The Pnebleu Blog

I’m tested out. I had two tests today: History of Landscape Architecture in North America and Finance. I feel moderately satisfied with the LAND test, but I feel really good about the FINC test! Normally, the exam keys are posted online after the test is over, but they are not up yet. I’m anxiously awaiting them. I need to make an A on the finance test to have the chance to get an A in the class. I could make anything better than a C on the LAND test. My brain is a little fried this evening.

Two quizzes, two online lectures, and a paper are due Friday for my lame/boring Marketing class. The material could be presented in a much more engaging manner this it is currently. On Friday’s, we have breakout discussion sessions. These are used for simple group projects and, obviously, discussion of the topics. They are the worst part of this class. They are a waste of my time and don’t increase my understanding of the material in anyway.

Mays Business School will be “experimenting” with differentiated tuition this coming fall semester. One of the main reasons sited for this cash grab is the increase in the number of classes with breakout sessions. Most of the classes offered currently are of a large lecture nature, usually with 150+ students. My largest is about 350 students. The administration wants to reduce this number for the discussion sessions. My questions is why? Every breakout session I’ve had in the business school has been mostly a waste of time when I could have been learning more material in a lecture or just studying on my own. One of the reasons I love Texas A&M University would be the fact that most of the classes required are large lectures with 150+ students. I like the anonymity and unidirectional nature of these classes. I wanted to be a number: ***-00-**** (hidden for my safety).

Update: I just discovered that I made another 88 on my finance test.  This is the third test and the third 88.  I’m a little frustrated.  I’ll talk to the TA to discover the problem with one answer that I’m not sure why it’s incorrect.

The following is an essay I wrote in response to an assignment to identify and discuss my favorite viral marketing campaign and give the reasons why I selected it.  I’ll put the grade up here when I get it, if it’s good enough.  If I fail, I’m not going to tell you!

Viral marketing is not new, but its recent growth and increased power have brought it to the forefront of every corporation’s marketing department.  Every conscience marketer of product or service is trying to create a way for the customers to work for them.  File-sharing on services like Kazaa or on networking standards like BitTorrent is a great example of viral marketing.  A music customer rips a CD and uploads the music files to share with friends or strangers alike.  This is the perfect example of a virus in the market.  The music starts with one customer, and then someone else downloads the song.  If they like it, the song is shared with more people.  If they like it enough, that someone else may purchase other songs or albums from that artist, go to a concert, or become a die-hard fan willing to spend hundreds of dollars on merchandise and experiences related to that artist, just like some of the fans of Nine Inch Nails did.

On Sunday, March 2nd, 2008, Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV for sale in a variety of ways.  First, they offer a $5 package including all 36, DRM-free tracks in your choice of high-quality MP3, an open source, lossless format called FLAC, or in the Apple Lossless format which will work in iTunes.  This package also includes many extra features.  The next choice for $10 includes all of the above and a 2-disc CD pack shipped in April.  For $75, you get the five-dollar package, plus the 2-disc CDs, plus 2 hardcover books, plus a data DVD with source .wav files of the recording sessions for remixing, plus a Blu-ray disc of the 36 tracks in extremely high-resolution audio.  The last choice for $300 is a limited edition collection of only 2,500 sets signed and numbered by Trent Reznor which include all of the above and a four-LP set of Ghosts I-IV.  Next to all of these choices to purchase they offered Ghost I, consisting of 9 DRM-free tracks, for free to download as a sample.  They have also posted this sample on BitTorrent among other file-sharing avenues.  Giving away something for free to entice customers to buy more is not a new concept, but doing it in the music industry, which has so readily sued its customers for sharing the music, is innovative.  The standard thought in the industry is that if you give your music away for free the customers won’t buy anything from you.  That theory is starting to fall apart and Nine Inch Nails’ album release is a prime example for how the industry can virally market the music and still make money on it and other premium products or services.  By Tuesday, March 4th, all 2,500 limited edition collections had been sold for $300 each; that’s $750,000 from just the most expensive of the choices.  It’s too early to say how well Nine Inch Nails will do from this release and marketing strategy, but I’m pretty confident that it will be a large success.  Included with all of the packages are desktop wallpapers for your monitor, and more importantly I might add, twenty-two images specifically designed for use on the web.  They range in sizes and design for instant messaging icons, webpage banners, images for blog posts, and any number of other uses.  Nine Inch Nails wants to give its fans and all of the people who download the free sample an easy way to advertise and spread its product.  Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and many other bands or artists are quickly catching onto the fact that viral marketing of their music is an important and viable means of generating revenue.  They are also realizing that penalizing the fans for sharing the music with others is only increasing the number of people aware of the band and potential customers.

The reason I choose this campaign is because it is close to my interests and my experience.  I am very interested in technology and music.  The recent technological changes in the music industry have all happened within the grasp of my lifetime.  The most significant change is the digital conversion which has happened most recently.  Within this decade, 2000 to 2010, I believe that most music will move from a physical medium, such as record, cassette, or CD, to the digital medium.  Digital allows for much more flexibility in the quality, access, transportability, et cetera.  From listening to songs online, I probably bought 5 or 6 albums and then got my friends to buy several albums after listening to the music with them.  The songs we listened to were less quality than when the songs were played on the radio, and much poorer quality than the songs on CD.  The lower quality encouraged me to not be satisfied with the free listen but to pay for a higher quality or premium version.  One of the music industry’s main concerns is the availability of pristine, high-quality digital songs that can be copied limitlessly.  However, most consumers aren’t criminals and would be willing to pay for those perfect songs.  This leaves the door open to give out samples of music at moderate sound quality for the purposes of viral marketing.  The customer can get a medium quality sample of an album for free on a social networking site such as Last.fm or Facebook, which then entices them to buy the lossless, or perfect, quality full album from a music store or from the artist’s webpage.  Change is coming for the music industry, whether they like it or not.  There is a great opportunity for them to embrace file-sharing as a means of viral marketing and still be profitable, instead of litigating the fans for just spreading the word, and product, of their favorite music artist, which in the end only hurts themselves.

Animoto.com is a website for creating great photo slideshows with embedded music. This video is made from photos of this semester’s TAMU vs. Fresno St. game. I hope you like it. I’ve also tacked on another remix of the video with different photos and section of music.

I’m starting to feel more and more like we are living in a police state. Especially, with recent events in the news; like the Los Angeles protest gone bad. But, what starked this feeling in me, are the numerous law enforcement offices on the roads. City cops, state troopers, bike cops, county sheriffs, and unmarked police patrols are all on the highways and streets looking for anyone they can give a ticket. The few officers I know personally are nice, wonderful people, but the system and policy that is developing in law enforcement should be given look over.

Just the other day on Texas A&M University’s campus, I was walking to my car when two bike cops pulled over two women on bicycles. I don’t know what for or what happened, but they did ask for a driver’s license. From the looks of the students, they were headed to the Rec Center to workout, so they might not have their id. Before the pull-over, the officers on bikes where just standing around waiting for something to happen. I’m not saying that the girls got a ticket, but if that is what happened, the officers where on a stake-out. Do two women on bikes pose such a danger to society that two officers should spend their time watching people and bike move by? Couldn’t they be doing something else more productive or at a level that requires their skills, like say, investigating a robbery or assault that happen frequently on the North Gate side of campus? (North Gate is a strip of dance halls and bars, that have had a few assaults aimed at foreigners and minorities in the past couple of years.) I think that instead of focusing on alternative revenue gaining, the police force should be doing their job: enforcing criminal laws. Unfortunately, many of the laws are written to increase revenue instead of protect the public wellbeing. A shift in law-making and a review of current laws would need to occur to make a difference.

This morning on my drive to class, I saw an unmarked car that had pulled over what from all indications was a speeder. That is a complete contradiction of the goal of speed limit enforcement. By driving an unmarked vehicle, the police officer blends into traffic, allowing individuals to drive as they would. When he/she pulls over one speeder, the government will get the ticket revenue, but for the majority of the other cars on the highway will continue to drive at higher speeds. It’s like a wolf in sheep’s wool. However, when an officer is driving a patrol vehicle, it stands out and traffic slows to the appropriate speed. This accomplishes the goal of speed limits (“safer” driving conditions), but does not boost the government revenue. There is a conflict of interests when the law enforcement adds to the government wallet. The officials will be encouraged to “enforce” more and the legislature will be encouraged to write more laws to be enforced, and judges would be more likely to find cases in more the way of the government.

I’m not saying we live in a country that is corrupt, but to prevent corruption takes a vigilant populous. We need to be the moderators of our government, not the other way around.

Well, the grades are in. I managed to sneak in another 4.0! I was really worried about my Accounting class, but I did really well on the final so it bumped up my class grade! I’m so relieved! Now, I can relax until the 15th of January.

Ok, so it’s been four weeks since my last post. I do apologize. This semester is going to swamp me constantly. I’ve had three exams in 6 days with one more exam on Friday. I feel like I did okay; we’ll have to see. I’ve got two projects due on Monday and several chapters to read in all of my classes. But, I’m trying to, and for the most part succeeding, in staying on top of everything.

I do believe this culture of ours is overly stimulated and hyperactive. We always have something to fill in every last minute of our days. I’m guilty of this for sure. I have podcasts that fill up my “free” time. We all need to step back and just think; not about anything in particular or specific, just mentally float.

Something you may already know if you know me personally is that I’m a hopeless romantic. I’m the one who wants the guy to get the girl. Lately, I’ve just had a strong concern or desire to find a woman to complete my life. I want to find a soul mate to share everything with. I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about marriage lately; maybe it’s because I’ve been too busy to do anything social, but getting married has always been a strong desire of mine. Yes, I know, this is really deep so I’ll be moving on now.

I’ve had a pretty continuous argument with my dad about Wikipedia for the past couple of years. He says that it can’t be used for anything, because it is unreliable. I don’t believe that to be true. There have been many, many times that Wikipedia trumps any other place to find info for my college homework or studies. You have to take the info with a grain of salt, yes, but you have to do the same thing with college textbooks which are written by individually biased, intentionally or not, professors. Every time you go to a lecture or read a page out of a textbook, you are taking the word of the author that the information is accurate. With Wikipedia, you are taking the word of groups of people who have edited and are re-editing the page. Along with that, I believe that the history of the edits is available so viewers can go back and compare the different entries for false information or back and forth changes of a controversial issue. So, to sum all of this up, where ever you get your information, you must look at the source to verify accuracy.

Well it’s halfway through the second week of class and I definitely feel overwhelmed. I had to talk to Brook before I refocused and took on the challenge. I don’t know how I’m going to manage everything. But! But, I will! If there is anything I know about my life, it’s that God has given me the ability, so far, to excel in school. So, I will proceed with all of my wits about me to focus hard on the goal of continuing my 4.0!

Also, I still am in pain with my teeth, gums, and cheeks. I am stilling eating really soft foods. It hurts to smile. I don’t handle swallowing pills very well. (My subconscience keeps my mouth and throat from allowing the pill down.) Hopefully, it’s healing correctly and as fast as it can. I want to be done with it all!