Virgin Mobile Fest Greens Technologic

I did not get a chance to blog at all this past weekend due to the Virgin Mobile Festival that I worked at.

I thought I would share some of the things that worked and some things that didn't work.

The festival wanted to focus on being green and eco-friendly. At the same time, they want to increase brand awareness by associating themselves with many non-profit organization and music. I felt they did a fairly good job at this but they lacked in some areas. For example, they did not train or inform their event staff of everything that was happening. (I found this out when I was passing out free sunscreen. This woman (an event goer) thanked me and mentioned that she wished she had known there was free sunscreen earlier. This was due to the fact that a 15yr old staff member told her there was no sunscreen to be found throughout the concert venue and another staff member told her there was NO FIRST AID! When has there ever been a music festival with NO FIRST AID!) They did not clarify what type of trash was designated for the different recycling bins. The initiative to recycle at the event was not prominent and the music line-up was poorly done. (They spelled Kanye West's name as "KAYNE" West. How does that happen!?!? As well as all the best bands were playing at the same time and at opposite sides).

There are many ways they could have fixed these problems but it was only their third year holding this music festival. I should say some things they did right.

The use of eco-friendly technologies such as recharging your phone, camera or Ipod via bike was very convenient. They had a Dell Dome where people could make their own buttons, T-shirts and use computers to sign up for Buzzd (a new social networking service like Twitter and Yelp.)

Real quick rant on Buzzd: It is described as a "location-sensitive entertainment
listings service with branded editorial and real-time user generated content on
the mobile device.'Your city, in real-time,' buzzd allows consumers to know
what's happening at any venue right now, rate events, and connect with friends
and people in the area." I can see how this could beat Yelp but they really need
to keep pushing it. They need to get more publicity if they want to beat their
competitors. When I heard about the service I automatically thought it was another social network trying to make it big. It did not strike me as a "OMG! THIS IS SOO COOL!" It needs to offer more to users.

On that note, let me finish what I was saying before this post gets to long. They had a spiffy VIP areas that gave free drinks and had actually beds to sleep on outside. They had a Recharge Dome for people to check out the new Kyocera Special Edition Virgin Mobile Festival "Wild Card" mobile (texting from this phone made my hand cramp up) which they could use to make phone calls, send a text message to the concert stage screens or ride a bike and recharge their phone. They had a Refresh Dome for people to cool off and they had a recycling program where people could get stuff for collecting empty bottles and cans.

There were more positive and negatives that I could list about the music festival but I don't want to drag on. They should have integrated the idea of charging your phone by dancing . . . Maybe I'll make a list and send it to Richard Branson.

[picture via Mobilecrunch]

Slydial to Voicemail

When reading about this new technology service, I thought that everyone already had this capability featured on their phone. You might want to check your voicemail features before getting excited about this service. I'm sorry I should probably mention what the service is first before commenting on it.

Slydial is a new service that connects you directly to some one's voicemail. In other words, you can avoid speaking to a person directly by using Slydial. It saves you time (if you don't count the ads that you have to hear before getting connected to the voicemail.) and awkward or long conversations. For example, you want to call in sick to work and are afraid if the boss answers then you have to answer questions and explain yourself. This makes it a lot easier to be a coward and go straight to voicemail. By the time your boss has gotten the voicemail; he will be to busy to call and check up on you (to make sure you are not playing hookie.) Here are some more situations. (Please do not use this service to voicemail break-up, unless your dating a psycho or your dog.)

The service is free to use but you can get a membership if you want to get rid of the ads. This leads me to what I was taking about in the beginning of the post. When I listen to my voicemails, I have the option to record a message and send it to a number. This is basically the exact same thing. To my surprise, this option is not available to all.

If you don't have this feature then I would suggest it as a great way to speak to your mother or girlfriend without having to listen to an hour long session of yapping. (No offense, but women can talk for hours!)

From another perspective, this service is making us more of a coward and continuing to change our way of communicating with each other. We are trying to find ways around directly communicating with people.

Who Needs a Sweety!

I think the right question is who needs a therapist or a friend when you could have a Sweety! This does sound strange and you must be wondering what the hell I'm talking about.

It's a gadget created to relieve stress. Yanko Design says, "Sweety is a virtual character who helps people understand where their stress is coming from and what they can do to conquer it in a friendly and cuddly way." The thing listens to your problems and frustrations, then determines the root of your problem with graphic patterns of color. If you are really stressed then it will "invite" you to play a game by "manipulating it's soft body." (honestly, that is what the site says. It sounds a little creepy but it gets better.) If that doesn't calm you down, then you can beat the thing to pulp (not literally). The designer believes "that’s WAY more than a human friend would let you do." (REALLY? All of my friends let me squeeze and beat them up when I'm stressed.)

The reason for this strange posting on some stress reliever is due to my stress of not finding a job yet AND having suicidal mice. That is correct. I am continuing to find dead and rotting mice outside my door. The mice try to get in and then die trying. Haven't they heard of failure or living for another day!

I think it's a conspiracy and all the mice are trying to play games with my mind. Maybe they die but come back from the dead to drive me crazy. They must be zombie mice or witchy mice. Has anyone had this problem?

Anyone know how to get rid of witchy zombie mice? They are taking over the entrance to my kingdom. I guess I need a Sweety to combat the mice OR calm my rage that I will take upon the mice.

Picture from Yanko Design

Virtual Reality vs. Reality

Where do we go next in these online worlds? If the majority of people turn to virtual worlds like Second Life and vSide then what will happen to the real world? Will we see only the hick towns or the Amish taking over? All I know is that virtual worlds will not be able to become reality for me. After reading Ellen Lee write in the San Fransisco Chronicle about virtual worlds , it got me thinking about the progression social networking. It seems that all virtual worlds are another form of social networking. The only problem is with so many virtual worlds being made, each site or world will keep users interested for a time period. After that, people figure out that there's more to life than a virtual world that will not help them lose weight while sitting in front of a computer or get married. In a virtual world you can not file your taxes or get married and create an offspring. There are limits to the virtual world and it's sad to see some people taking a virtual world to this extent:



My second concern is with the invention of MyCyberTwin then how do we we are talking to is ALIVE or REAL. I think virtual worlds like SecondLife will stick around for awhile but give it some time and in a couple years it will die. Unless, they are able to create a world where you can walking inside your coputer and become part of it! That would be nice, to have two world instead of one. Or am I overthinking this?

Tech Spoofing

Who doesn't enjoy a good spoof? How many times do we surf youtube for something funny like someone making fun of company or person?

^{MAC VS. PC}

I have to admit the last techbrand spoof that I enjoyed was the I-Rack that made fun of the many different "I" products that Apple makes. "YouTubers Spoof and Mock Tech Brands" from silicon.com made me realize how the jokes on techbrands seemed to be more popular than celebrity spoofs like Paris Hilton.

I love finding user generated media, authentic media because it gives the brand a more personal and comfortable feel. A brand needs to have a weakness and needs to be able to be made fun of. What brands or companies have not been mad fun of and have continued to prosper? Most companies that are being poked at tend to do well in business. Companies need individuals to make videos about their brands because it's "authentic media" that is being watched. It's knowing an individual spent time and effort to create the content, and is not being paid by a big company to produce it that intrigues users. For example, my favorite spoof on Halo 3:

I'm not sure if Halo 3 really takes over your life as this individual makes it out to be, but if it does, then I would have never known if it wasn't for this video.

How addicting is Guitar Hero now that you can play it on Wii? I find it addicting, but is it spoof worthy?

Searchin Gold

While being amongst my peers in my classroom, I learned about their secret blogger identities. I think it's time they are revealed to the world. I think they need to be noticed for their insightful posts and deep thoughts.

I came to find Deepak to be very interesting. He recently blogged about me in which touched my heart and soul. I really found his opinion on consumers buying products online to be enlightening. Maybe even thought provoking.

My second fav (or in english terms - favorite) is SnopBlog6 who seems to always have interesting titles for his posts like his recent post money money money. Other than his 1st blog but otherwise he has an earthy tone that seems very personal.

I hope you enjoy the gold that I found, and the real identities of my classmates. Sorry i couldn't post a picture of them, but they might be angry with me for that.

Customization 2.0

Imagine the sweater being hot pink and minus a hoodie. This is what I receieved for Christmas about two years ago when everyone had to have monogramed apparel. It was a fad that luckily died out. The new trend . . .

Customizing and personalizing your own shoes. NikeID has created a "public NikeID Studio/boutique" that started from their successful online NikeID.com business. An article in BusinessWeek describes it as "a place where anyone can custom-design Nike shoes." This is very similar to the My K-Swiss but the difference is Nike has a real world store in which you can buy the latest designs or create your shoes to purchase. This remind anyone of build-a-bear? The only difference is with build-a-bear you walk out of the store WITH the product you created.

After visiting NikeID.com, I realized the positives and negatives of the business. Consumer designed products would have less consumers complaints or purchase returns. Although, as a consumer, I would like to complain that they didn't have what I wanted and neither could I create it. They have created a line of shoes that are to resemble your "school pride." The only provide six school logo choices and you can not upload your own school logo. If they could fix this issue then I might be interested in buying a pair myself. BUT my other problem is it takes up time. They say, "time is money" for a reason. I don't have the time to sit and create a pair of shoes that I won't be able to wear everyday to work.

The last thing NikeID should be concerned about it gives people the time to change their mind. Part of society buys by impulse and intelligent marketing strategies like "BUY NOW!" After desinging a shoe the person may realize they don't need a new pair. Then they have about three to four weeks to receive the shoes in the mail and change their mind.

If you think about it hard enough, you're paying an extra cost for something to be personalized? I think I will stick to some sharpie pens that work great on almost anything! How about you?

MICROSOFT DESTROYED BY VISTA

Blame it on Vista to destroy the hard drive of a two month year old laptop. My baby (laptop) was fine until one day the whole thing crashes. The only conclusion I could find was that Vista’s weaknesses caused my lap top to self-destruct. Vista came out in 2007 which is after the book "Naked Conversations” was published by Scobel and Israel. The authors comment that consumers’s view of Microsoft has changed and improved. I have a hard time believing this.

The majority of people I speak to have expressed great annoyance with Microsoft. The company seems to find difficulty in creating a product that works.

The majority of consumers prefer Windows XP than the new Vista for obvious reasons. I bet the author is wishing he could kick himself in the head

When Microsoft came out with XP(many years ago) they had a couple of glitches and issues. It took them a couple years to create all the patches to fix then problems. The problem is, Microsoft is competing so they have to put out their product before it is fully developed. I believe consumers should wait a couple years and then buy Vista. Or . . . buy a Mac.


How many people have had these bad experiences
with Microsoft or any experiences? Have I gone mad in my belief that they have
lost sight of the consumer’s wants and needs?