If you haven't heard . . .

If you haven't heard, Prince William will marry Catherine Middleton on Friday (cue various "Friday" jokes) at 11 a.m. at Westminster Abbey in London, England.

Since their engagement, media has been all a-buzz with royal reports from Kate's wedding dress designer to famous and not so famous invitees.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the royal wedding is not the event itself, but the world's infatuation with it. Prince Charles and Diana's wedding attracted an international audience of 750 million. Meanwhile, according to a "British official," the anticipated audience for Prince William and Kate's wedding is around 2 billion.

Numerous American reporters like Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira for The Today Show, Anderson Cooper for CNN, and Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters for ABC will be in London covering the event live. According to The Globe and Mail, an estimated 7,000 journalists are in London covering the wedding.

So, is it the thought of a "fairytale" wedding, or the sheer magnitude of the event that makes it so fascinating? Obviously, something about this is alluring and resonates with Brits and non-Brits alike.

More interesting is the fact it will be televised like Charles and Diana's. Considering the constant comprise of their privacy, you would think they would want to retain it for something so personal. Why not keep it an elite, intimate event?

Televising the wedding seems contradictory to their regular requests for privacy. So, is it just a big publicity stunt, allowing businesses to make money? Or is it legitimately news worthy and deserving of foreign media? What do you think?

As far as making money goes, the wedding has made them a commodity. Businesses have developed merchandise centered around the wedding. QVC is selling rings imitating what was once Princess Diana's oval sapphire engagement ring. Plates with Prince William and Kate's faces plastered on them are being sold and advertised on the Internet and TV.

So, what are your thoughts? Will you be watching? Share!

Tweeting Cops

With Twitter usage still growing, it’s no surprise that law enforcement has caught on. But what would a cop tweet? For some reason, I get mental image of an officer getting back in his car after a stop and Tweeting, “Got one doin 43 in a 40 LOL…quota filled! Celebrating with doughnuts.”

Hopefully not the case, but really, is it that far off? It seems LEA’s (Law Enforcement Agencies) in Great Britain have put Tweeting to use showing the citizens how much they really do in a day. Greater Manchester PD took a 24-hour period last October to Tweet every incident that they dealt with.

Here in the US, LEA’s use Twitter to send information on stolen cars (Seattle), and to share 911 calls with their followers (Denton, TX).

Could this use of technology be used to cast a bad light on those who are arrested and make them “guilty until proven innocent”? Certainly, but the regular news media generally does a good job of that. However, in this case, I believe it makes the activities and dealings of law enforcement more public and more transparent, something other areas of government should take note of.

http://digitallife.today.com/_news/2011/04/20/6501211-police-tweet-from-court-

The Royal Family's Biggest Secret

More than two hundred and thirty years after the American revolution there is still only one royal family that counts: the British Royal Family.

With all the hype over the upcoming wedding of the young British prince (despite polls showing that most Americans don’t care), you have to wonder how a family that should be an anachronism in the modern world has managed to keep going strong.

Jerry Seinfeld recently weighed in on the wedding declaring the royal family and the pageantry nothing but dress up.

Seinfeld is a great comedian, but he’s wrong about the royal family. If this was all about dress up and fantasy then they would have been finished long ago, just another footnote in the dustbin of history.

No. The royal family’s success is about as far from fantasy as you can get. It’s about hard work and consistency, the same kind of hard work and consistency that stands behind any great brand be it an enduring celebrity or a product like Coca Cola.

The recent Oscar-winning movie, "The King’s Speech," gives a pretty good idea of why the royal family has lasted. At the center of the story is the struggle of the would-be king to conquer a severe speech impediment in order to speak to his people –something made very urgent by the emergence of the radio.

What is never doubted is that this man would work hard to fix his stammer. But why should this not be doubted? After all, even at that time a British monarch didn’t really have genuine power. His brother, Edward, who was king for little over a year and then abdicated knew this. In Edward’s mind there didn’t seem to be a point in putting up with so much work and pressure for little in return.

Bottom line, the crown was and is all about service and duty. This virtue is the core characteristic of the brand. In a world where self-dealing and “what’s in it for me” is the general rule, this brand stands out as a kind of counter-example.

What has made the royal family such a force is its basic consistency when it comes to this core characteristic. Prince William’s grandmother, the current queen, who turned 85 on Thursday, has served since she was twenty-five years old. That' nearly sixty years. She hasn’t had one moment of a genuinely private life in all that time. Every public gesture, every word, every event she chooses to attend or not attend is scrutinized. She probably has one of the hardest jobs in the world and she has never wavered.

Sure there have been scandals and missteps but what the royal family has done right is stayed true to its core characteristic –like any great brand— and always snapped back to its main virtue of sacrifice. And like any great brand, when it has changed and adapted, it has done so carefully rather than recklessly, letting go of some of the royal conventions(i.e. not marrying commoners) but holding onto others (i.e., the ceremonial opening of parliament).

The strength of the royal family rests on this kind long-term consistency. As queen, Elizabeth’s mother refused to leave London during the blitz, putting herself at risk and endearing herself to the British people. 

The royal family has also endured as a result of responding to the needs of the times. Queen Victoria recognized that the rise of democracy meant that a British monarch must be a new kind of figure, a constitutional leader not an absolute one that had to actively appeal to the people. She found a way to make the royal family relevant. Her successors have built on this decision, giving Britain a stability that other countries without monarchs have lacked.

The result: it’s 2011 and we’re still talking about them. That is something that takes a lot more than play-acting and theatrics to achieve.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/22/royal-familys-biggest-secret/#ixzz1KUdHttuh

WOW & Real World Relationships

Now this is something I have never heard of - finding your soul mate on World of Warcraft.  The article I found entitled, “It’s Love at First Kill” focuses on some couples who met on World of Warcraft and ended up starting a relationship outside of the fantasy game.  Though at first this sounded really crazy to me, it started to make sense after I thought about it for a while.  The people who met on this fantasy game obviously already have one thing in common, they like to play online games.  

One thing I found very interesting that the article pointed out was that “WOW” has 12 million subscribers and that match.com only has 2 million subscribers.  In a way, this simulation game has a much bigger pool of people (though some of them are probably not single) to form and build relationships.  Another shocking statistic I found in the article is that, “More than 40% of online gamers are women”.  I had no idea that so many women played online games.  World of Warcraft seems like a great place for people to meet other gamers.  

I know people that have met on match.com and ended up marrying, but I have never heard of people meeting on World of Warcraft.  These couples fell in love without talking to the person over the phone, or even seeing their picture.  They just saw what the other person created for the computer screen.  Though this may seem crazy, after reading this article it seems like gamers meeting other gamers makes sense.  It narrows down the “playing field”.  

Does anyone think that this might be the way of the future?  What do you think about online dating sites? What do you think about building relationships over the internet without even seeing the person in real life?

iPhone Knows Where You Are...And Doesn't Forget

Security researchers recently discovered a hidden file on the iPhone--which syncs with a corresponding file on your computer--that tracks everywhere you go. This file records the latitude and longitude of the phone's travels and even carries a timestamp for each data set.

This location-saving file seems to have appearing with the Apple iOS4 update, which was released in June 2010. This means that anyone who can access your iPhone or personal computer has access to all of your daily movements for nearly the past year.

Mobile networks have been tracing locations for a while now, but with this transition into tracking files stored directly within the phone and computer, the potential for privacy breaches seems much higher.

I don't know about you, but it sure does concern me that if my phone were to fall into the wrong hands, with just a quick "jailbreak," someone could know when and where I eat, sleep, and travel throughout the day.

Original Article

Two More Actors Cast For the Movie Version of The Hunger Games

Recently, Lionsgate studios announced the casting of the main players in the on-screen adaptation of Suzanne Collins's bestselling novel, The Hunger Games.

The story takes place in the future, where the term "mass media" takes on an entirely different connotation-- the main characters are forced by an evil government (known as the Capitol) to participate in a sporting event known as the Hunger Games. The "Games" is basically a punishment for a past rebellious uprising against the Capitol, and the players are forced to compete in a wilderness setting, outlasting one another until they are the lone survivor, and winner of the Games. It's basically a really sick version of "Survivor," except they not only have to survive, they have to kill each other. By hand.

Oh, and did I mention that all of the players are between the ages of 12 and 18?

Anyway, the real killer (sorry, I had to.) in all of this is that throughout every second of the Hunger Games, the participants are filmed and recorded and monitored, and then broadcast throughout the country so that everyone in this futuristic world can watch. Which leads to some really interesting strategies: just like in "Survivor," the players all work angles, display or conceal special talents, make allies with their fellow players, and try to play up their different selling points to appeal to sponsors (who are allowed to send you occasional "gifts" during the Games). Talk about the importance of advertising.

The movie is set to open March 23, 2012.

Let the games begin!

hitRECord

hitRECord.org/reel

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, star of (500) Days of Summerand 10 Things I Hate About You, began work on a project called hitRECord, a collaborative new media outlet that allows submissions of all forms of art and combines them into cohesive productions. Contributors from the music world work with those from the film genres and beyond. When a particular project turns out especially well, Gordon-Levitt uses his industry connections to pitch the project to the traditional entertainment industry to generate profits, which are then shared with the contributing artists.

This new take on the global media industry provides opportunities for artists from around the world to collaborate and create new projects that combine all forms of media.

iphone 4

      Apple has announced the release of its newest model phone the Iphone 4.....oooo aaaaah. The date for the release had been pushed back time and time again and for what? Nothing... Absolutely nothing. The Iphone 4 has nothing special about it except that its.....white. All the features that are found in this phone model can be found in previous models. Rumors are that it is supposed to ship at the end of April but with the iphone 5 debuting soon there is no point to the insanity of apple. The key to the madness is this Apple has such a hold on the media that it can get them all excited over the COLOR of a phone. That is the scary part of the story. The way the apple franchise has exploded is unnatural they have your attention just by putting the simple letter "i" in front of something and it makes it instantly amazing. And like the media cattle that we all are we herd towards the shiny displays and blinking lights. They constantly have you thinking what next? I personally can't wait to see iknitting or itherapy.

Mass Media and Sports Reporting

Mass and social media outlets have thrusted athletics into everyone's lives. With each advance in technology, reporting on sports and their players have become more and more in depth and speculative. Newspapers used to be the only way to find a blurb about the previous day's sporting activities. Then, the radio introduced live broadcasting of the games. Since then, the invention of TV and the Internet have allowed fans to become very familiar with their favorite athletes. There seem to be zero boundaries between the lives of the players on and off the court.

Television has even expanded its role exponentially, in a very short time. There are countless channels available for every major sport. Every game can be viewable by fans if they pay for the premium packages. All sports stations, like ESPN, have also expanded the job of reporting sports. They went from showing short, choppy clips, to streaming scores, broadcasting major sporting events, and even into live look-ins of the sporting news all day. Now that everyone can view Facebooks, Twitters, etc. the live television broadcasts of shows like Sportscenter have shifted from presenting recaps of games to talking about speculative news about the players. There isn't a day that Sportscenter live airs without an interruption from a breaking news story that generates from a social media source. There were a couple of weeks during the NBA season that Sportscenter constantly tried to break the story of Carmelo Anthony being traded. They would get leads from anywhere, regardless of the credibility. It made them look bad because they didn't do good reporting and just talk to the source of these negotiations.

The Internet has allowed athletes to become icons in more ways than just their actions on the field or court. Websites, such as Twitter, have turned into an athlete's stomping ground. With Twitter, fans follow what their favorite players off-court actions on a Tweet by Tweet basis. Player's feelings can be updated at any time by cell phone, computer, iPad, etc. There have been multiple fines handed out because players are Tweeting during their games. Players have even entered the political realm by giving their support to a particular candidate publicly on websites. In the past, people wouldn't have given a thought as to who their favorite athletes were voting for, but now, I'm sure some of them take it into consideration.

Basketball players, for example, have evolved from having to climb a ladder to pick the ball out of the peach basket, to the introduction of the three-point line, to players' thoughts being broadcasted to the world (sometimes during the game).

Bringing it all back to make my point, I believe that professional athletes have become something that they were not intended to be. There's no reason for an athlete to be able to tell me what they had for breakfast or who they went clubbing with the previous night. Not only do I not care, I think there are too many chances for athletes to mess up and portray the wrong message. Not only do they create distractions for themselves, they affect the way people view them. I feel like if I didn't see the bottom of the TV screen that says ESPN, I'd confuse that channel for E! Not saying many people in the class necessarily care about sports, but to those who do, Do you believe that athlete's ability to be 'heard' in the new ways have added to your enjoyment of sports or taken away from it? Should ESPN go away from trying to speculate stories, and return to focus on presenting the simple sporting events? What would you do to make the experience better?

Youtube Live Streams

Friday YouTube announced that the will now offer YouTube- Live on which YouTube partners will be able to create and broadcast live streaming events on their pages anytime. I am excited. YouTube is such an awesome broadcasting tool and is definitely an effective way to share information so this live streaming will be icing on the cake. YouTube live streaming will make the already instantaneous delivery of content even faster. To ensure the quality of the streaming YouTube reports that they will add live streaming incrementally to pages over the next year.What do you think about the addition of live streaming to YouTube? Are there any issues you can see coming from this addiotion?







http://www.youtube.com/live

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/04/youtube-is-going-live.html

Even the Government is Using Facebook

A draft of the Homeland Security Department’s new plan to revise the National Terrorism Advisory System indicates that Facebook and Twitter may be used to distribute alerts in some cases. Details of what channel the announcement would appear in aren’t available quite yet though.

Facebook might distribute alerts to the news feeds of those who opt in by Liking a certain Facebook Page, such as that of the Homeland Security Department.

The advisory system will change from the five-level color-coded system where the US is always at one of the levels to a two-level system where alerts expire after a certain time. According to a CNN news article, "After federal, state, and local government leaders are briefed on a threat, information may be published on Facebook 'when appropriate'. For instance, alerts may be held back if announcing them publicly would jeopardize ongoing investigations or expose the depth of US government’s knowledge about a threat."

By distributing alerts via the news feed rather than as a home page banner, users who’ve Liked the Page publishing the information could see it no matter what device they access the site from. With Facebook reaching 155 million US users per month, and roughly half that number each day, it could be a powerful complement to TV and radio alert broadcasts for announcing changes to the terror threat level.

Thoughts?

The Masters: Interactive Advertising

As many people already know, The Masters Golf Tournament 2011 begins tomorrow. For those, like me, who are stuck here at Belmont, wishing they could be walking the course—all hope is not lost.

EA Sports has launched a new interactive advertising campaign, which will offer free online viewing of all 18 holes in the course via a Facebook app. The app was designed by advertising agency Heat, San Francisco to promote the Augusta National course in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters. The video game was released March 29.

The app is truly revolutionary for golf lovers. Through the use of 360˚ Google Street View, the app allows viewers to virtually walk hole-by-hole through Augusta National, home of The Masters. The app also enables viewers to pan up, down, side-to-side, forward, and back.

I was honestly excited to take a virtual tour of Augusta National and spent altogether too much time doing so. It seems their marketing strategies have worked on me. What do you think? Will this campaign from EA Sports and Heat, San Francisco succeed in promoting Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters or do you think the missed the mark in advertising strategies?

Check out the Facebook app here.

-Original Article-

Apps, Apps, Apps

In 2010, alone, Apple sold 13.662 BILLION computers (Macbooks, Macbook Pros, desktops, etc.). Not only do they sell humungous amounts of computers, they also sell programs for them. Apple has revolutionized something beyond anyones wildest dreams, apps. They've taken the painful task of going to Best Buy and buying a CD with the information on it and turned it into an easy 3 clicks on any computer. Combined with the music sales, which I'm sure make up a great majority of the sales, the iTunes store sold over $4.1 billion worth of media. If apps were to even be one-tenth of the sales, they would have generated over $400 million!

People have become so engrained in these apps that if they fail, their life tends to unravel a little bit. I, unfortunately, fell victim to a failing app recently. My blog post was supposed to be on April 1st and 13th. I had the dates saved on my iCal app with a notification that was supposed to be sent to my e-mail 2 days before the assignment dates. After I put the information in, I didn't worry about remembering the dates. As it turned out, I didn't get the notification for the April 1st post, thus, I forgot to do it.

This has made me realize how wrapped up in apps I am personally. I can't believe how much I rely on their proper operations in order to make my life run smoothly. I use both computer and cell-phone apps, and they even work together. Has anyone else run into the issue of overusing and over-relying on these apps? Or is it just me?

(sales figures obtained from - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312510238044/d10k.htm)

Facebook in the Media

As if face book didn't permeate our lives enough it is now in the journalism business. The social networking site is now incorporating some of what twitter is into its already large conglomerate of applications and gadgets. The amount of information shared over this website is mind boggling compared to what we where able to share even just 10 years ago. NPR has been using face book to report recent events in the middle east and other important events. Face book has mad it official by launching a dedicated page to journalism and the practices associated with it. The new page on face book is meant to be a way for different media companies to socialize and share "best practices". The page also has links to lessons for use by the general public. The page resembles twitter in some ways and has the fact that it has a far greater reach than twitter does with billions of people logging on daily. In short Face book is trying to be like twitter in that it wants to be more of a place for spreading news rather than being a place to socialize.
:original arcticle:

Designer Labels bring happiness?

Having went to an all girls high school, I am somewhat familiar with designer labels. Of course, I think it makes no sense to pay $80 for a pair of jeans that are going to be run to the ground, or $65 for a polo shirt with an alligator on it, just because it's name brand.

According to this article, people are more likely to be happier and live a better lifestyle when they indulge in designer products. Either someone is more accepted and declared more approachable for having a designer sweater, or even seen as a higher status. The people who were seen wearing their designer logos were declared happier because they were accepted more, and treated better than those without labels.

Should we continue to judge people by the logo on their clothes? Does spending ridiculous amounts of money on a logo really make someone happy, or just broke?

http://www.newser.com/story/115594/its-true-designer-labels-will-make-your-life-better.html?utm_source=syn&utm_medium=wid&utm_campaign=yahoo