Music technology

The technology for music production has changed dramatically in the past 50 years, however the instruments and talent required to produce respectable music has not. An electric guitar, drums, bass, for example are the most popular instruments for consumers to purchase today, however the technology hasn't changed since the sixties. Zildjan cymbals have been around for hundreds of years!
The processing and equipment used in the recording of music, however, is extremely high tech and is very expensive. Im not really sure where I am going with this but perhaps someone might want to popularize a new instrument. The barrier to entry as you may guess is pretty high.

This is my last blog post and I will miss it dearly.

Sgnig out. Yours truly,

mike rudolph

What is the best way to advertise?

Free stuff? Possibly free food? Viral maketing? The interweb? Nude girls? Balloons? Spotlights? Steel drums? Cotton candy? Jousting? Carnival rides? Posters? Flash mobs? TV commercials? Blog posts? Catchy tunes? Famous people endorsement? National disasters? Photography?

The world may never know the most successful marketing strategy. Mainly because it's very cicumstantial.

Probably cotton candy, though....

To specialize or not?

I was with my girlfriend at a place in Charlottesville VA that specializes in the "Gus burger" which is basically a cheeseburger with a fried egg on top. As I drunkenly waited for my Gus Burger with bacon, I pondered whether it's better to specialize in one product and be really good and well known for it versus having a decent selection of products.

I am convinced that if you want to make MOanaeY, then you do one thing efficiently an just pump them out to the crowds. It's like canyon pizza or Ritas Italian ice. You can just concentrate one one thing, but it has to be done right. Keeping it sime is morey style, I think.

Autotyping

Data entry is still pretty difficult on mobile devices despite the current technology that exists. If there were a better interface that used something like voice recognition, then it would significantly increase the usability and safety of these devices. Things such as texting while driving and even while walking are dangerous. Although it reduces the privacy by requiring vocal input, we certainly wouldn't eliminate typing. I dis read an article recently that Apple just bought a company, Siri, that wrote an "assistant" software for the iPhone that uses voice recognition to do things like make reservations, find out what's going on around town, or type messages. Pretty cool.

Photography idea

If you could hire someone to follow you around for a night on the town and you could afford to pay them like $50, would you do it? I'll put random details here that may be difficult to follow - there's my disclaimer.

Sometimes I wish I could afford it, because this weekend, for example, was ridiculous. In one night I broke up a fight that random people were in and talked a group of about 20 people out of it while simultaneously telling people at another party that it was my friend Justin Wyne's 21st birthday (he's 22). The results of this legendary idea were unconscionable.
Iirst off I find myself in this random apartment with like 5 guys apologizing to everyone and then I say "alright then, have a good night" as I turn to leave someone says "wait, who are you?" we laughed and I went on my way back to the party Justin was at.

Justin was playing along with it quite nicely as well as the fact that all the girls at this party were pretty tipsy. Anyway, Justin got way more attention than I would have ever imagined from these girls and it was just awesome.

Saturday was Movin' On, and the band I play with was the winner of Battle of the Bands to play there so we played and then we decided on a whim to buy a lot of beer. ANYWAY...I wish someone was there to follow us around because I laughed so hard this whole weekend that I can't seem to remember why.

BLOGS

Well I guess it might be because of my crazy schedule, or lack of motivation at this point, but for some reason I find it difficult to remember that I even have this blog to write in. The notes I write to myself here and there are just glanced at when I open my notebook. I gaze into the distance and ponder what I should do and blogging doesn't seem to pop into my head. Maybe it's the fact that my secrets are so amazing that there's this intrinsic part of me that wants to protect the ideas.

Anyway, perhaps it's because we're not reminded in class so I just randomly remember I have to do this and then write about nonsense. There should be a search engine that filters out nonsense. It would check against this blog post and if an article or page is anything like it, it would just be hidden from the results. How on Earth is a stranger going to find this blog and then take the time to read this. All I know is that it will be stored in a database somewhere and cached into the system and will come up in someone's search one day and they will have wished there was some filter that hid crap like this from view.

That's all.

DRUNKNKKKK

I'm not drunk. BUT apparently there's an excessive drinking problem at Penn State?! I was thinking about it today after reading an article in the Daily Collegian (here), why might this be?

The culture that Penn State students have established for themselves seems to revolve around getting drunk. What can be done to curb this? Apparently passing laws to make people who have parties responsible for guest's bad behavior EVEN after they leave...This seems kind of ridiculous (and illegal?). Perhaps the we should promote more local events that involve art, music, and recreational activities that actually help the brain.

Businesses in the area that don't serve alcohol tend not to do well. I'm not saying to eliminate alcohol. Who cares if college students want to drink? Why can't we instead forget the drinking problems and rather than concentrate on increasing the penalties for drinking related infringements, we should concentrate on events that can bring money into the community and distract from the need to binge drink.

Free live music in the streets on First Thursday is a great example of this. Perhaps make a similar activity on the weekends where people could set up booths and vendors could sell food and arts and crafts in the street. This is wildly popular in Germany and even for Arts Fest during the summer. WHY NOT?

Let's do it. Well, I don't care anymore because I'm graduating, but someone else should do it.

Website PR

It's quite difficult to advertise your business online for free. You either need to come up with a great idea for the promotion, or give something away for free. To create a buzz online without SPAMMING people, bombarding them with information that they don't care about, takes a lot of thought.

Perhaps we can do some search engine optimization by having other people promote our website through theirs by posting links to our site. ANother way is by twitter. Judging by our results, all the time I've spent promoting on Facebook and Twitter - it's only gotten us like 50 emails.

We have had people visit our site 841 times, and have 446 emails. We haven't had much action since our first promotion. They are trickling in. I do find that once I re-post to twitter/Facebook we do see a little surge in traffic. I think it comes down to just bothering the hell out of people until they get curious and check it out...

Or perhaps a free item giveaway...

Idea for "Mise En Place" Ordering

In the world today it's difficult to take the time go shopping to prepare truly fresh ingredients for a meal. The winner of this year's TED Talks wish was Jamie Oliver (http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html) - a chef who says that he wants to cut down on obesity since heart diseases and other diseases related to diet is killing more and more people every year. He wants every person to be able to prepare at least 10 fresh meals at home and to understand nutrition and eating healthy. So here's our idea:

It's kind of like netflix, but for fresh groceries. There will be a website that has a selection of recipes on it. You can choose from the available recipes and order something online up to a couple of days in advance. There will be a distribution center where you can pick up the raw ingredients in the portions you'll need, but not prepared yet. The customer can then take the package home, and follow the instructions to prepare a quick, delicious, and healthy meal. This can help save time with shopping and deciding what to cook for the evening. Because we're doing it on a large scale, the price won't have to be much extra for this huge convenience.

We'll even try to partner with local farmers with the advance ordering so they can take advantage of this program.

The distribution center can also offer cooking classes for those who aren't exactly sure what to do.

Volunteering & Social Entrepreneurship

There are so many ways people could help the world while starting a business at the same time. It really takes some getting involved with this type of thing though to see the importance. There are people all over the world that have much less then us and it's difficult to imagine. At this stage in our lives we tend to just think of ourselves and aren't really capable of feeling for others. This is understandable and I'm usually guilty of the same crime.

This spring break, though, I decided to spend it helping to build a home with Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. The guy we were building for had lost all of his belongings in his home when Hurricane Katrina hit. It's hard to imagine such devastation, but once you get out there and meet the people that had this happen to them and hear their stories first hand, you become a little more compassionate.

With this experience, it is obvious there are many ways that we can do things to help other people and benefit society at the same time. Creating a product or business that saves lives or helps improve peoples' lives in the form of a nonprofit organization doesn't necessarily mean you don't make any money. I can certainly see that one might not make as much money, but the feeling you get when people are grateful because of your actions is worth more than money.

Emerging Markets: Toys for Adults

You may or may not be surprised, but toys are becoming extremely popular. Sex toys, that is. The market for high-tech sex toys is booming (link to NYTimes' article...), and it's making their inventors (and consumers) very happy indeed.

Just last week, a man unveiled his $7000 talking sex robot (link to CNN's article...) invention, of which he apparently has received hundreds of orders already. I don't know how much it costs to produce each one, but if there's a market for something this outlandish then the simple doodads and hoosawhatsits out there to tickle your "fancy" must be selling like crazy.

I live with 5 girls that are in a sorority (Craigslist...another post, haha). I've recently learned about "slumber parties" or just referred to as "parties" where a sales representative comes and sells sex products to a group. The point is that one of these parties sells about $700 worth of items.

In Australia and Germany, for instance, I've seen sex shops on main streets that look like a small Best Buy store. Non-discreet nor shameful, they were almost classy. It's a more open kind of thing there, I suppose.

What I'm saying is that someday you'll wish you had thought of the iPod of sex toys and had the guts to move the idea forward.

Oldies but goodies

You know what market(s) you probably don't think about much??????

Old people...or elderly to be P.C.

Baby boomers have JUST begun to turn 60 in the last couple of years. It would be wise to get to know the elderly and decide what their problems may be or what their fears/desires/needs are. You don't need to invent some sort of new pacemaker or anything to keep them alive (though that's certainly wonderful), but something that improves their lives will be just what brings in the huge profits.

You know who's smart? Apple. Everyone's like "Ohh the iPad is so lame" but I personally think their target market is going to end up being these elderly people that aren't very technically savvy and want a simple, large, easy to use device that puts all of their books and communication capabilities in one place. Even better, the closed interface along with the App store - you can't screw it up!! It's frustrating to me and anyone that's accidentally installed WeatherBug or some crazy toolbar to have your computer bogged down by unwanted applications. The iPad has been made pretty foolproof in this sense, don't you think?! It's not for me, but perhaps in 50 years I'll buy something a young'n has developed for people my age.