Web 3.0 Article Response

The article focused on how web 3.0 will play an even bigger role in our ever day lives than the web does now. This is hard to believe, but the article explains that the web will be intelligent. It will have a consciousness almost because it will have a brain of sorts. The web is headed in a direction that will allow it to think for itself in our best interests. It will be able to connect even more to our lives and memorize what our habitual web behavior is so that it can better understand what and why we are searching for. It is scary to think that the web will have a consciousness, but I agree that the web is a whole new window of opportunity for connections as the article describes.

The Next 5,000 Days on the Web Response

"There is only One machine. The web is its OS. All screens look into the One. No bits will live outside the web. To share is to gain. Let the One read it. The One is us." This is how Kevin Kelly ends his speech about where the web has been and where it is headed. He refers to how when Web 1.0 was the standard, society thought that its successor was just going to be the TV but better. We were wrong. He says that now people believe it is just going to be more wikis and more user-generated content and more of whatever has been characterized as Web 2.0 features. However, Kevin Kelly explains that the next 5,000 days on the web are not headed for that future at all. Rather, the web will begin to take on a life and consciousness of its own.

As of now, people use the web to connect to sources of information. Kelly is saying that we should open ourselves up to the fact that the web may be heading in a direction where information will be connected by even more portals. He describes the internet as the greatest machine. He mentions that our cell phones are starting and soon will be completely connected to the internet. Microsoft Word is handled offline, but if Kelly is right then all of these sources and portals of information will be on the web in no time.

Web 3.0 may be heading to a world where each individual is completely transparent, which could be very dangerous. Not only would we be releasing and creating information available to everyone, but we would be allowing the web to memorize our patterns of behavior. In this new web style, the internet will have an understanding of who we are. Rather than just completing fulfilling search demands, the internet will be able to access search history and other information to understand what and why we are searching for. A good example of this is Nabaztag, the ubiquitous computing technology I described in my midterm paper.

Visual Component of Midterm -- Product Logos

This logo was made for Nabaztag through using both Photoshop and Illustrator. I edited the pictures that I got off of the web in Photoshop, deleting the backgrounds, cropping, and adjusting the color, while I used Illustrator for the text and the vector. I came up with the catch phrase that I would use to market Nabaztag, "Connect to Life", because I thought it described the product pretty well. The pictures that I chose were pretty obvious to me: a picture of the product itself along with a computer that it is connected to (because that's what it does in reality).











This logo to the right is for the technology called brain fingerprinting. Again, I used both Photoshop and Illustrator for this. I used Photoshop to edit the pictures, de-saturating the brain of its color, deleting each picture's background, and then later cropping the final .gif picture of the extra canvas space. Illustrator was mainly used for the paths, text, and shapes. I thought that this logo fit the type of marketing that this technology needed because it describes what it is with simply two pictures.


Please comment on this post if you could so that I know how I did. Thanks!

midterm visual component proposal

Since I completed project 1, which included the discussion of upcoming, innovative products, I am (obviously) choosing to make logos for a few of the products that I talked about for the visual component of this project. The logos will be a visual description of what the product does.

I plan to utilize both Illustrator and Photoshop. In Illustrator I will be using the obvious shape tools as well as using text and pathfinders. In Photoshop I will use layers as well as the color and contrast adjustment tools.

I envision my visual components incorporating both text and picture. I do not know exactly what I am going to do yet, but I can see the logos portraying the products' innovativeness.

midterm paper

Sorry, I brought a printed out version to class (which was then canceled). I forgot that it was supposed to be on our blogs.



Brianna Horiuchi
March 22, 2010
Professor Jacobsen
Media Literacy

Our World of Persuasion

We live in a world of advertising and yet advertising companies are having trouble getting through to us. If we live and breathe advertisements, why is this the case? All of this advertising has created clutter, so much so that advertisers are struggling to break through. So what is the solution? There is no one solution to successful advertising, however there are a few techniques that I believe are the best chances of persuading today’s consumers. New product ideas that are currently in the process of becoming realities will soon need to be marketed, and I believe that these techniques will be the answer. These methods of advertising are nothing new, but narrowcasting, branding, and product placement can be successful with the right balance being determined for each specific product.
Whether they are ready to be released into the world or are still in the process of being created, innovative technological products will soon need to be marketed to the public. Because they are new technologies, the advertising method will be crucial to how much success these products achieve. Ubiquitous computing, for example, is becoming a reality as we speak. It connects every moment in our lives to the internet. Nabaztag is an example of this technology being put to use in our homes; common everyday objects can download information from the internet. We can be verbally notified about an e-mail or someone’s Facebook status that we program it to follow.
Another upcoming technology is the microrobotic fly; if this model does what it is supposed to, it will revolutionize search and rescue. Its purpose is to be able to fly into the small crevices between the rubble that is the result of some sort of disaster like, say, an earthquake. Its sensor can search for movement or heat or some other indicator of a human body.
Cleverbot is a new form of artificial intelligence that is supposed to be able to not only relay information and hold a conversation, but also borrows from each conversation it had to better the current one. Since this product is open to the general public, I was able to actually try this one out for my experimental purposes. I found that it does not change its answers for similar types of questions. On two accounts I asked, “What should I wear today?” and its response was the same both times. I held two different conversations with my Cleverbot, one of which made no sense while the other was very responsive. The first went something like this:
User: What should I wear today?
Cleverbot: George Segal.
User: Huh?
Cleverbot: Latin America.
User: I am asking what I should wear today?
Cleverbot: What do you want to do?
User: What do you mean? I am asking you what to wear to the party?
Cleverbot: I already told you what I think the meaning of life is.
User: How old is Jennifer Aniston?
Cleverbot: Cry.

In the second conversation, I tried to keep the conversation casual and simple without asking it to relay any facts or opinions. It went a lot more smoothly:

User: How are you doing today?
Cleverbot: I'm great! How about you?
User: Not good. I am crying.
Cleverbot: What is wrong?
User: My boyfriend broke up with me.
Cleverbot: That's just sad. Slap him!

These two conversations went completely different; the first made me believe that this avatar site did not work at all, but the truth was that it just does not work as it is supposed to.
The last and possibly most important technological innovation here is the revolutionized lie detector: brain fingerprinting. This process will help put criminals in jail and prove the wrongly accused to be innocent. Criminals can lie all they want, but this system uses information, specifically memories, from their brains. Whether they admit to committing the crime or not, the criminals’ will give forth evidence of the act whether they mean to or not. All of these new technological innovations are either coming soon or have already been introduced to the public and need advertising assistance.
So what advertising techniques are lingering in the world but maybe not being put to the right use? The first possibility is narrowcasting. This technique targets a specific group of people rather than the general public, but how does one decide which group of people to focus on? Knowing who the prospective consumer of the product is gives the company a great advantage to help advertise to the right demographic. Advertising is pointless and a waste of money if it is reaching out to the wrong audience. Say we are trying to sell Range Rovers; we are not going to air a commercial for them on Nick Jr. Now say we are trying to sell a certain brand of golf clubs; our first-priority audience would be the golfing community, so we might scatter our ads on various country clubs’ golf courses. Narrowcasting helps market the product or service to the right consumers.
Another approach to think about when advertising is branding. This involves creating a culture around your product that makes it appealing to the consumer. A Mac, for example, is much “cooler” than a PC because they have created that type of aura to surround them as a result of their sleek and modern designs along with their advertising. They portray the Mac as a young, good looking, “cool” guy while the representative of the PC is an old, overweight, nerdy guy. This is a successful example of branding a company, while Song seemed to me to fail miserably. Watching the launch of Song, a branch of Delta Airlines, in The Persuaders was pretty funny to me because they, in my eyes, completely missed the point. They tried so hard to create this culture around the product that they forgot to mention what they were selling. Now I know that they did not forget to mention it and that it was their choice to leave it out of their advertisements, but the old man who walked into a Song information center still did not even know what the product actually was. How could it have actually been considered successful when people do not even know what they are being sold? This is a perfect example of how the perfect marketing strategy needs to consist of the perfect balance in order to be successful.
Product placement is another method of marketing a product. This puts the product out there in society so that it becomes a part of life rather than an advertisement. Product placement is used greatly within the movie industry. In fact, a Sex and the City episode, an entire episode, was created just so that Absolut Vodka could advertise its product on the show. Viewers thought that they were just watching another 30-minute episode of Sex and the City, but in reality they were watching a 30-minute advertisement. This is a genius technique for marketing a product; this example shows exactly how product placement should work. It becomes a part of society, a part of culture, without the public actually even consciously realizing it. The idea of advertising in Second Life supposedly never took off, so this method of product placement, marketing real-life products in a virtual world, was a failure. However, what if instead of advertising in the virtual reality of Second Life, the products had been advertised in a different virtual reality like the computer game called Sims. This game is not only much more popular, but it is also not used for business. Techniques for marketing a product do not have to be new and innovative like the product itself, but maybe the already used techniques need to be utilized in a different way.
So then how do we take these techniques and use them to market the new technological innovations? Applying these techniques to create advertising success requires balance. For example, brain fingerprinting is a product that should not be advertised on TV commercials or strategically placed in motion pictures. The target audience for this particular product is the people of the criminal justice system. They are the ones that will be using it, and therefore they are the ones that need to be warmed up to the idea of using the contents of criminals’ brains as evidence. On the other hand, a product like Nabaztag can and should be introduced to the general public. Anyone who has a busy life should be made aware of this product – so basically every American over 13 years old. Now that the company knows who to advertise to, it needs to know where to advertise it. Product placement is essential for this product unlike brain fingerprinting because of the predicted typical consumers. Since the predicted consumer for Nabaztag is the general public, it can and should be snuck into episodes of TV shows and scenes in movies. The last step of advertisement of this product is to create a “cool” culture about the product. This, along with the other aspects, is crucial to its advertisement success. Branding this product will be most beneficial if it took place in the commercials aired on television.
The advertising industry is struggling to stay above water; companies are searching for the new strategy to “break through the clutter.” But in reality, it is not a completely new technique that is needed, but rather a revamping of the old techniques. Balancing the methods of advertising is the true answer to how new and innovative technological products need to be marketed in order to be welcomed into the everyday life of today’s consumers.




Outline (does not count as a page of the paper... just so you can follow my train of thought)
Intro
New Innovative Technologies
Ubiquitous Computing
Nabaztag
Microrobotic Fly
Cleverbot
Research this – try it out so I can really have an opinion
Brain Fingerprinting
Advertising Techniques
Narrowcasting
Branding
Product Placement
How the Techniques can be applied to advertise the Mentioned Products
Brain Fingerprinting
Narrowcasting – criminal justice system
No product placement
No branding
Nabaztag
Narrowcasting – general public
Product placement – movies and TV shows
Branding – “cool” and modern culture
Conclusion

adobe illustrator assignment

original...

my illustrator version...

midterm proposal

Project 1: Future Techniques of Persuasion

I am a business administration major with a concentration in marketing and minor in advertising, so I thought that this project really spoke to me in terms of my interests. I plan to use the website that you have provided and pick a few of the products that have not yet become popular and create my own marketing techniques using what we have learned in class from "The Persuaders." I plan on doing research on some of the big advertisement firms and see how they market their products and try to bring these products from the videos to society.

"The Persuaders" Questions/Responses

What in "The Persuaders" surprised you (or not)? Name one new thing you learned about marketing or politics from watching the film. Name one new thing you learned about yourself from watching the film, or one thing that the film reiterated about yourself.

To be quite honest, a lot surprised me from “The Persuaders.” Being new to the world of marketing and advertising, I am only aware of the obvious methods of advertising like commercials and billboards and magazine ads. I knew that product placement existed as well, but I was surprised to hear that advertising companies go so far as to scope out movies and TV shows before they are even developed. The “Sex and the City” example that showed how “Absolut” had HBO create an entire episode that revolved around an advertising scheme. It is incredible how “Absolut” did not only plan to advertise their product on the hit TV series, but they planned to create an episode for this product. That, to me, was surprising and genius. It works out for both parties in the deal, so how can they afford to say no? Moving to another point, I think that companies that try to surround their product and/or brand with a certain culture and attitude are on the right track. However, I also believe that, especially in the case of Delta Airlines’s branch called “Song,” companies focus too much on creating that spirit and forget about the simple advertisement. In this instance, the advertisements for “Song” directed the consumers’ attention to how the company was harmonious and could relate to women’s needs and forgot to mention what exactly they were advertising – an airline. The man that was talking to a representative at a “Song” information store had no idea what the company was exactly. Isn’t the whole purpose of advertising/marketing to tell the consumer not only why they should buy the product, but also what the product is they are buying?

If there was one thing I learned from this documentary on marketing techniques of the modern age, it is how susceptible I am to the advertising schemes in society. This response, for me, kind of also flows into the next question, so see that answer as well. But basically, advertising is all around me and sometimes I am not even aware that I am falling into an advertising trap. The diversity and abundance of methods of marketing have become so integrated into society that sometimes only our subconscious is noticing them, which is not a bad thing because then we end up buying the product due to the fact that it was still instilled in our minds.

"The Persuaders" begins by questioning the increase in the amount of advertising we typically encounter in our daily lives. How would you assess the amount of advertising you see? Too much? Too little? Just right? In your view, what difference does it make to know that people today see much more advertising in their daily lives than people 20 or 30 years ago?

I agree that advertising is literally everywhere, even though we may not be aware of it. We are even being advertised to in our own home. Companies will do almost anything to get us to think about their product. If evaluating the amount of advertising we see in our everyday lives, I would definitely not say it is too little. Many people would say that there is too much advertising today solely because there is much more than there was 20 or 30 years ago. However, I think that companies are just trying to keep up with the technology and the new opportunities they are given. This does not necessarily mean that there is not too much of it though. Let’s just say that I lie somewhere between too much and just right. Society does not oppose or prohibit the amount of advertising going on today; in fact we succumb to it. The high exposure that we have to advertising really does have an influence on the way that we see a product or a brand. I do not think that the fact that we have more marketing techniques and are being exposed to many more ads everyday than the people were of 20 or 30 years ago really makes much of a difference. Like I said, companies are trying to not fall behind in terms of the technological opportunities they have today. Advertisers of 20 or 30 years ago did not have the chance to advertise on websites or Facebook. I think that advertising has just progressed along with technology.

Digital Nation (part II)

These segments of Digital Nation showed aspects of technology that I did not know even existed. What was most surprising to me was the "Second Life" program that could have the potential of being integrated into the business world.
The program is basically a grown-up version of the “Sims” gaming series. The avatars in the “Second Life” program allow business companies to cut the cost of flying their employees to, say, Beijing for a business meeting or negotiation. It is astonishing that someone from Hong Kong can have a formal-attire business meeting with an employee from Australia, England, India, and the United States all from the comfort of his/her own home while sitting in the kitchen in his/her pajamas. I can see why this would be very beneficial to the companies as well as their employees, and I think that it is great that big companies like IBM are finding creative ways to utilize the technology that is available to them. It just came as such a shock to me that technology has really come this far. I think that this part of the video was a sort of reality shock for me because I had never actually took the time become aware of all the different technologies are involved in my everyday life that was not here say 50 or so years ago – TV, internet, cell phone, iPod, GPS, computer games, video games, etc. If I had realized that I as an individual was so in tune with technology, maybe I could have imagined what was available to big companies like IBM and seen something like this coming. It is unfortunate that employee teamwork may no longer be face-to-face and that people at a business meeting may never actually meet the others, but this does not mean that this form of technology is bad. This “Second Life” program may have the opportunity to revolutionize the business world, and its impacts will be great.

Another point I wanted to make concerned the segment about teaching through technology. I believe that teachers hit the nail on the head when they recognize that students today do not learn in the same manner as kids did a decade or two or three ago. It is not that our generation is a dumb generation, but rather that we have been introduced to new potential distractions need to be lured to learning with a method of teaching other than just the traditional lecture. I agree with Katie Salen (from the video) when she says that video games can have the same potential as books when used correctly. The internet is a great thing, and I fully support integrating it into the school curricula more than it has been in the past. I think that people stigmatize the technology of the internet and video games because they are afraid that we will not be able to control it. That should not be a concern if we add technology education and utilization of educational video games to the curriculum from the very beginning of one’s education. For now, I side myself with those who believe that the internet and video games and other forms of technology have a positive effect on society.

Group Work (in class)

1. Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

We don't think media production will stoop down to individual productions. There will always be movies that have this strategy such as (Paranormal Activity, Blare Witch or Clover Field), however, it will never take over all media. It will never be the main way of making movies. We believe it's just another way to convince the audience to buy a product or service, as well as intriguing people to watch movies and television.

2.
Find a news article and write down tags you would use to define what the article is about. Now goto Digg or another tagging site and see how others have tagged it. What did you learn from the differences or similarities in tagging?
New York Times article
Live Analysis; United States versus Canada

Tags: Olympics, Hockey, Sports, Canadian Upset, US, Canada, Sport's Media, Men's Hockey
Digg: Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, hockey, Jaromir Jagr, Men's hockey, Mike Babcock, ron wilson, Russia, Sidney Crosby, Sweden, United States.

The Digg website consisted of more specific details than our tags. We focused more on the sport and the different aspects of hockey, instead of the Olympics in general.

3.Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?

It is important for transparency to be involved in the Social Media world because its what sustain the whole social media or user generated world. If people weren't ready to expose themselves on Facebook or Twitter, than those types of social media would be non-existent. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube rely on people to express themselves and their opinions. If people slowly stopped being transparent then the social media would feel the "domino effect" and eventually fail. As a group, we believe that is just as important to be transparent online as well as offline. Being transparent online allows you to express and connect yourself to multiple people at a time. However, having transparency offline allows more personal interaction as well as creates a more personal relationship. Overall, we think that people have a tendency to be more transparent online than offline. However, we think that there is no distinct reason for transparency to be more important than one another.

Digital Nation (part 1)

Being the first generation to truly be brought up surrounded by innovative technology, we hear about problems like internet addiction and distraction due to the influence of the media. Throughout our schooling we have been told to keep our cell phones away and stay off the internet. In our homes, our parents are constantly getting frustrated with us because of our constant texting and talking on Skype or Oovoo or even on the phone. Our generation tends to be attracted to the idea of being constantly distracted by social networking devices. The video that we viewed in class takes on the task of trying to raise awareness of the damaging affect that this technology and new way of life even is having on society and on our health.

The question is though what types of addictions and distractions are seen in everyday life. Online video games. This phenomenon has become a sensational hobby among many teenagers, especially in males. The concept of online video games is fun all in itself because it is interactive and thoroughly engaging. People could argue that other hobbies are just as addictive, but internet games draw people in with their variety. There are adventure games, puzzles, multiplayer, sports, arcade, and shooting games. The list hardly ends there! The internet video game obsession is spreading, taking up hours and hours of peoples' days. It can get in the way of school work or even a social life. Some gamers ditch the real-world life for the social world that they find on these internet games. I think that that is what the video was trying to warn us about.

My collage describes the web 2.0 concept of cell phones. In the lower left-hand corner there are two "ancient" cell phones, in the upper-right hand corner there are two cell phones that are still around today, and in the center there are two phones that are the most innovative of our time. These three divisions show how this technology has evolved from being solely a telephone to a device that contains the ability to call, text, access the web, calendar, calculator, music, video clips, GPS, etc. This technology has changed how society chooses to communicate with one another.

web 2.0 terms/definitions

user-generated content: (AKA consumer-generated media) web content created or uploaded by the general public; this blog is an example of user-generated content

long tail: selling a product that is plentiful in smaller quantities at a time in order to sell more; also not selling as many popular products in large quantities

web operating services: (AKA webOS) describes network services for large scale distributed computing

folksonomy: (AKA collaborative content) system of classification involving collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content

web syndication: making website content available and updated on other/multiple sites

mass collaboration: form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work on an individual project

computer-supported collaboration: research of technology that affects groups, organizations, communities, societies, etc.

social software: range of softwares that allow users to interact with one another and share data

hosted services: allows individuals and organizations to create and publish their own website to the world wide web

web application: application accessed via a web browser

video-sharing sites: websites where users can upload and distribute their video clips

wiki: website that allows for easy creation and editing of multiple interlinked web pages via a web browser

blog: type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other content such as graphics or video that users can follow

mashups: web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service


*wikipedia was used for information about each term*

my three main mediums of communication

Video chats have become popular because of the great fact that you can see someone in China from New York and not only talk to them but see them. It uses digital audio, digital video, images, and text/language. It has been a very convenient method of communication.



Even e-mail is sometimes seen as archaic and out of date by younger people now, but is still used in everyday life (especially by students). It connects people all over the world using text and images. It really hurt the postal services because people chose to generate free e-mails that can go anywhere in the world over having to make a trip to the post office to send a simple letter. Keeping in touch with someone was made much easier by using e-mail.




Cell phones have evolved to be compact multi-tasking machines so that you can use it for many other things other than talking on the phone. They are now MP3 players, text messaging maniacs, store locators, dictionaries, calendars, calculators, and more. They now connect people to not only other people but to the internet as well... which gives them all the information known to man in the palm of their hand. It uses digital audio, images, and text/language.