Team Edward or Team Jacob?

Unless you haven't left your house in the last several months I'm certain you've heard of the phenomenon that is (cue suspenseful music)..."Twilight"!

The series of vampire fantasy novels have teen and young adult audiences buzzing. Although, the target demographic for the book was teenage girls, I've found many of my friends in their late 20's and early 30's to be equally as obsessed with the handsome vampire and his plain-jane lady love. I'm talking locked in their bedrooms, reading in the car, constant dinner conversation, 'I wish I could find a guy that is just like Edward,' nuts over this series.

I'm baffled that a book intended to entertain a 15 year old girl could hold the attention of somebody (presumably) more mature. Of course, my "adult" friends claim "Oh, it's just an easy read", but then they send mass emails to organize a viewing of the upcoming film version and have endless discussions about who is the better choice for the heroine - the line being clearly drawn between Team Edward and Team Jacob.

I'm impressed with the generational span this series has. I can't think of many products that appeal to both a teenager and a 30-something, except maybe a new car.

I personally have not read any of the books, but with each friend I lose to the Twilight addiction I become more and more curious at what exactly is so enticing about these stories.

Maybe I'll have to cave and just sink my teeth into them...(pun totally intended).

Lindsay, Campaign Manager
Lunch Today: Lean Cuisine, apple w/ peanut butter, and green tea

UPDATE: I bite into the first novel and now I should probably just bite my tongue...sigh...I'll be locked in my room catching up on the series if you need me.

CHOCOHOLIC!

Do you remember the last time you were craving chocolate?

Do you also remember what it felt like when you saw the small variety of good chocolate at the store?

And no, I am not talking about Hershey’s chocolate or all the other candy bars out there. I know some people really like Hershey’s & Co., but come on - face the real world - that stuff isn’t really that great.

If you ever get a chance to go overseas, check out the grocery stores with their AISLES of chocolate. Growing up in Europe and always being able to access the really good stuff, I was used to eating chocolate every day. I have to admit, I am a ‘CHOCOHOLIC’ and I cannot live without my chocolate for a single day.

So, when I came to the U.S., one of my first tasks was to find good chocolate. After weeks of eating some good and some bad chocolate, I ended up calling my mom and telling her to send me a package with my favorite chocolate. When that package finally arrived, I ripped it open and I ate two bars right away.


My favorite chocolates are Lindt’s Creation 70% (ALL of them) and MILKA caramel.



Especially around the holidays, they come up with all those new varieties and I am already waiting for my monthly package of chocolate from my mom….. and like every month, I will rip open that package and eat a bar of really good chocolate.

BON APPÉTIT & HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Doreen, Research Assistant
Lunch today – salad and a doughnut

When Value Meets Values

The Internet changed lots of things in lots of really neat ways.

Now that my overly-general attention-grabbing intro-sentence is out of the way, let’s get down to business, specifically, how the Internet has dramatically changed the way businesses start, operate, and fail.

Several variations on how to achieve the end goal of any business (making stacks, piles, and swimming pools of money) have arisen in the recent times, all varying in their experimental nature. Chris Anderson coined the concept of “The Long Tail” in an article for Wired Magazine in 2004. He has gone on to write two books on the topic and endless blog posts. The name comes from a power law distribution curve which (think back to graphing in Algebra, it’s very close to the graph of an exponential function). Traditionally businesses focus on selling only the most popular products, especially when it comes to media like books or music. Businesses like Amazon and Netflix have shifted that norm by overcoming costs of stocking and distribution by leveraging the Internet to reach a huge audience and offer them an unimaginable array of options at a very low cost. Thus making more money off of the nearly infinite ‘tail’ of the graph rather than the ‘head’. Essentially selling more of less popular items than possible ever before.

Another strategy employed by many Web 2.0 companies has become known as Freemium. Again, companies like Flickr, Second Life and Rapidshare use the Internet to reach a very large number of people for almost no money and then proceed to give away their service but offer paid premium memberships with added features. This model works because of the scale, if only 1% of users pay $25 for a year of your service and you have 10 million users, well do the math. The percentage of paid customers varies greatly depending on the service. Club Penguin, for instance, has 25% of monthly unique visitors sign up to pay $5 a month, where as most shareware software programs often see less than .5% of users paying.

This brings us to the “pay as you wish” method, which allows the consumer to pay only as much as they see fit. Obviously very counterintuitive, this idea was employed by Radiohead, Saul Williams and many other artists as a new way to distribute their music. Certain others are refusing to take money for their work, San Diego singer-songwriter, Joel P. West, is offering his album only in exchange for a creative work (photo, poem, song, painting etc.) to be posted on the album’s blog.

With all these evolving business models, the value of a service or product really comes to the forefront especially when leaving the monetary payment for said object to be determined by its consumer. This is a truly fascinating concept, which would revolutionize commerce. As many social scientists theorize, our personal sets of values are determined mainly by the culture surrounding us in our pre-adult years and the order in which we prioritize these values shifts around through the course of our lives based on the scarcity or need for them. For example, during a drought, the need for clean drinking water comes to the forefront of many people’s minds. My question is this: what if everything we consumed was paid in accordance with the ordering of your values set at any given time?

JZ, Graphic Designer
Lunch: Supafood Smoothie and Everythang Bagel wif Hummus

Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends

The economic "slowdown" is having a negative impact on most people, especially college students (current and future) who rely on student loans to cover the immediate costs of education.

Lenders are raising interest rates on both private and federally guaranteed loans to offset the turmoil in the credit markets. I personally managed to get out of college without a single loan - except for the ones I issued to myself on my Credit Card to attend spring break festivities in Fort Lauderdale (yikes!). However, majority of my fellow students were looking at several thousand dollars of debt at graduation.

So, what can students do to finance their college experience in these tough times?

Well, not everyone has a rich Uncle to rely on, but GreenNote has a solution (www.greennote.com) that just might be crazy enough to work. They have created a website based on the idea of using your personal networks (friends, family, friends of family, community) to generate a student loan.


If you want it. Just ask for it. It's that simple.

GreenNote provides the platform for potential post-secondary students to ask their networks for the money they need to continue their education - and the tools for lenders to provide the funding at a low interest rate (6.8%) to the student in need.

What do the lenders get? A small return on their investment and the good-feeling knowing they helped a young mind achieve the foundation of their future; a solid education.

Lindsay, Campaign Manager
Lunch Today: Tuna and artichoke sandwich, potato salad and green tea

Gratification

I am not usually one to follow the crowd when it comes to material things, although in some cases it is necessary in order to keep up with our developing society. Helping to develop this society is one of the leading trend setters, Apple Inc.

I don’t understand the meaning behind gigahertz and rams and pixels and processors, but I am captivated by the sleek design of Apple’s products and I think we can all agree that when a new product of theirs is released, people go hog wild. My concern is with the shelf life of these trendy products. One year after the original iPhone arrived in stores, the next generation iPhone 3G was making its debut. My question is this: At what point do we have the best product?

We all seem to want the “best” or the “fastest” or sometimes even the most expensive products, but I have been finding it hard to reach this goal. About a year and a half ago, Apple released the new MacBook Pro with a new operating system, new screen, etcetera, etcetera. Well, recently they released the newest version of the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Therefore, I’m sorry to all of you who have recently purchased what would now be considered an outdated version.

Do we really need the thinnest computer or the sleekest phone? In other words, when do we decide if enough is enough? I have to admit that I’ll probably purchase one of these new computers at some point when my four year old Toshiba takes its last breath, but I’m not so sure that a four finger multi-touch buttonless glass keypad, will really make my life any easier.

Ashton, PR coordinator
Lunch: Two slices of pepperoni pizza bought with USD CampusCash

Halloween Costumes Gone Awry!

Remember the innocent days of Halloween costumes that were once cute, scary, or funny?

Maybe it’s just because I was younger, but as a child I never remember seeing adults or teens dressed up in revealing costumes that now seem to line the walls of nearly every Halloween store around. Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with a sexy vampire or witch costume every now and again, but lately it seems like everything has gotten so sexed up that even Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz has been transformed into a harlot!

I think the worst part about the new fad of provocative costume designs is the fact that they are usually marketed to teens. Sure, there are still some modest costumes out there, but the trend seems to be pushing towards showing more skin. Even childish get-ups such as Rainbow Brite, Little Bo-Peep, and Little Red Riding Hood have been taken to extremely distasteful proportions.

By no means am I a prude and if you’re an adult then I say you can wear whatever you want, but I just think there is something morally corrupt in leading young teen girls into thinking that they have to buy sexy costumes to look cute. Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer original and creative costumes to any pre-packaged, overly-mature attire any day of the week!

Brittany Hook, Editor
Lunch: Home-made potato salad, a croissant, and strawberries.

After reading Brittany's blog post I saw a ton of news coverage on this exact topic. Including a story from my hometown of Minneapolis. The folks at the Today show did a good job of covering this rather concerning issue as well. Here's the video of the story.

This trend became quite evident to me during my college years when it seemed that Halloween became an excuse to go to the bars in your underwear, but now this trend has trickled down to the youngsters and parents are having to navigate their young children away from provactive and overtly sexual halloween costumes targeted directly at the youth market.

Oh, the horror!

Lindsay, Campaign Manger
Lunch: Coffee and a Luna bar