Jun 02

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Last Thursday, Ubisoft, a French video game developer, sent a safe containing the new Watch Dogs game. Ninemsn, a digital media company in Sydney, Australia, received the mysterious package without the voicemail message that was intended to be sent with it by Ubisoft. The package began to beep and with much concern, Ninemsn evacuated its office and brought in a bomb-squad.

While marketing techniques created by Ubisoft have been innovative in the past, this PR went too far in its promotional effort to hype the video game.

“Publicity

“The PR company no doubt got carried away with their creativity and ended up sending us something the bomb squad had to open up,” said Hal Crawfor, Ninemsn’s editor.

In response, Upisoft issued a statement apologizing for the delivery that did not go as they had planned.

“We will take additional precautions in the future to ensure this kind of situation doesn’t happen again,” Ubisoft said.

Does this stunt negatively affect their business? While a mishap like this circulates in the media, negative publicity scares can also give a bad reputation to a brand. But Watch Dogs is still the fastest selling game released from Ubisoft, and their current selling goal remains at over 6 million.

PR stunt or nah?

Sometimes, the PR is just laughable. Or is it meant to be PR at all?

Last week, 50 Cent gave the internet a good laugh after videos of his bad pitch at the Mets game circulated. Was it a publicity stunt? With a new album and TV show set to release soon, it seems probable. But 50 Cent denied this claim on Good Morning America as he claims that the ball just slipped.

 

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May 30

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May Staff Playlist

Author: cheyenne
POSTED AT 01:05 PM

Our theme this month is prep music! We’ve compiled our favorite background music to listen to while preparing or serving food. And it turned out to be a blend of pump-up jams and chill-wave flows for your enjoyment.

Haaris:
While I prep pure aggressive hip hop:

Wu Tang - “Ice Cream”
Hodgy Beats - “Turnt Down”
Odd Future or OFWGKTA - “Bitches Brewin”
Odd Future or OFWGKTA - “Bubble Gum”
Tyler the Creator - “Tamale”

When we eat it’s all about instrumentals and beats:

Flying Lotus - “Beginners Falafel” 
Omega One - “The Hashishin”
Boris - Flood (entire record)

Tad:
Boards of Canada - “Turquoise Hexagon Sun”
Tycho - “A Walk”
Sea Wolf - “Whirlpool”

Tracy:
Toro Y Moi and then Electric Guest if I need to get into a good mood.

Justin:
The XX - “Intro”
Tycho - “A Walk”

Jacob:
The Siket Disc!

Here’s a sample track “What’s the Use?” from the epic instrumental Phish album.

Wikipedia says: 
“The Siket Disc emerged from material developed during the Bearsville Studio sessions for Phish’s 1998 album The Story of the Ghost. Not exactly outtakes or unfinished songs, The Siket Disc’s compositions are actually select excerpts from the long-form improvisation of the “Ghost Sessions”. The Phish keyboard player Page McConnell edited and mastered the selections into this compilation, named for engineer John Siket”

Sean:
Fink is pretty good for background music - “Perfect Darkness”, “Yesterday Was Hard On All Of Us”
But I listen to Live Phish Radio a lot too.

Calia: 
The XX - “Sunset”
How To Dress Well - “Repeat Pleasure”

Cheyenne:
Clean Bandit feat. Jess Glynne - “Rather Be”
Classixx - “Holding On”

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May 02

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“Free

Free Comic Book Day is this Saturday, May 3rd! Take part in the stories and artwork that have sparked our imagination as well as the upcoming summer feature films, which we are all excited to see. Celebrate at a participating comic book store, throw on your cosplay outfit, and get ready to geek out!

Santa Barbara’s very own local comic book and gaming store, Metro Entertainment is having special events to celebrate Free Comic Book Day. This Saturday, they will be giving out free comic books, door prizes and storewide sales. They are also hosting autograph signings with the artists and writers of the Simpsons, plus another celebrity appearance from a Clone Trooper! Check out this site for the full schedule.

“Simpsons”

“Arc

In addition to our local comic book celebrations, Free Comic Book Day is taking place across the U.S. as well as worldwide. The comic book origins of these rich, epic, and fantastical stories can also be seen as they appear in this year’s major studio feature film line-up. This Friday, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be released in theaters.

“Spiderman”

The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Release Date: May 2, 2014

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Apr 23

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“Twitter

Yesterday, all Twitter users gained access to their new web profile. The ability to personalize profiles, much like recent Facebook updates, is allowing for an increased creative and multi-media experience on this platform.

What’s new? Larger photos and profile headers are featured at the top of the page. Best Tweets, those more popular amongst followers, will appear larger in font size to promote positive reception. Pinned Tweets allow you to place your favorite Tweet at the top of your profile. Filtered Tweets are used while browsing, and you can choose to view Tweets alone, with photos or videos, or with replies. Also, the new “Following” list has boards of profiles with header photos and descriptions that resemble Pinterest formatting.

Overall, the new format makes editing and managing profiles more intuitive. Bigger photos and fonts are an effort to make Twitter more accessible and personalized in real time. The new twitter, the new you: check it out here.

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Apr 17

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“Heartbleed
What happens when there are gaps in Internet security? The relationship between the user and the server is at risk of losing encryption. Encryption protects our privacy, passwords, business emails, credit card numbers, and basically all of the information we have given through webpages.

The Heartbleed bug threatens this security by leaving gaps in the OpenSSL software. This flaw exposes Internet memory and allows it to be read by anyone—without being detected. This bug has been in use since December 2011, and software packages have used this flawed version of OpenSSL on websites, apps, and other services since May 2012. This month, the Heartbleed Bug was first detected by a member of Google’s security team and by the software firm Condenomincon. This is good news because researchers located the problem before hackers did.

All sites that use OpenSSL software, like Yahoo, Airbnb, NASA, amongst others, are at risk. The bad news is that there is only so much you can do to recover or change what has already been exposed. For now, this OpenSSL flaw is the responsibility of Internet companies as they update their servers and take security actions. Companies have been sending warning emails to users, implementing patches to fix Heartbleed vulnerability on their severs, and making the decision to apply for new digital SSL certificates.

What can you do? First, check websites of use and read through this list to see if a provider you use has been affected and if they have updated to fix Heartbleed. You can also change your passwords and watch activity on sensitive online bank or email accounts as precautions.

While changes are progressing to fix the Heartbleed bug, it is still highly catastrophic because memory has already been compromised, and it is a difficult technical process to fix the gaps.

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Feb 28

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Oscar Worthy

Author: cheyenne
POSTED AT 12:02 PM

“Oscars”

It’s that time of year again to roll out the Hollywood red carpet, pop some popcorn or champagne, and start the bets. The 86th Academy Awards hosted by Ellen DeGeneres premieres this Sunday. And if Leo DiCaprio doesn’t take home his first Oscar, I’m sure there will be a riot. So, who will take home the trophies?

According to The Credits, predictions have been made for every award category. The Social Awards App has been used to track and analyze predictions of critics and audiences alike. For best actress, Cate Blanchett is pulling the majority in for her role in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. For Harvey Wienstein’s Philomena, actress Dame Judi Dench is Blanchett’s closest competitor. For best actor, Leonardo DiCaprio is in the lead along with the buzz around Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. His closest competitor is Matthew McConaughey from Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club. Tom O’Neil of GoldDerby.com, where Oscar experts make predictions, states that Leo’s advantage of being overdue for an Oscar along with his best performance of his career put him in the lead. But McConaughey has been receiving positive acclaims through his role on HBO’s True Detective.

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Jan 24

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“VineVsInstagram”

Celebrating its one-year anniversary today, Vine is moving forward as a mature social network. Vine is achieving this goal with their life-long partner Twitter who realized the potential to install the built-in video platform a year ago.

Colin Kroll, Vine’s GM and co-founder, expects more collaborations, cameos, and hardware hack innovations to continue appearing on the feed.

But how is Vine changing after one year of service? Kroll states, “This year, we’re really focused on making it easier to discover videos and find new accounts.”

This app integration has been keeping up the competitive creativity of Vine against its similar social platforms like Instagram Video, Snapchat, and Youtube. However, the six-second videos of Vine continue to breed a unique creativity and production amongst other mobile video players.

Advertisements, film trailers, and actors’ comedic skits have all utilized Vine to achieve publicity, discovery, and monetary gains. Their influence in the past year has impacted other social media platforms to keep up and add additional video options.

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