Final Wrap Up

Throughout the course of this semester I have learned a tremendous amound about online technology. Not only about marketing online through promotion, place, price, and product, but about the world of engagement marketing through the blogosphere. Learning and actually creating a blog was probably the most interesting and most beneficial piece of information I have learned. Being a Business major I feel that this is going to be the next step in the business world. Blogging is becoming more popular everyday and I know that if I can participate in be part of that blogoshere it is going to take me a lot farther than if I am not involved. I enjoyed also learning about different features I can put on my blog and also how to even learn some HTML code. All of these things are beneficial to me, because although I would like to think I am good with technology I do not know how to add features and create websites and HTML code and things like that.

We also found out many different aspects of Search Engine Optimization that will help us understand how Yahoo, Google, and other search engines each uniquely rank their pages depending on behavior of each individual person.

I think that we all learned a great deal of information about this class and it was a joy to sit and listen to lecture and hear guest speakers talk about their experience with the Internet and blogs. I hope that Professor Brown remains blogging and keeping his website for Barbaro and saving horses even though he will not be teaching anymore. I would like to thank him for a great semester and the best of the luck in the future after his teaching career.

I would also like to wish all the Seniors graduating good luck in the future, I can not beleive its time to leave aready! For all the undergraduates, good luck next year, have fun, and take advantage of the time you have in college because it goes sooo fast!

Cancun

My last wiki edit on the Cancun Mexico website was also adding a Restaurant section. Probably due to my love of food, I feel it necessary to always have some good restaurants to recommend to visit away on vacation. I noticed that I had made other changes with the hotels and nightlife, but unfortunately I they were edited. I do feel it is still a good wiki giving a lot of good onformation, but could be a little more informative and talk a little bit less about Hurrican Wilma because that seems to take up most of the wiki.

Rockaway Mall

I added a small new section to the Rockaway Townsquare Mall wiki. They have nothing written about the various places to eat while enjoying their shopping trip at the mall. I made a Restaurants section and listed the majority of places to eat at the mall. I also think that all of the stores should be listed, so that may be my next edit.

Wiki Roxbury High School

Seems like just yesturday I was still in high school, but a lot has changed since I have been there. I though it wouold be a good idea to update the new head faculty of principals and assistant principals. I also added a the Guardian Angels, and Roxbury Prime Time to Student Government/ Leadership activities. Lastly, I added a section called Departments to showcase the various educational departments the school has to offer. To see more about Roxbury High school and what I edited go here.

Wikipedia Edits

I edited a couple more things on the Shallow Hal wiki. I added the official fox website to the external links part of the page. I thought it would be a good additional source of information about the movie. I also added two different bits of information to the trivia section. I thought it was interesting to know what other movies the producers, theFarrelly Brothers, made and that Gwyneth Paltrow did not use a stunt double and had a to go through a four-hour make up process everyday. Lastly, I added a little paragraph at the end of the plot section just about what type of message the movie represents because I think the producers did a good job at focusing in on the key message of inner beauty and made sure it wouldn't just be taken as a slap stick fat joke type of movie.

I think after my edits the wiki shows a little bit more about the producers and what their intentions were for the movie, some other interesting pieces of information, and a great additional site to find out more about the movie.

Amazon Associates

I figured out how to complete the amazon associates link. It was very easy; it was right in front of my face the whole time I just kept looking over where I was supposed to get the HTML code. I chose to link to the DVD The Holiday because I recently just watched the movie and thought it was adorable. I definitely think it is a great movie to have and one you can watch over and over.

Ipods Disrupting Pacemakers?

One of the articles in Global Neighborhoods discusses Ipods disrupting the beat of a pacemaker. This is a very interesting topic and should be studied much more. Ironically, in my English class someone had just done a project about cellphones and new electronics causing cancer when held too close and too often to the skin. In this case I could definitely see there being some relationship between the Ipod and pacemaker. The Ipod somehow messed up the beat of the pacemaker even when the Ipod was not on. This issue needs further intense research. People need to be careful with new technology and how addicted we get to it. Everyone constantly has an Ipod and cellphone on them at all times. It is scary how dependant we are on some of these electronics in our lives.

Amazon Associates

I was already a member of amazon and subscribed to be a member of the associate program successfully as well. I know where to add a page element, but then I am not positive where I am supposed to post different products I would like to link to. I am sure it is right in front of me so I will keep playing around and looking until I figure it out.

Stiuqxela

It is quite funny how this guy Chris is winning in a contest he is not even a part of, but good for him, he obviously knows what he is doing. If I had more articles written and places people could view the word stiuqxela I would definitely have a better ranking. For now, I will have to remain blogging and including stiuqxela in my work.

Media Mix

We have been talking a lot about different ways for companies to advertise and promote their products and services. In an article we read today called Media Mix, Rupert Murdoch gave us his views on how traditional companies need to adapt to the changing technology in news media. This coming from Rupert Murdoch is a significant thing. He is a global media mogul and has always been involved in traditional media. From the New York Times to Fox, newspapers and television are faced with many challenged reaching the masses. People do not want to be told anymore the news. they want to participate and interact with one another about current issues in the world today. That is one reason why blogs and message boards are becoming more popular. People can subscribe to newspapers online, watch TV shows online, record TV shows using products like TiVo, and much more. All of these enable people to get whatever they want when they want it which in turn puts traditional media on the back burner. Murdoch explains that traditional media companies like himself, can take advantage of these new opportunities evolving and adapt to the new technologies. He also shows that although people want to interact with one another and voice their news, content quality is still needed and companies that can put out and oversee that quality information is being written will win in the end. Murdoch has already hopped on the bandwagon and adapted to the change by buying MySpace $580 million!
To find out more look at some of these articles.

John Edward's Haircut

I found this article and thought it was extremely entertaining. It shows that people really do love talking about just about anything and making it into a bigger issue than it is. It refers to an article about John Edwards getting $400 haircuts and how he charged them to his campaign account. Due to his actions, people are giving him negative flack in his political campaign. People feel it showed a lack of judgement and no matter how wealthy you are, you should not charge expensive hiarcuts like the one Edwards got to his campaign budget. I think it is more humorous than a serious issue, but everyone has their opinion.

Enhance Brainpower

As I was browsing through my teammates recent blog posts I came across an article that Ashley found through another classmate. It was an article called Why Exercise Boosts Brainpower. It was about a study done on mice to grow new cells resulting from exercise. These new cells would be in a part of the brain that effects memory in adults starting at age 30. Similar to Ashley, my grandfather has Dementia, the early stage of Alzheimer's disease. Although it seems far fetched that exercising would actually grow these new cells in the brain and improve your memory, at least they are still working to come up with some type of treatment for Alzheimer's patients that can at least slow down or lessen memory loss. I think it is a great idea and hope that in the near future something can be created to help this disease. It would be interesting to find out a little more about the process.

Google Adwords

Recently, we have been discussing Googles Adwords and how websites can pay per click to gain a higher ranking on a Google search. This past summer I interned at a small human resource company in New York City called Retensa. I was the Marketing Associate, job that entailed pretty much all online advertising. I basically registered the company website in as many search engines and yellow pages as I could find. We also had an Adwords account where I would identify the most popular words people would search to find a website like Retensa. I would track how well our Adwords were working at bringing customers to our website. It was very interesting how the keywords worked and how websites can pay per click and pay per call to attract more viewers. Companies can really use many of Googles resources to market their website even without spending loads of money. Everyone should take a look at how Adwords works and the amazing things the Internet lets you do today.

Google not only is there to help big businesses that have big budgets, but small local businesses as well through their coupons and free listings. To find out more about Googles free offerings that will benefit any size company their is a great article to read called Google Local: For More Than Just Local Businesses.

Guest Speaker

In class on Friday, the creators of DealCatcher.com came to class to talk about how they started and what their company is all about. I thought it was very interesting because I had never heard of DealCatcher and enjoyed hearing about how their site works. The President and founder of the company, Dan Baxter, was actually a student of the University of Delaware and did not know his concept would be such a big hit. Baxter was only looking to help his family and friends save money and show them where to go to get the right discounts and find coupons that can be beneficial. Instead the site gets over 35,000 hits a day and increasing at a rapid pace. I will definitely check out the site on a more frequent basis and tell my family and friends about it. I think it is very helpful especially if you have a product in mind that you are looking to buy. You can put that product as a special keyword and DealCatcher will contact you when special promotions or discounts are available for the specific product you are searching for.

Keep updated on the stiugxela search engine experiment.

Stiuqxela Test

It will be interesting to see if we can get the word stiugxela a high rank in a google search linking to the Packers webpage. It will show that this is how companies, organizations, and people get their website more "google juice" in the internet world. I think it will be a fun test for the class to try.

Spring Break

Over Spring Break I went to Cancun. It was an amazing time. The weather was beautiful, the hotel was very nice, and the food was much better than expected. My flight to and from Cancun was also very smooth. The whole trip was a success and I had a relaxing and wonderful time.

I actually had chosen Cancun, Mexico as one of my Wikipedia articles to edit. I am going to add a few more sites to visit and some hotels that I heard were great as well. I already added some different clubs and bars tourists can visit while on their stay in paradise.

Viacom sues Google

Friday in class we discussed the Viacom vs. Google lawsuit. Viacom in suing Google's YouTube for $1 Billion dollars. YouTube is one of the newest technologies on the web. Anyone can just put up a video clip and share it with others. It is not only used for entertainment, but as a great marketing tool as well. Even when we had the interview over Skype with Toby Bloomberg , she told us about the example with Mentos and Diet Coke. It made both companies a lot of money and it was free marketing.

We split the class in half and debated about the Viacom and Google case, and I was defending Google. I think that Google was not trying to hurt Viacom or take money away from them. Google thought they were creating buzz and helping most companies in cases like this one. Anyone can post videos, and Google does its best to monitor that all the vidoes are correctly copyrighted and posted. It is a hard task to do and they are trying to come up with software that can help detect videos that should not be on their site. As soon as Viacom told them about the videos put up from some of the TV shows that Viacom owns, Google took down all the ones they could find. That is the best they could do and they are still in the process of making the system better. To read more about the Viacom/Google case read this.

Wikipedia Edit

Spring break is right around the corner and I could not be more excited. This year I am going to Cancun, Mexico with all of my friends. It is our senior year so we are even more excited about the trip together. I edited the Nightlife section of my Cancun Wikipedia article. I thought it would be a good idea to list a few bars to go to and find out a little more information on places to go each night and what they have to offer. I look forward to adding more to the article especially after I come back from Spring Break to give more first hand information on helpful advice while on a vacation to Cancun, Mexico.

Tricia's Study Abroad Wikipeida

I just read Tricia's blog post about her edit on wikipedia about study abroad at the University of Delaware. I think this is a great article to edit and add more information to. Last winter, I studied abroad in Europe with the business program and absolutely loved it. It was the best experience I have ever had. My group was awesome and I learned so much. We traveled all over Europe: Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Italy. I wished I could have stayed in each country longer, but it was still an experience of a lifetime. I tell everyone I talk to that study abroad is a great advantage that the University offers and to go on any of the programs if they are able to. The more students and others read and know about study abroad the better. This is definitely a good wikipedia article to bring to more students attention.

Mainstream Media

As I was searching through some of the new articles I have no read yet on my feed, I came across an interesting one about an upcoming conference in New York City regarding blogging in the business world. It is called Penelope Trunk On How To Connect To Mainstream Media. Penelope Trunk will be talking at the only conference that focuses on women bloggers. I think that is a very fun and interesting idea, especially in the world today more and more women are top executives and have a real presence in corporate America. Penelope will speak about many helpful topics for bloggers in the business world. Her first piece of advice is to use a blog to market yourself. It is the best way to let people see who you are. Also to get noticed link to the persons blog you want to notice you. If you want a journalist to write an article about or mentioning you, link right to their blog or post on their blog. I think this will be a veryinteresting conference and Penelope Trunk seems to have a lot of advice to give new bloggers in business.

Comments on Ashleys Blog

As I was browsing through all my teammates blogs, I came across an article that Ashley blogged about. It was about a 22 year old boy that voiced his opinion about certain topics on his blog and was sentenced to jail for it. He will spend 4 years in jail for expressing how he felt on his own personal blog and his punishments were this severs. I agree with Ashley that we as Americans do not realize how good we have it. We all have started blogs in this class and it is just another form of our freedom of speech and freedom in general to be able to express ourselves in any way we feel appropriate. Hopefully, these countries will be able to move forward in the rights they give their citizens in the future. To read more about this incident go here, or to hear what Ashley said here.

Modern Marketing Techniques

As I was browsing through the articles under my required blogs I came across a few I felt were very interesting. One article under Modern Marketing called Upping the Hackability presented an innovative marketing concept that I was unaware had been done. It talked about how two different companies invented products that instead of the same old boring marketing techniques used a different witty approach to get their message across to consumers, in order to promote open source software. The Open-Cola company invented a can of soda that wasn't Coke or Pepsi, but a generic cola that people could alter and change and make into their own soda. There were recipes online and the only guidelines were that if you changed the recipe or ingredients you needed to update it online using the open source software. Another company introduced a product called Free Beer with the same idea of getting more people involved in the open source technique on the web. People could find the ingredients and process of how to make beer online as long as they contributed their views and any changes they wanted to make to the website. Both of these products have nothing to do with soda or beer, instead they are being used as underlying tactics to promote open sourcing. I thought that in a world where marketing is key to any business this was a new and unique way to get the open sourcing idea spread.

First Wikipedia Edit

I made my first Wikipedia edit on the article about the Rockaway Townsquare Mall. This is the mall that I shop at when I am at home in New Jersey. There is still much more I can expand on that Wikipedia has not included so far, but for now I added just a small piece of information. I wrote a little about the group that owns the mall and the visa gift card they offer for customers to purchase. My edit is here under Expansion.

Second Introductory Post

This blog is a project for Buad477. I think this is going to be a very interactive and informational class that will benefit everyone. I am a senior marketing and finance major and am looking forward to learning how to use blogging in the real world. Information technology is becoming more mainstream and in the future will be vital to every business. This is just the beginning of the learning curve, but to learn how to set up your own blog accounts go to Buad477.

I am still trying to figure out how to show on the class website that I subscribed to blogger and bloglines, but looks like this could be fun! In the meantime, I am going to waste some of my time here.

Test first blog!