gas prices will climb extensively as soon as the government starts to work economic recovery. And because of this delayed lowering in gas prices, people are ignoring compact and sub compact cars, to a buy limited edition vehicle like the Jaguar XJL-a car that costs $105,000. This 470 horse power car puts out seventeen miles per gallon and they are being sold out in a matter of minutes in special online sales. People who fancy Ford F-Series trucks are taking advantage of these online sales as well. In September of last year there was a three percent increase in the number F-Series trucks being sold. Other companies have seen huge bumps in their SUV sales by 23 percent in that same year.

Because of the lowering gas prices, consumers seem to have forgotten that gas was at an all time high in 2008. I feel there’s no need to have a clunker now, you’re going to have to pay more money to keep the SUV maintained, than what you would with a regular compact car. For example, I paid $2,000 for a used 94’ Mercury Sable and it averages about 25 miles per gallon, so at the pump I would pay $22 for gas. Yet These dumb people are buying cars that are over $80,000, and half of the time their too scared to drive it.

At the moment these SUV’s are very attractive, but due to the current economic state that the country is in now, buying these types of vehicles makes no sense. Its proven that once the economy shows signs of improvement, those huge SUV’s will start to lose its appeal from consumers- because they are some of the most fuel thirsty vehicles out there. The Obama administration has focused on encouraging fuel efficiency despite lowering gas prices. Stephan Gallon from R.L Polk & Co. reported that the government has invested 2.4 billion dollars for car companies to develop hybrid cars. That legislation requires the car companies to create a vehicle that averages 35.5 miles to the gallon by 2016.

Fuel efficient cars, like hybrids are more environmentally friendly and a great investment for consumers. Automakers are striving toward improving vehicle performance with the development of the “leaf” by Nissan. With it every full battery charge can take you 100 miles with the leaf. Although this is foreign company, this just shows how American inventors are behind. But with the new legislation by President Obama that will change.

Can we trust in the media anymore?

The purpose of the media is to announce news and also to educate the public on events happening now. In today’s media, reporters will do what they must in order to get their names out there. And if they have to make themselves look like a jack ass to gain popularity they will. A reporter’s main purpose is to gain an audience. If they can get a few followers to start an argument over a certain topic the can profit form it immensely. Radio show host who would display this type of behavior is a man by the name of Rush Limbaugh. On his show, the conservative radio host attempts undermine the Democratic Party with crude statements about President Obama and his cabinet.

On October 9th, the president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in strengthening international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. He declared in a speech that same morning, saying that he was completely shocked to hear that he was awarded the Nobel Prize. The president went on further to say that “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of the many transformative figures that have been honored by this award” (shown in the first video at the bottom). This man tries his best to serve the country well on both sides, but there are a lot of conservative jerks out there that would love to see him fail, similar to Mr. Limbaugh. But my point is: If the president fails wouldn’t the country fail as well? This is why we have to be careful of the types of media influences we let govern our moral judgment.

After the president’s speech Limbaugh told his audience that the president is “destroying his country as a super power” because of his efforts in attaining world peace. And he believes the only reason why the Nobel committee even considered giving him that award is because those committee members are part a European world power. And they, like some the terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, want him think that everything is fine and he doesn’t have to worry about the war in Afghanistan anymore because they are giving him such a prestigious award (shown in second video clip, skip to 2:10). To me, that completely makes no sense.

But apparently Rush’s audience loves listen to crap like that and he has profited tremendously. In an interview with Jamie Gangel, a national correspondent for NBC News asks Rush, who is he doing his show for? Rush replies with “I am doing my radio show for my audience! For ratings! He says “I want the largest audience I could get. So I could charge the highest advertising rates and what else do I want, MONEY (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33273166#33243084)!!!! In that interview, Jamie has reported that Rush is achieving that goal, because he had just signed a contract worth four hundred million dollars (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/33276211#33276211).

After reading that, could you really believe in what the media reports anymore? When I saw the video, I was really turned off by some of the comments that Limbaugh made. I understand where he is coming from, because all media reporters want to become successful. Is that a good enough excuse for aggravating a group of people who tend to not research anything? So I encourage you to leave a comment and tell me how you feel about this.

Should the print media be kept alive?

I feel that print media should be kept alive for the sheer purpose of time. So that in another fifty years we can look back and reflect on some of the things that have occurred over time. Some people say it would be nice to have everything digitalized because you would have easier access to important facts and dates. But sometimes having easy access to everything isn’t the best method in attaining information. Certain websites like wikipedia and google translate allow their users to update the information on the site, if they feel it’s necessary. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the information that you receive is accurate or even beneficial you.

In 2005 John Seigenthaler, a former editor of the Nashville Tennessean Newspaper, discovered that his own biographical article on wikipedia was altered by one of its users. The biography falsely claimed that Seigenthaler played a part in the Kennedy assassinations. Eventually investigators caught the person who posted Seigenthaler’s false biography and corrected it. He claimed it was a joke. Ever since then Seigenthaler and other figures in the media continue to criticize Wikipedia’s open editing policy, calling the website a provider of inaccurate information.

There has been countless times where I have used google translate for my Spanish class to provide a full translation of what I had written down in English. When I got my assignments back from the teacher, there all these comments from her wondering where my information came from. Sadly, the grade on my report decreased because of improper use of the site, and as a result of that I stopped using those sites as a reference indefinitely because I wasn’t benefiting from it at all. It has inspired me to research more, and go deeper into the subject by reading the books that are required for that topic.

That’s why I believe print media should remain as one of the main sources of information because written word cannot be changed. It is ephemeral, a permanent moment in history where the ideas and views of that time cannot be altered. The electronic media is definitely a more efficient and environmentally healthy method to receive news. We also find that the internet can make life a lot easier when it comes to finding facts. But unlike print media, electronic media constantly changes making the information found vulnerable to deletion. Fifty years from now, I want to be able to show my grand kids the newspaper clippings from the 2008 presidential elections or the biography of Nelson Mandela.

What is your prediction about print media? Should it be left alone? Or has electronic media become too prominently known for print media to make a come back?