Jimmy's Blog

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Lindsey's Posting on Ads

I read my team mate Lindsey's posting on ad's being everywhere and fully agree with her. It is crazy today how much of our media is used as ad space, and it seems as if it is constantly increasing. I agree with Lindsey on the fact that it is more important for a company to try to find new ways to promote their products rather then just finding a new place to stick their ads. People are already using DVRs to eliminate watching commercials and popup blockers to eliminate these ads, so putting them somewhere else will not help. If anything it will just cause people to find new ways to block out the ads.

Friday, May 12, 2006

Summary of East Coast Surfing

Because there wasn't an article on east coast surfing I decided to create one. I never thought that it would be that popular of a page but there have been a few people who have added to it. The first edit that I made was actually creating the site and adding some surf spots that I have surfed at or have heard about along the east coast. I also added a picture I took at my beach back home during an amazing day of surf. For my second edit to this article I added a few more surf spots as well as a few of the local surf shops on Long Island. For the third edit I rewrote some of the introduction, added a popular surf forecasting link, and added a few pro surfers who grew up on the east coast.
I think that I had a good impact on the community. I thought it would just be me creating the article but a few others have actually added some of their own surf spots which is kind of cool.

Step Into Liquid Summary

I decided to edit the Step Into Liquid article on Wikipedia because I have loved this movie ever since I first saw it a few years ago. When I first started editing the article there really wasn't any information, so I had a lot of material to work with. The first edit that I made to the article was that I added a little information to the introduction of the article and some quotes about the movie that were on the front and back of the DVD. The second edit I made was reformatting the site and adding an IMDB profile. The third edit that I made was adding a section that included the features that are on the DVD. The special features are actually pretty cool on this DVD and has a bunch of stuff to keep you occupied.
I feel that the edits I made had a good impact on the community. Because it is a small community that watches this article I haven't really seen any reactions to my edits yet.

Summary of Wikipedia article on Surfing

The surfing article on wikipedia was probably the article that I was most looking foreword to editing. For my first edit I decided to add some surf spots to the section on popular surfing areas. Its a huge misconception that the east coast doesn't get good waves so I thought I would add some spots that I know are amazing surf spots. For my second edit I decided to add some more movies to the list. The article already had a good amount of movies listed but lacked a lot of newer movies which I thought should be added. For the third edit I added a few more surf movies and created a new section for forecasting links.
Because my edits are still present on the page I feel that I did help the community grow. The information that I added helped create new sections of the page in which others later posted their own information.

Jack Johnson Wikipedia Summary

One of the 4 articles I chose to edit for my wikipedia product was an article on Jack Johnson. I decided to edit the article on Jack Johnson because he is one of my favorite musicians and I am a huge fan of his movies. For my first edit to the article, I added some information about the surf movies that Jack Johnson has made. That was pretty much the one thing that the article lacked. When I went to make my second edit, I was still having a hard time trying to find information to add. I decided to expand on my previous posting about his surf movies and to reformat it to include pictures like had been done for the cd's in the above section. For my third edit to the article I did a little research and was able to find some information that the article was lacking.
Overall, I think that I added a good deal of information to the community. Before I had made my edits there was very little information about Jack Johnsons film career. Most of my edits seem to have remained except someone did take the pictures of the DVD covers off.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Search Engine Optimization

For the past few classes we have been learning about the 4 p's and most recently have learned about the promotion aspect. I feel that most interesting feature of promotion is search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is interesting because it involves trying to find ways to create google juice and make your site rank higher in a search result. Until we started learning about the different ways to perform search engine optimization, I did not think that it would be so easy to increase your ranking in search. Even a change as simple as change as adding some text to the title of your web page can help improve the ranking but providing more words that search engines can associate your site with.

Webshots Targets Collegiates With Community Site

I was just looking over my bloglines account and found an older article that was posted by ClickZ. The article is about how Webshots has developed CollegeLive, a program which is only available to college students. From what I can tell it seems like it is pretty similar to the facebook. Their site will aim to create an environment for its members to interact much like the facebook does and will offer social planning tools that will allows its sponsors and its users to promote events.
I am interested to see how this company plans to survive in a market that is already so defined. Because of its late start I feel that it is questionable that they will survive. Sites like the Facebook and Myspace are already so developed and have such a following that I feel it would be hard for a company to come how take their market share.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

East Coast Surfing edit

For my 3rd edit to the article on East Coast Surfing on wikipedia i decided to add a little to each aspect of the article. The first edit I did was rewrite the introduction section and add a little more information to it. I also decided to add a few surf spots that i have heard of or surfed at, as well as adding a link to Surfline which is a very important information source in regards to travel and swell updates.

3rd edit to Jack Johnson article

Its getting pretty hard to add information to the wikipedia article on Jack Johnson because it contains most of the information that I know about Jack Johnson and about his musical career. I just decided to add some information that I found on his web site to the section on his biography. The facts that I added basically contains information on where he was born and who his musical influences are.

Step Into Liquid edit

I just made my 3rd edit to the wikipedia page on the surf movie Step Into Liquid. For this edit I decided to add a section to the article on the special features that the DVD offers. When I bought the DVD I was surprised that it had a ton of special features that are actually informative and interesting. One disc actually has a surfing computer game on it, as well as an interactive program in which Robert August instructs the viewer which surfboard would be the best for them to ride.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

DealCatcher.com

I thought that the guys from dealcatcher.com gave a really interesting presentation in class the other day. It was really interesting to hear how they stated in a bedroom buying server space for $8.00 a month to a company that generates millions of dollars in income for a bunch of different companies. I had never heard of deal catcher until the presentation but was some what surprised when i heard the purpose of the web site. It was hard to imagine that a site that basically functioned as a massive referrer to other sites could be that profitable. I also found it interesting that their company spent relatively nothing on advertising and spread solely on word of mouth.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

"Da Vinci Code Promo Breaks New Marketing Ground for Google"


ClickZ recently posted an article entitled "Da Vinci Code Promo Breaks New Marketing Ground for Google." The article basically explains how Google is working with Columbia Pictures to create a contest that will promote the release of their new movie The Da Vinci Code. The program that Google has created will promote the movie by releasing a new puzzle on their users home pages every day for 24 days. After the 24 days have passed and all of the puzzles have been released, the first 10,000 people to complete the 24 different puzzles will be eligible to participate in a 48 hour challenge in which they can win one of several prizes.
I think this is a great promotional idea for the Da Vinci Code, because it relies on the principles of buzz marketing. I think that a lot of people will take interest in this game because it is another way to promote an already highly anticipated movie based on a best selling book.
I checked out the site and it seems pretty interesting. If anyone wants to check it out for themselves just go here and create a name and password for google if you don't already have one.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Surfing 3rd Edit

For this edit to the surfing article on wikipedia i edited a few different sections. The first edit that i made was deleting a link for the new movie The Benchwarmers from the list of surf movies for obvious reasons, and added an actual surf movie that i recently watched and thought was very good. It is pretty cool how wikipedia allows people to go in and edit others postings and how it relies on its users to maintain a code of ediquate.
The other section that i edited was that i made a new section in the article titled forecasting links. I also added some of my own links and moved some other links from other spots in the article to this new section.

Step Into Liquid

For my 2nd edit to the Step Into Liquid page, I decided to reformat the page to make it easier to read the information. The main aspect that I reformatted was the large image of the DVD cover on the right side of the page. I felt it was taking up too much space and decided to shrink it down and put it inside of an information box. The information box that I made contains information as to who directed and produced the movie.
As a side note, I found this triva fact on IMDB that says the record as to the biggest wave ever ridden has been broken. I though that this was interesting because this scene is one of the most impressive scenes in the entire movie and really leaves the audience in shock.
  • The 66-foot wave ridden by Mike Parsons at the Cortez Bank is believed to have been the largest wave ever surfed at the time the movie was released. It has since been surpassed by a 70-foot wave ridden by Pete Cabrinha in 2004 at Peahi in Hawaii.

East Coast Surfing

I noticed that when I went to make my 2nd post in the article East Coast Surfing, I noticed that other people had started to edit the page as well. It''s pretty cool that I was able to start this page and hope that over time it develops into something that can be very informative for people looking to learn about surfing on the East Coast. For my 2nd edit, I decided to add a few more surf spots in New Jersey that I have surfed at along with some of my local surf shops on Long Island. I hope that people continue to give their input and help develop the article.

Jack Johnson 2nd posting

I just made my 2nd posting to the wikipedia article on Jack Johnson. It is hard to add a lot of new information because the article is very informative and contains a lot of information about Jack Johnson's life and music career. I decided to expand and reformat the information that I had previously posted. I decided to add pictures of the DVD covers of the movies, that Jack Johnson and the rest of the Moonshine Conspiracy and Woodshed Films crews have created, so that it would resemble the format used above to showcase his cds.
I thought that this would be a good addition to the article because it should make more people aware of the films that Jack Johnson has made.