Class Assignment: Parsing the Future

The link that I found the most interesting was for EveryBlock (http://sf.everyblock.com/). This is a good website for my major in PR because, we need to know what is going on with the people. PR needs to stay connected with the people and what they are doing. With this website, we are able to find out what is going on in the area or abroad. From business reviews to crimes that occur, we are able to look at what is going on. This website gives PR another way to see what people are doing at the time, and how it relates to their business decisions.

This also relates with #56 from the Cluetrain Manifesto, “These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other's voices.” As said before, there needs to be a connection between the people and the PR agencies. When working together there can be success for both sides.

This website not only helps PR connect with the people and see what they are up to, but it can inform them. People are often looking for things to do or places to go, this website can inform people and it gives great publicity to companies.

I think this website can expand and people will be able to use it on a daily basis, but they need to first know about the website and what it does. With the publicity of the website, comes publicity of many companies.

I found this website great for PR and for the rest of society.

Cluetrain Manifesto

After reading the 95 thesis' from the Cluetrain Manifesto, I felt that many were confusing and hard to relate to, but there were also a great amount that are very relatable. The most interesting one that I found, was #12, "There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone." I thought this was a great one. It is very true in today's world more than it ever was 10 years ago when this was written. Our access to the internet gives us the oppurtunity to talk with people that have used the products and have either liked them or not. We are able to get a breakdown. Going to company websites gives us the ideal look of what the product may be, but searching further about this item gives us the true answer of whether it is good enough. All the big items that I buy, I research about them a little bit. For example, I just purchased a new cell phone. It looked cool on television, on the website and in the store, but was it worth the money? I searched around on th internet and found awesome results. It helped me stray away from certain phones and help me choose the one I would get my money's worth. Another example would be Ratemyprofeessor.com. Going into a new semseter is always worrisome, but when you are able to get feedback from previous students, you get to know the professor more and decide if you want to take their course or not. This thesis is a perfect one becuase we often find ourselves looking for the answers that the corporate world wants to hide from us. Talking to other consumers gives us the true answers, sometimes goo and sometimes bad.

My major of PR was brought up in #26, "Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets." I would have to disagree with this because the job of public relations is looking out for the greater good of the public. They are helping the companies work and share their products with the public in the correct and healthy manner. Public relations is not afraid of the public, they are there to get close to them and understand them.

This manifesto was good to read and look at something that was written a good amount of time ago when computers were just taking off. These are still relatable and useful just some are understood a little differently.

Header

Here is a web page header that I made in class today. Hopefullly I can work on it more or make another one with all the information I gathered in class!

Blogs I'm Following

The two blogs that I will be folling for this class will be a Public Relations and Publicity Blog (http://101publicrelations.com/blog/) and another public relations blog with PR tips (http://www.sspr.com/blog/category/pr-tips/).

And the Winner is......

Hillary Clinton and John McCain took the state of California on Super Tuesday. It was an exciting night filled with winners and losers from not only the candidates, but the voters too. Voters in Alameda County had one very big problem. They ran out of Democratic ballots in many locations. Some places had people using ballots of different languages or photo copies of the ballot. This problem led to many issues. A judge decided to open the polls to a later time, 10 pm. Many people were told the wrong information via internet, radio, and television that it was open all over instead of particular places. Some ballots were accepted in places and others were turned down. There seemed to have been a lot of confusion with the workers. Not only was there confusion in this situation but with the ballots themselves. There was not electronic voting or whole poking, but rather connecting the lines. There were some misunderstandings with voters. This is was a new way of voting and some were not informed on how to do it correctly. Instead of connecting the lines, many people circled the candidate or checked next to their vote. The country was filled with a lot of voting throughout the day, which led to big surprises and obvious wins. It was a thrilling day for the country and we shall wait and see how the rest of the country continues to vote!

Photoshop Part 2

Today in class we worked a little bit more with photoshop. This picture was slightly altered. Being that it is older and has many spots we cleared a section of spots, cropped it, and changed JPEG to TIFF and then back to JPEG for this blog.