Week 4 EOC: Advertising is based on Happiness

I have been Dj-ing for over 12 years now and I have played on a plethora of Dj mixers in my day. Many of which have been cheep or what many industry professionals would call “Budget Mixers”. “Budget Mixers” are great for the crazy house party's where you know that there are going to be a risk of someone mistakenly spilling their adult beverage all over the “wheels-of-steal”. But the problem with that choice of musical, mixing, apparatus is that the quality of the sound. On the other hand, if its studio quality sound you desire there is always the $6,000.00 “Allen & Heath”. You do get what you pay for when it comes to professional Dj mixers.

In 2002 I purchased a “Pioneer DJM-600” 4-Channel Dj mixer at the “Mobile Beat” Dj trade show at the “Tropicana Convention Hall” for $900.00 cash directly from a pioneer representative. The thing originally went for $1200.00 in a retail store. Let me just say that this sturdy music blending tool has seen allot of abuse. It has been through a number of clubs, party's and events on and off the “Las Vegas Strip” and beyond. I love this mixer, it works flawlessly and allows me to be creative by expressing myself as a Dj with ease to this day.

Throughout the years as a Dj on the scene I have often required the functionality to record and then listen later to many of my performances. And a great solution for that need is the ability to listen to the weekly recordings without having to go through countless audio CDs by using an “iPod” or a “iPhone” via a “”FM Modulator”. This handy device allows you to wirelessly play back the music or audio on your “i-device” through the FM radio in your car stereo. Well I have bought many. And one brand in particular is a “Belkin” wireless FM modulator. This piece of junk, I went through at least four of them. And its always the same thing with each one.The cord that attaches to the i-device gets a short right near the plug. Now I’m not hard on them, they all fail the same way. And each one cost me about $100.00! ;-(

Week 3 EOC: Internet Privacy vs. Market Research

Wow the internet today is amazing! You can get a ton of services and information for free. Or can you? It turns out that many of the top companies across the World Wide Web are tracking us as consumers. “It’s called behavioral targeting—tracking consumers’ online browsing behavior and using it to target ads to them.” Marketing An Introduction ARMSTRONG KOTLER. Websites like dictionary.com and msn.com are using cookies made with “Javascript” to track you. As soon as you visit one of these usefull sites for one of thier services, your computer downloads sometimes one or even up to thousands at a time. After wich these sites now are reported to via the internet-cookie all the sites you like to go to.

Week 3 EOC: Making Money for Good

Ok we have all done this at one time or another, a associate or a friend of yours has come to you and asked if you would be able to donate to some local charity or their child is trying to save up enough money to go on some school trip. You really want to donate money but you just don’t have the means to make it happen. Well don’t feel bad for to much longer because there is a new service on the Internet at http://www.gazelle.com/gazelle-for-good/ . What Gazell is is a new online service that buys up all those old electronics that you have just laying around, collecting dust. When you go to their site and enter in say an older “iPod” or an old digital camera, they tell you the going price for that piece of technology. And if you decide to sell it to them, they will send you the box free of shipping for you to then send the articles back to “Gazell” in.

Your probably thinking where does the charity aspect come in at? “Gazelle For Good allows anyone to raise funds for a cause by starting an online gadget collection drive.” www.gazellforgood.com . Gazelle for Good allows you to collect used gadgets and in return they give the money to the charity of your choice or to support your cause. Gazelle will even recycle old electronics instead of just throwing away that stuff into a landfill.“Gazelle guarantees that no item sent to us will ever end up in a landfill regardless of whether or not it has value.” www.gazellforgood.com . I think that this is great idea. This solves the problem of people not having the funds to fork over for a good cause.”Gadget drives are a great fundraising idea for organizations or individuals.”www.gazellforgood.com. I know that I have plenty of old gear that I would like to get rid of for good and even in a responsible way.

EOC Week 1: Excellent Customer Service

It’s been a long time since I can remember a time that I have experience “Excellent Customer Service”. But when I was a just fifteen years old I was with my dad and my best friend and we were coming home from a week-long trip from the “Ruby Mountains” in northern Nevada. It s was a scouting trip that we had been on and we were tired. We just wanted to get home. On our way home my dads ’73 Chevy pickup burst into flames. We had to hurry and pull over and put the truck out with an extinguisher. The insurance company arranged for a tow truck to com pick us up, got us a hotel room, the whole nine yards.

“Often, they were at the scene of a wreck or at a repair shop and had no way to get to an Enterprise office to pick up a rental car. So the company came up with another game-changing idea—picking customers up wherever they happen to be and bringing them back ….. Hence, the tagline: “Pick Enterprise. We’ll Pick You Up,” which remains the company’s main value proposition to this day.” Enterprise Rent-A-Car

EOC Week One: My Voice

All my life I have always imagined myself working in an environment that allowed me to be myself and to be creative. In this place of employment I will not find myself constantly looking at the clock wondering if it is time to go home yet. In fact I hope it’s the type of place where I don’t have to punch a time clock at all. And I hope that it will seem like there isn’t enough time in the day to finish the projects that I am involved in. I love photography, drawing, painting, djay-ing (spinning records) and writing music on my computer in my spare time. I listen, read and absorb news on technology in an attempt to inspire and educate myself. And I hope someday to create my own “Startup” that will provide some very useful and addictive service that a lot of people will love to use. Lately, I have been trying to take notice of people in their everyday life. The things that they do, and how they go about doing those things fascinate me. I can’t help but to think, “I wonder if computers, technology or the web can make that job or that task that a person is trying to accomplish easier?” With the advent of these new smart-phones, I think that my job in the future, as a designer will be an exciting one. I can’t wait to get started.