Weekly Blog Post #1 - Cluetrain Manifesto

The most interesting concept I came across from the list of 95 theses was number 91. The concept reads “our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Companies that have no part in this world, also have no future.” I can see how the people who wrote “The Cluetrain Manifesto” 10 years ago think that companies are disconnected from their consumers’ inner personal circle. Today companies are all about reaching out and getting connected with their consumers. Ever since the explosion of user-generated content by means of MySpace or YouTube, companies have caught on. Companies now put out viral ad videos on YouTube or make a company MySpace page.

The concept that applies to my media field would be number 34. The concept reads “to speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.” In the past few years, video game publishing and development companies have now reached out to the consumers that buy their games through the internet. It is practically the standard now for development companies to have forums for potential consumers of their games to give feedback directly to the developers before a game is released. For example, a development company would now hire community managers to read comments on their forums and report the ideas to the developers. Ideas could be someone saying, “Hey, there should be camouflage character customization,” for a military first person shooter game.

Dueling videos…courting the youth vote: My Perspective

Everyone has heard the expression “your trying to hard,” well that’s the feeling I got watching Hillary Clinton’s viral video. After about a few seconds into the video, I sort of through up in to my mouth. From the faux “band members” praising Clinton’s rock ability to Clinton’s face being, for lack of a better word, photoshopped onto a person holding a guitar, it made me sick. This is not how you “connect” with young voters. I’m guessing Clinton’s campaign lackeys thought they need to make her look hip to appeal to young voters by making her a rocker. This Clinton video is nil for one in my book.

Yes, we can. I watched this speech by Obama live on TV and I had never been so moved by a speech in my life. Even political analysts, and old farts that were political analysts when MLK gave his “I have a dream speech,” said that Obama’s speech was almost on that level of magnitude. To see the day when a politician finally god damn gets it that it’s not about Democrats, Republicans, skin color, or religion, but about justice and equality. That is what led me to vote. Not the shenanigans in Clinton’s videos, but people like Obama. The video isn’t made by Obama’s campaign, so I was able to accept the video for what it was, with the ploy of using all the celebrities that appeal to young people.

Photoshop Assignment Three: Header

Rushed it at the last minute so here is my header:

Media-related Blogs

The first blog of two I will go to is:

Kotaku.com

and second is:

joystiq.com

Both are video game blogs that are not run by any media company or corporation. I have visited them for quite some time and both always have articles such as rumor gossip that you can’t find on a typical media company ran website.

Late Breaking

Super Bowl ads are another check mark on the list of things that America does in excess that just piss off anyone living in a different country. I mean am I right? Advertisers throw millions of dollars out the window to get one 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl. No wonder our economy might go into a recession. Any who, Super Bowl ads usually tend to be funny for the sake of being funny or controversial for the sake of being controversial.

This year’s theme from my viewing experience was the wild and crazy animals. Some funny ones to note were the Bridgestone Tire commercials. Basically the commercials demonstrated the maneuverability of a car using their tires while avoiding a boat load of animals with a crazy screaming expression thinking they are about to become road kill.

Another animal commercial was the FedEx commercial where an entrepreneurial employee solves the company shipping problems by using pidgins. The employee’s boss asks him how they will ship large products and then giant pidgins the size of Mac trucks come on screen. These giant pidgins hauling crates start dropping the crates midair on people in the street causing havoc.

The last worthy commercial to note on the animal theme was a SoBe commercial. One of the most random damn things I have ever seen occurred in this commercial. I super model holding their new drink product walks onto a stage followed by a CGI lizard. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” starts to play and a bunch of CGI lizards start dancing in unison. Hilarity ensues.

In the end, I found all the animal commercials to be funny. But let’s be fair, it is kind of a cop out. Animals doing not so uh.. “animal” things are always hilarious. The rest of the commercials like always, are just like any other and I forget about them and just focus on the programming I tune in for.

Photoshop Assignment Two

Here is my final image for this assignment: