Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Dell Adamo: All dressed up with nowhere to go?

Dell Adamo: All dressed up with nowhere to go?


http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10197525-1.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1


Dell computers has been on the forefront of the notebook and portable PC market for years.  They have been able to establish a huge market share for offering good internal computers for an affordable price, making them very popular among young adults and college kids.  However, they have just started to re shape their image with their new sleek laptop with incredible internal makeup. Dell's new Adamo is latin for to fall in love with and covet, what dell was trying to get its clients to do by falling in love with the new design and every detail.  

The owner of the company says that this is not going to be Dells bread and butter.  That rather than mass producing the Adamo all at once, they will use it to offer consistent consumers of Dell products a new type of notebook that emphasis its its razor-thin bezel around their 13.4 inch glass screen, a super thin profile etched in aluminum.  Put more plainly, "The value they get out of the product is in the halo effect they hope it brings to the entire product line and to the entire company," said Baker.

Over the past few years, Dell has focused much of its earlier advertising towards internal makeover.  This creates superior value for a customer in allowing them a to sacrifice all of the flashy components of other laptops but to focus on what is important.  Personally, I think that Dell is trying to be something that their not.  They have set up an already effectively and established AD campaign as well as already create a name for itself as a cheap but efficient computers and laptops.  This image has allowed Dell to become a major player in the computing market as a whole.  

A customer who wants to go to Dell, is not going to get the same kind of satisfaction anymore with their new focus on design.  People are not going to get the new satisfaction of buying a good but cheap computer capable of hanging with the best on the market with Mac and IBM.  Their new look is compromising their new release of technology both with the price and what's on the inside.  Their new computer is supposed to go for near 2000 dollars, which again can only deter potential customers, and only confuse their existing clients about their own Dell products themselves.



Sean Duane

Science Moves a Step Closer to Mind Reading

Scientists in London have found that it may be possible to read someone’s mind by simply examining their brain activity. In an experiment involving virtual games, the scientists found that they were able to find out in what part of the game the player was by using a scanner to measure their blood flow. The researchers were able to measure the activity of some neurons in the hippocampus, which controls navigation and memory. Eleanor Maguire of the Welcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging at University College London simply puts it, “In other words, we could ‘read’ their minds.” Although the idea that someone could read personal thoughts is a long way away, there is a possibility that in the future, machines will be made to read memories. Maguire points out that ultimately, this could help understand disorders like Alzheimer’s. In the neurons studied, memories of the past and visualizations of the future are encoded. Ultimately, this could lead to using this new technology to help solve forensic cases.
I feel that using this technology would be a major invasion of privacy no matter who is being tested. These days, it seems that the government is monitoring nearly everything we do and the fact that it is possible that they may eventually have the technology to read our minds will raise huge ethical issues. If this technology really develops into the possibilities stated in this article, people are almost certainly going to have a problem with it, as this idea is the most intrusive form of invasion of our privacy thought possible. On the other hand, it is almost impossible to ignore the fact that this idea of reading memories could revolutionize criminal justice. This technology goes way beyond lie detectors. To have the ability to read the memories of a potential suspect of crime could become a quick, definitive way of proving innocence or guilt. But despite the positive uses of mind reading, I feel that if this technology is put to use, the idea of reading memories will spend more time being argued than actually used.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29666474/

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Online Ads: Will Fewer, but Bigger, Be Better?

Robert D. Hol’s article, “Online Ads: Will Fewer, but Bigger, Be Better?” is about how numerous popular Web publishers are adopting a new display-ad format that they expect will captivate viewers and ultimately increase revenues. In the past few years, search advertisements have been booming while online display ads have decreased. The Online Publishers Association (OPA) announced last week that there will be three new display-ad formats that will hopefully engage readers more fully and allow online publishers to charge advertisers more. The new display ads will be bigger than standard display ads and will be more interactive. A unique aspect about the new ads is that it will allow viewers to bookmark them the same way one can bookmark a website, that way the viewer can go back to them at a later time. The article goes into further detail describing the “trio of new display-ad formats.” A few of the major Web publishers that are going to use the new ads are BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Time, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, USA Today, and several others that will, in total, account for two-thirds of the U.S. Internet audience. I think the new display-ads will catch on and definitely engage viewers more. I know that I personally ignore advertisements that I see on websites and cannot recall the last time I clicked one on the side of a web site. With fewer but bigger advertisements per page one may be more likely to focus in on the specific ad. These new display-ads will be an alternative to the “cheap ads” on many sites that “many premium sites think are devaluing their ad space.” The article goes on to talk about the ads taking over more of the screen and “in a potentially interruptive way for the user. If they annoy more than they engage, such ads could backfire.” I have the same concern regarding the ads because if the new interactive advertisement appears and maybe is too crazy or annoying it could cause the viewer to become annoyed and leave the site. The new ads are meant to “give more room for creativity to brand marketers” which could lead to advertisements that are too crazy or too outrageous. Andres Combuechen, CEO and chief creative officer of Atmosphere BBDO, the digital agency of agency giant BBDQ said, “The industry needs something new to get reinvigorated.” If the web has been lacking in innovation in this field I think it is a good idea to look towards alternative options. Marketers these days measure the success of advertisements by measuring the number of clicks, but how the new advertisements success will be measured is still unknown. Many believe that the web has become a “sewer” and that it needs to be renovated with new innovative aspects, such as these new display-ads. The new display-ads will hopefully give advertisers more “flexible, creative ways to engage with potential customers.”


http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090310_456699.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories