Who won't give in to the holidays?

Just about every industry has reinvented the meaning of a holiday. They have taken the religion aspects out and besides from even that, the innocence out as well. They have trained us consumers well, with their ads and brainwashes. Christmas, has been molded into a holiday of perfection and scored according to how much those presents you recieved cost. We've allowed them, the businesses, to control basically every holiday. Holidays have lost their meanings, they've all been turned into a reason to binge shop.

Every year Christmas is rushed earlier and earlier. I usually notice it the day school starts that some Christmas decorations are mixed in with Halloween. This year, however, it was the end of August I saw Reindeer dolls in CVS. I love the holidays, but I feel like thats really killing it. As I looked through these Reindeer dolls, there was Cupid dolls mixed in. These weren't clearance items, and they're still there now too.

I realized that these dolls I saw weren't placed early by mistake, stores are trying to stimulate the holidays even earlier this year.

Businesses are taking advantage of us, they know that we are weakend from the economy. Some even say our economic problems are behind us. Ether way, even if thats true, shouldn't we be saving our money so we don't repeat the debt trend again?

I think that its scary that these ads and slogans are used to lure us into spending. They make us think that we are doing something good for others. Meanwhile, we are only hurting ourselves. Even if you can afford to spend $5,000+ on Christmas, why not cut your budget down to 2,500$? Then if and when the economy declines again, you will have an extra $2,500 stashed somewhere.

We don't have that choice though. The only choices that we have are what these stores tell us we have. I know people that already have their trees up and decorations. People this year are really craving what the holidays are known to bring. They really want to feel the happiness brought on by decorating. Stores know this, they want you to feel that feeling too. Because when your happy, everything is great and you don't care at that moment how much cash you waste in presents.

This is a dissapointing, sad, and scary situation.

Trying to keep up with the consumers

I read an interesting New York Times article about the movie industry and how its trying to keep with up with consumers. The goal is they don't want to be harmed like the music and newspapers industries have been. Netflix has, however, hurt the industry some. People want to save cash and don't really care about owning DVDs anymore.

When I was younger it use to be like a competion of who had the most CDs, DVDS or VHS tapes. But that fad quickly became uncool. We would have pride in spending 300$ on a DVD set and put it on display. Now we have nothing, how do you display a digital copy of something? You can't so it's not important to us consumers anymore.

Disney is starting something called, Keychest. Keychest really suprised me because I would think the company would loose money by doing this. It actually saves you money because Disney tracks your digital purchases. You have the ability to watch a movie on your cell phone and finish it on demand on your tv. Thats pretty cool and flexible. I really like that idea.

Hopefully, all the companies follow. So that when you purchase a movie you own the rights to it in any form. Companies want this, they want us to have a way to still display that special collectors edition or whatever they would call it. They don't want us to give up on movies no matter what form they may come in. They don't want people to stop purchasing. They want that special charm that use to drive us to buy that movie.

Why don't we care anymore? Maybe because we realized we can get it cheaper, and we have less space by not storing it in our house. I don't think its as special though because we don't physically have it. I never buy movies anymore and if I do I watch it once and thats it. So whats the point of spending that money when I can get it on demand cheaper?

Its so amazing how what use to be special to us turned into clutter and none sense. I wonder what comes after digital? Or is digital here to last? Look how fast we went from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray. When is digital going to change? How can the movie industry keep up when everything is constantly changing formats and we demand new things. I believe the only way is that we know when we purchase a movie, we own those rights for life and can get it however we want. But that option would probably come at a very expensive price for the consumer. Why would we want to pay that? We aren't the ones who care about owning it, its the movie industry that is wanting us to care.

Books turning more digital

Amazon's Kindle isn't the only e-reader, but, up until last week it was the more dominant reader on the market. Barnes & Nobles is firing back with their own Kindle version called the Nook.
Most people I know perfer reading actual books - I don't know anyone with a Kindle and I've never seen one up close. In the past I did think about buying one but realized its a waste of money. There still aren't a wide selection of books available, and usually when I'm done with a book I pass it on to someone else to read. With a e-reader you can't do that unless you actually lend them the reader.

Right now, I don't think books are endangered but they will be soon. As technology progresses and these e-readers improve books will begin to dissolve. But I think it just all depends on how the younger generations are conditioned towards books. People today feel so lost and vulnerable without their cell phones but for hundreds of years cell phones never even existed. Most likely we will be conditioned to be lost without our "Kindle" or "Nook". We, as people, have been accomodated so that when we want something we get it. I love that freedom, if I forget to look something up during the day and it pops in my head before bed - I have the freedom to just look it up online without having to get up.

So if theres a book we really wanted and didn't want to wait to drive to a book store or have it shipped in a week with the Kindle you can get it instantly. How convienant is that? But its also very addicting. If you had to drive or wait for a book to come in the mail everytime you wanted it you would refrain from buying them. The Kindle allows you to empty your bank account quickly and conviently. I like freedom but not that much freedom.

Maybe now that the "Nook" is out, Amazon will lower their prices on their "Kindle" but then again Amazon will probably just improve their "Kindle". Even though I am edgy about e-readers, my prediction is that since the Kindle is the ipod of books, in 5 years almost everyone will own one.

Cablevision vs. Verizon

Last year when Cablevision acquired Newsday, I knew it was only a matter of time before they would block the site to customers only.

Beginning next Wednesday if you don't subscribe to Newsday or aren't an Optimum customer it will cost you 5$ a week for access on newsday.com

Newsday isn't the first site to limit their site without a fee such as, The New York Times. Why should you buy a Newsday if you can easily access it for FREE online? But who wants to pay to go on a site to read the news? I wouldn't. Especially since its Newsday, their information is usually loaded with a bunch of errors and inaccuracies. Everything that Newsday has is from yesterday morning. By the time I read it I already know the missing information that wasn't known when it was written.

Cablevision said their reason was that ads had decline because of the economy and that they really just wanted to focus on Long Islanders. But every page in the paper is their own advertisement for their "Triple Play". Can we say waste of money?

I don't think Newsday's or Cablevision's reason to require subscription to their site is the same reasons why The New York Times has a subscription policy on their site.

For many years, Cablevision felt very threatened by Satellite companies. I think when they finally won over that competition, and built confidence by taking over the landline industries...they just seemed so undefeated. This company is the biggest monopoly going. When Verizon was granted the right to begin their Fiber optics network, I noticed Cablevision gearing their advertising towards businesses instead of residential customers.

Verizon, I don't think is going to be going anywhere, they are really trying to take Cablevision down. Cablevision's one strength was they were the only company that carried their channel News 12. Even though Verizon is unable to get that channel, they decided to launch their own local news channel. When I heard that over the summer, it was surprising, and what a brave move on their part.

Back to Cablevision, I believe that blocking their Newsday site is just another way of blocking Verizon. For the longest time I noticed that every other page in the paper was Verizon and then "Optimum Triple Play". I thought, what the?? That makes no sense, why advertise your competitor. Finally, at the end of the summer, Newsday decided to cut Verizon ads.

This topic is something I love reading about, there are just so many ways Cablevision has tried to be the only "Long Island" company and never really had true competition until now. As a Cablevision and Newsday customer, I like to see the competition. Being on the sidelines, I enjoy watching Cablevision try holding their weak acquisitions, while fighting against the tenacious Verizon Corporation.

Foursquare me?

Besides Facebook, Twitter is becoming the more dominant social networking site. But soon that may all change. I recently read in a New York Times article about a growing site called "Foursquare". This site has yet become popular but it fills in the missing gaps that Twitter leaves out. Foursquare allows people to really know where their friends are they can stop by and say "hi". Now I don't know why anyone would want to do this...but I can see people following this fad. I however, would find it creepy and I don't feel like I need a site to tell my friends where I am. If I want them to know where I am, then I would have already invited them to come. But Foursquare is used to INVITE them instead. People who use this site don't text or call their friends to come out to eat anymore. They look online and see if their friends are local to meet up with. It seems like soon one day we don't even know what our friend's voice sounds like....whats next? We have lunch on a virtual site? People are becoming less and less present on Earth and more and more present in a virtual world...we are all so disconnected from what use to be reality. We are recreating new ways of socializing...more convenient ways that come with many risks.


Foursquare though, does have some good things about it. Its a site that actually motivates people to leave their homes and go out to places and do things. Because unlike any other social networking site this site is a game too. If your someone who goes to the same Starbucks everyday and are part of Foursquare you could actually be the mayor of Starbucks. You win awards for the amount of times you go somewhere. People compete with their friends to be the mayor of a location and feel threatened when they're dethrone from their seat. So this makes people want to keep going out to their favorite places.

Advertisers have picked up already, "For a small business with a limited advertising budget, it’s a great way to promote ourselves,” said Olivia O’Neal, owner of Sugar Mama’s. The shop offers Foursquare mayors a free cup of coffee each time they come in, and regular patrons receive their 10th cupcake free. “There are about 67 people currently working on those offers, and for a small family-owned business like ours, that’s a really big number,” Ms. O’Neal said."

I don't know if I'll ever join this site, but I feel like this is the new trend in our culture and its somewhat scary.