Final Blog Post

Well, this will be my final blog post of the semester! I have really enjoyed this project and feel like I have learned a great deal about how heavily I can be a part of the current online scene. I think that blogging especially has been helpful in opening my eyes to the endless posibilities of one to one marketing and making a small voice be heard. I hope my posts have been helpful in at least directing readers to sites I have found interesting over the last few months. I do plan to keep a blog in the future, if only for personal use, so I keep in touch with current internet trends. I think it will help me with my professional career. So, here's to a great semester! Blogs away! :)

Wiki Articles: The Wrap Up

I thoroughly enjoyed the Wikipedia segment of this blog project. I frequent Wiki on a daily basis for all kinds of information and am thankful to all the people keeping articles up to date. It is now easier to understand what exactly open-source means and I have a greater appreciation for all the time that has gone into the creation and updating of each individual article. I'd now like to recap what I have accomplished on Wiki this semester and briefly discuss the evolution of each article.

The Last Five Years:
This play is one of my favorites and I was very impressed by what Wiki had to offer regarding the story and lyrics. There was more information that I had anticipated but there was still much to contribute. I first added an award that this show had won in 2002. The next two edits added content as well, but to the plotline. I felt it necessary to incorporate a few more lyrics into the telling of the story for added effect, because they are so heartfelt. I was surprised to see how often this article gets edited, and it is clear that it is usually done by the same few people. Mostly, people added information to different touring companies or international productions, and very little content was added. All in all, the evolution was pretty standard and I have a feeling this is because it is such a niche, and the people who wrote this article know tons and tons about the subject.

Hallstatt:
There was very little evolution on this article, which doesn't really surprise me. I do think, however, that my contributions were pretty helpful, especially for tourists trying to find out more information about this town. I started by discussing the toy town appeal it holds and how it is a great town to cover by foot. For the next two edits, I added different attractions: salt mines and ice caves. I thought these would be interesting for prospective tourists. Basically one user did most of the edits in between mine, adding content to the History section. Between the two of us, we were the main editors of this article for the past few months, which I think is really cool!

Trumbull:
I thought it would be neat to edit a wiki article on my hometown, and it turns out I was correct! Apparantly lots of other people thought this as well, because it was the most edited articles of all the ones I've followed. Most of the edits added content, especially to notable people and external links. There were a few grammatical edits and a few spelling corrections of people and places, which leads me to believe they were done by people closely associated with Trumbull and its history. In my first edit, I added that Trumbull was named after Jonathan Trumbull, because I thought this was extremely important regarding my town's history. The next edit entailed me adding a link to The Trumbull Times, our local newspaper, because there were a ton of other resources and this one was left out for some reason. My last edit added information about the evolution of the town name. I thought this was cool because it had to do with my first edit.

Las Cruces:
After visiting this town again in March, I thought it would be cool to add info on wiki about what I've learned. I can't believe how many people edit this article! There was much info added about trivia and demographics, and people are constantly correct grammer and spelling. Personally, I went for adding interesting content. My first edit added the fact that there are many art galleries in the downtown area, because this was left out among a long list of other activities offered. My second edit incorporated Stahman's Farm because it is one of my favorite places in Las Cruces, and I would like if tourists checked it out on their journeys. My last edit discussed the state question of "red or green" because this was something I found quite comical in my travels!

LAST Last Five Years Edit

The Last Five Years gets all of its power from its brilliant lyrics written by Jason Robert Brown. The wiki article does a great job of incorporating some of these lyrics as they tell the story of the play. However, I felt that one little lyric was missing as Jamie's christmas song for Cathy, "The Schmuel Song" is discussed. I decided to add that he tells Cathy indirectly through the song to "unlock the dreams you've lost" which pertains to her dreams of becoming an actress. This song is really cool, the way it parallels this dressmaker's life with Cathy's. To understand more fully the context of the lyrics, check out the article here, along with my edit!

Las Cruces Edit

As you know by now, I have a soft spot for Las Cruces, NM. I also am a huge fan of Mexican cuisine and love dining in New Mexico because their food it mostly authentic (and spicy!). Whenever you order a plate with chile you must ask your server which chiles are spicy that year.. the red or green. This is very important because it varies year to year depending on the crops. This question is so popular in New Mexico that it has become the official state question. I touched upon this in my wiki article: "In honor of the chile crop of New Mexico, the state has adopted "Red or Green" as its official state question to specify which type of chile is more spicy that season." See for yourself here!

Trumbull: Last Edit

I am still dissapointed in the lack of history given on Trumbull's wiki page so I decided to add some information about the origin of the town's name. I found it interesting that Trumbull aquired land from Stratford because I visit that town regularly and I had no idea they were once one in the same. I discovered it was named yet another name, Unity, when it was first settled. This is the edit I chose to make on Wikipedia."This town was first named Unity and then changed to North Stratford in 1747. The name finally changed to Trumbull in 1797 when the town was incorportated on Stratford land." here

Hallstatt Final Entry

For my last edit on this page, I choose to add a little information to the history of salt mining. I discovered in my research of this beautiful Austrian city that the world's first salt mine was founded upon it's soil. This was very interesting to me because I had never really thought of salt mining in the first place. I am incredibly excited to check it out myself in just a few short months when I travel to Europe. Here is my contribution to the article: "It is possible to tour the world's first salt mine, located above downtown Hallstatt." See for yourself here!

Trumbull CT edit #2

The article on Wikipedia for my hometown, Trumbull CT, includes a bunch of resources to find out more information. It also provides links to many of Trumbull's news resources such as webpages and TV stations. I felt that it would be important to include Trumbull's newspaper on this list and was very surprised to find it wasn't there. You can see my addition under the page's Eternal Links section.

Last Five Years 2nd post

I love The Last Five Years. The lyrics are incredible and the story is just heartbreaking. I chose to add a little to the Wiki article in the section discussing each song as the play progresses and what message they are giving to the story. The final song of the show (which just happens to be my favorite) is entitled "Goodbye Until Tomorrow" and it is sung by both characters (Jamie and Cathy.. the only two in the show). The premise, simplified, is that this couple met,got married and then Jamie left her. BUT, the story is told fowards by Jamie's songs, and backwards by Cathy's songs. So at the end of show, Cathy is singing about being excited and breathless after meeting Jamie for the first time and how she is saying goodbye until he calls tomorrow..until he calls. Jamie, however, is actually singing goodbye.. forever. I decided to include a lyric sung by Jamie that explains that he tried to keep the marriage together and love his wife, but he couldn't and now he must say goodbye. My edit was, "He says to her, "all I could do was love you hard, and let you go"." Check out the article on Wiki. They do a fantastic job of explaining the show.

Las Cruces, numero dos

Whenever I visit my Grandma in Las Cruces, we do a number of things. We go hiking in different springs, travel to White Sands, go to the farmer's market,explore Mesilla.... and go to Stahmann's Farm. Stahmann's Farm is a huge pecan farm that holds about 180,000 trees on its miles of farmland. It's fun to go and walk around the groves and see nothing but pecan trees all in perfect lines. There is also a country store which sells Stahmann products; my favorite being pecan pie topped with pecan ice cream! Although Wiki doesn't have an article for Stahmann's, I decided to add it to the places to see on the Las Cruces page. To find out more about this great farm, you can visit their website and maybe even order a little something pecan-y for yourself!

Second Hallstatt Edit

After spending more time of Wikipedia's site devoted to Hallstatt, I realized there really wasn't much interesting information. I feel that is there is going to be a page devoted to a town, there should at least be a number of things listed to help readers understand what it is all about. Through researching Europe, and different tourist attractions, I came across the big ice cave. I decided it would be nice to add this to Wiki's article in case soon-to-be visitors were scanning the page to learn more about what there is to do in Hallstat. Therefore, I added "The Giant Ice Cave is located in Hallstatt and is one of the largest in the world." Hopefully this may encourage others to explore the many exciting points this Austrian town has to offer.

Hallstatt Wiki Edit

I chose Hallstatt, a tiny Austrian town, for my final Wikipedia article. As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, I will be traveling through Europe this July, and stumbled upon this place in a book entitled "Europe Through the Back Door" (which is excellent, by the way. Highly recommeded.) The article featured on Wiki about this town doesn't really do it justice and states mainly background information such as history. I thought it would be helpful to include a bit of information that goes a little something like this: "Hallstatt is a popular tourist attraction due to it's "to town" appeal and can be toured on foot in ten minutes flat." You can check out my edit here!

Today's Class

Today we had a speaker come to class to discuss search engine optimization. He discussed how some websites are set up to produce certain results from different searches. They can make changes that might not be noticeable to the customer, but optimize the structure in order for easy extraction of the page by search engines. He talked about Google quite frequently which was helpful because I was easy to follow what he was saying by different examples he gave that I see on a daily basis. I'm not quite sure what his job is, but he did cover a lot of difficult information and made it relatable to our class and what we are currently studying.

Wiki: Las Cruces

I have chosen to edit the Wikipedia article about Las Cruces, because I visited there a few weeks ago for spring break and absolutely adored it. The article discusses the highlights of different areas of the city, and highlights the downtown area. They do discuss the farmer's market and churches, but failed to mention anything about the art galleries. These galleries were my favorite part of visiting downtown while I vacationed there, so I thought I would give them some credit. You can check out my edit by going here.

Katie's Blog

Katie chose to write about about John Batelle's new interactive webchats. Personally, I think these are a great idea because they promote ultimate consumer interaction. He is not only organzing these e-chats, but he is making them as personal as possible by drawing from customer recommendation about what they would prefer to discuss. She tells us that people are actively posting ideas, and this engagment alone is positive for Batelle. To read more of what Katie had to say and to get linked to the actual article, click here!

Stiuqxela

Our class is doing an experiment on how to develop the most Google juice from a single, nonsensical word: stiuqxela. We will soon find out who has used stiuqxela the most effectively in their blogs. I have chosen to write a haiku:
stiuqxela is fun
it has three syllabals, right?
stiuqxela, love you.

Crisis Management

Toby's post about crisis management really hit home. The unthinkable events that took place at VT last week left everyone questioning whether or not they could have somehow been prevented by alerting students. In this article, she discusses a new mobile text messaging system, Twitter, that can send out mass text messages for free in a state of emergency. This would definitely be helpful, knowing that every college student I know is addicted to their cell phone. Could this new technology save lives in the future? Check out this article and decide for yourself.

Chimps with rights?

I was browsing Slashdot this morning (my favorite of the required blogs due to it's quirky current news feeds) and I cam across a comical article entitled "Shoulc Chimps Have Human Rights?". This article explains how a Brazillian court has granted a chimp habeas corpus in a recent case and now the same might occur in Austria. Habeas corpus is basically the right to a fair trial and punishment which thus far has only been applied to humans. The article however points out the similarities we share with chimps and states that a group of world leading primatologists feels that they should be treated like humans for this reason, even in the court of law. Now, this might be going a bit too far but who am I to judge? I don't know enough about the mental capacities of chimpanzees. Maybe they should be treated as our equals... we shall soon find out. Read more of the article here!

Roger's Post

My teamate recently posted an interesting article concerning internet curfews. I had never heard of such a thing and I never knew it would be possible. However, in India, colleges are considering this practice to limit the amount of "bad content" on the students' hardrives. Roger was completely against this movement, and even more adverse to it spreading to America. I agree that college students here have different schedules than the average person, and late night research and communication over the internet is our prime time to be engaged. I hope to never see this policy put in act. To read more of what Roger had to say, check out his blog.

Today's Exam and what I've learned thus far

Well, we had our first Info Tech exam today and it was a bit surprising I must say. I put in quite a bit of time reviewing my class notes and print outs, but I felt that I didn't focus my studying in the right direction. The exam was kind of all over the place and didn't pay much attention to the concept of why we blog, or how blogging affects different aspects of marketing. There were a few statistical questions that were a bit rough.. hopefully I chose the correct answers! However, I do feel that I have retained a lot of information even if my exam score does not reflect that fact. I am now more interested in online marketing and pay more attention to different forms of personalization (which I was extremely surprised not to find on the exam today..). The whole process of rss and news feeds make more sense now and I think it's interesting to think of different markets online being disruptive such as retail, auto, and software (I can't believe this wasn't mentioned on the exam either, because I think this is a big deal!). Well, I'm glad I studied hard, if only to become more knowledgeable in my field. :)

Second Wiki Post!

I just finished up editing "The Last Five Years" article on Wikipedia and it was even easier than the first time! The Last Five Years is one of my favorite musicals and I added a bit of information Wiki had left out. My edit told that "the show received a 2002 Drama Desktop award for outstanding music and lyrics". You can check out this great article here. Goodbye until tomorrow! (<-- musical theatre joke)

gCensus

I read an interesting article today on Slashdot entitled Making Sense of Census Data With Google Earth. The author of this post explains how Imran Haque has created a new program for Google Earth that takes information from the US Census Bureau and creates different layers over maps of the earth. Viewers can check these layers out to discover demographics of that area such as population ages, family size, race, etc. I am a huge fan of Google Earth and this new addition makes it even more incredible than it was before. Check it out for yourself!

An interesting topic from today's class

In class today, Professor Brown discussed how researching is done in the blogosphere. His question to us was "how many of you have used customer feedback on the web about a certain product?". I personally use this sort of information regularly, whether it be consumer reviews of cd's, movies or restaurants. Usually when I am purchasing a product I will check it out on Amazon (even if that is not the site I am buying from), just to read what other customers had to say about it. By allowing consumers to comment on products, businesses are opening up a whole new level of communication that not only is extremely helpful, but it can act as a form of free publicity if the item has been "favored" or rated highly.

Great post, Katie!

One of my group members, Katie, posted a very insightful message this afternoon. After learning the true definitions of "phishing" in class today, she realized she has seen this type of internet fraud first hand. I have also spotted these types of fake emails in my inbox, but never realized how they got there. As Professor Brown discussed in class, different programs are able to generate a random email address from different combinations of letters and numbers. They then use those addresses as their targets to subject them to different hoaxes, as Katie discussed in her post.

First Wiki Post!

I just completed my first Wikipedia post and it was a lot easier than I imagined it would be! I chose to edit the page of "Trumbull,CT" because that is my hometown. The man Trumbull was named for wasn't even mentioned, so I took this opportunity to do this. Fortunately, this man, Johnathan Trumbull, already has another article written about him so I was able to create a direct link there. This web stuff is pretty neat when you find out that you have more power than you thought! You can check out the article and my edit here. Over and out!

Blogging through life!

Well, so far I have found this class to be extremely interesting. Using a blog seemed strange at first, but I am starting to realize how important it really is, not only for this class but for the business world in general. As the importance of the internet increases in general, businesses will feel the reprecussions if they are not aboard the technology train. Not only do business get the chance to publish information on their blogs, but they can also receive comments increasing the interaction between the business and customer. The implications this has on marketing is huge and I am fortunate enough to have a head start on understanding the world of blogging. This blog has also increased my knowledge on the madness behind the magic of a typical website: html. To publish a blog post for the internet world to view, along with a hyperlink to a website of my choice is absolutely brilliant in my eyes! The final reason I am excited about this blog is that I have the chance to interact with my three group members. We can discuss this class, comment on eachothers blogs and allow our professor to view our progress... all leading to a high level of interaction. This stuff is really exciting, and I'm happy to be a part of it!!

First Post

Hello there. My name is Kerri Angell and I am currently finishing up my last semester at The University of Delaware. I am a marketing major and am looking foward to an exciting career in the field of advertising, hopefully in New York City this fall. I plan on touring Europe this summer with my best friend. We're currently searching for flights and would appreciate any advice on how to find the cheapest one! I personally can't wait to see Budapest. Thanks for checking out my blog! Over and out.