I took the Vals survey and found that my primary VALS type is experiencer, and my secondary type is innovator. It says that experiencers are motivated by self-expression. As young, enthusiastic, and impulsive consumers, Experiencers quickly become enthusiastic about new possibilities but are equally quick to cool. They seek variety and excitement, savoring the new, the offbeat, and the risky. Their energy finds an outlet in exercise, sports, outdoor recreation, and social activities.Experiencers are avid consumers and spend a comparatively high proportion of their income on fashion, entertainment, and socializing. Their purchases reflect the emphasis they place on looking good and having "cool" stuff. Innovators are successful, sophisticated, take-charge people with high self-esteem. Because they have such abundant resources, they exhibit all three primary motivations in varying degrees. They are change leaders and are the most receptive to new ideas and technologies. Innovators are very active consumers, and their purchases reflect cultivated tastes for upscale, niche products and services.Image is important to Innovators, not as evidence of status or power but as an expression of their taste, independence, and personality. Innovators are among the established and emerging leaders in business and government, yet they continue to seek challenges. Their lives are characterized by variety. Their possessions and recreation reflect a cultivated taste for the finer things in life.

I think that the results are interesting and sort of true, but I wonder how they use this info in marketing.

Wiki Edit

Ok I just made a huge edit to the Rent page on Wikipedia. There was a lot of incorrect information in the summary of the play, and I just worked on Act 1 as a start. I changed the order of some of the events that were sequenced incorrectly, and I added some parts that were left out. Since it took me so long to do and I made such a big edit, I only started with Act 1 for now, but I will edit Act 2 soon.

Wikipedia Edit

I made my first wikipedia edit on the Wantagh page. I added that Jones Beach is located in Wantagh; I was surprised to see that it wasn't already included since the beach is probably the only thing that makes Wantagh exciting. Is that enough of an edit, or should we be adding a lot of information every time?

E-mails

In my e-mail yesterday, I receieved 2 pieces of mail that are examples of things we have been learning in class. The first e-mail was from amazon.com, where I ordered the required books from for this class. Well, they must have used cookies to get information about me because they sent me an e-mail suggesting other books that I might be interested in, and this was their list:

• 
  The Google Story by David Vise, Mark Malseed

• 

Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright

I thought that was pretty funny since these books were required for class and not necessarily something that I would be interested in, but how would Amazon be able to know that just from cookies?

The second e-mail was a fishing e-mail. I was at work when my friend sitting next to me was like, "Oh no!! Someone got my Chase credit card account number and has been using my acount!" Of course I knew right away that it must have been from a hacker fishing, but she was so convinced that it was real because of the letterhead and the links that they provided. It was only until I opened my e-mail and saw that I received an identical message that she finally believed me that it couldn't be legit. This is what it looked like:

This is the reason why I find this class so interesting: the topics we learn about are real and applicable to our everyday lives. I hope those were good examples of using cookies and fishing, if not someone correct me!

Wikipedia Edit

I made another Wikipedia edit today!! I added Hollywood Video's mission statement to the Movie Gallery Entry. I'm just a dork and have it memorized after working there for 3 years, but I was surprised that it wasn't on there already.

Last week's Skype guest speaker

Last Wednesday in class we listened to a guest speaker, David Brown of Perfiliate, through a Skype call. Before this class, I'd never heard of Skype before. The only voice over internet service I remember was something called Dial Pad, which in the late 90's - early 2000's, was a free service for anyone to use. It was surprisingly easy for a high schooler to create an account and make prank calls to California (...not that I would ever do that!). Listening to David speak in class, I was surprised at how clear the Skype call sounded; if I hadn't known, I'd have thought David was standing at the front of the room with Professor Brown.

David talked a bit about his company and pay per click advertising, but I found it most interesting what he had to say about security on the internet. He informed us that half of all computers have some form of spyware installed. Most of this spyware originates from Peer to Peer programs, such as Kazaa, that collect information about where you surf on the internet. This information is then sold off to other companies for research or other purposes. Hearing this information got me thinking about illegal file sharing programs like Kazaa. I wonder why there isn't a peer to peer program that could offer legal and free music downloads funded by advertising similar to Google. Google makes billions of dollars a year through their ads, why couldn't a file sharing program work the same way? I wonder if anyone has ever thought of that. I'm sure there must be more to it, but wouldn't it make sense to pay either individual artists or record labels through advertising money generated? I know I would put up with a screen full of ads if I could download music for free. Does anyone know if this concept has ever been tested?