In an effort to meet more blog owners and share new opinions on topics we have created a concept called co-writing.  Once a month we will partner with other writers to share our opinion on a particular topic.  This month’s topic is the infamous IPAD.  Read ‘em and weep.

Over the years Steve Jobs has used his intellect, ingenuity, and marketing genius to create a loyal base of customers.  See the documentary Macheads for an insiders look into the phenomenon.

Steve Jobs can be defined as a visionary who takes risks to introduce items to the marketplace.  He is largely responsible for the PC that you are reading this post on (regardless of the platform).  However, his latest invention is the cause of much dispute and turmoil.

In 2010 Apple released the IPAD.  The IPAD has been described as a tablet computer with internet browsing, gaming,  media consumption, and kindle-like book reading abilities.  The device functions on a modified version of the Iphone OS.

The controversy surrounding the IPAD is clear.  The device is essentially a larger Iphone or Ipod touch.  Labeling it as a tablet PC is simply an intelligent marketing play to sell more units (> 1MM at the time of this article).  Before writing this article I decided to stake out local apple stores to find out why people where buying this “tablet” PC.

I wish I had a robust set of findings to report from my research.  I questioned 20 people.  15 of them indicated that they purchase ALL Apple products.  5 of them tried to craft intelligent uses for the product but essentially said the same thing as 15 honest people I surveyed.

The results were in.  The device has little to no extra functionality not currently available in the Iphone or Itouch.  Therefore, it is a waste.

Mr. Jobs I tip my hat to your marketing genius.

Co-Writing Resources:

Mike Austin – Is the IPAD worth the hype?

Joreel Diaz – Is the IPAD receiving too much publicity?

Without a doubt Google is the dominant force in internet business.  Here is a list of dominant entities that google owns or operates:

• YouTube
• Google Maps
• Gmail
• Google Analytics
• GOOG-411
• Web Service Engine

With such an extensive repertoire of tools Google is dominating the web landscape.  Will Google eventually have a monopoly on the internet?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

In the last 15 years the internet has wreaked havoc on entire industries and ways of life.  15 years ago no one would have guessed that so much would be at our fingertips.  Need to find out about your local news?  Use the internet!  Want to sell a few shirts? Use the internet!  Want to meet your soul mate? Use the internet!

The internet has made things faster, cheaper, and much more accessible.  Evolution commands that things change, evolve, and improve. With that in mind it should be safe to say that the internet will eventually be replaced.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

The video above displays a modern marvel…a flying car.  For years the allure of a flying car has been every man’s dream.  Owning a flying car would allow a person to travel faster, see dynamic views of the world, and exhibit a level of freedom not previously available.

We all know it will happen, the real question is when.

Personal computers are like humans…they all die at some point.  Personal computers have a whole host of things that can go wrong:

• Motherboard dies
• A virus invades your computer
• Speakers die
• Blue screen of death
• Spontaneous combustion

We’ve all dealt with 1 or more of these issues.  Which one has been the biggest pain for you?

This is a guest post from Paul Toth at Violent Contradiction

Today’s “consumers,” also known as humans, live in a tyranny of the senses, an almost-invisible net of influences that equates living under a more obvious tyranny. Every stranger could be the equivalent of a state security agent. For example, guerrilla marketing campaigns hire alluring salespeople who sit at bar and offer occasional strangers a drink. “Try it out. It’s my favorite vodka.” The seduction begins, but it’s not leading where the customer hopes. It’s never leading where the customer hopes. The customer has been placed under arrest without need of handcuffs. We’re seduced into arrest in the way that sheriffs’ departments detain those with outstanding warrants: by being offered a prize if we show up at certain locations. Wherever they go, consumers move under the shadow of “subpoenas.”

I first began wondering how this seduction operated when I noticed how music affected me while I was shopping. Why, I wondered, do supermarkets play what I considered objectively-depressing music (ala post-talent Elton John ballads and the like)? Friends to whom I put that question claimed to never notice music in retail settings, but I hear it everywhere: in offices, stores and almost every other public space.

Creative Retail Communications states in its FAQ that as a Business Music Provider (BSP), it “supplies businesses with licensed content for background and foreground music” and has “music experts that [sic] program the content into playlists to serve specific market demands.” In other words, music is programmed to suit a specific demographic. But what is the demographic of most public spaces? All demographics. Thus, all consumers must suffer the music of whatever demographic reacts favorably to post-talent Elton John ballads, even if they don’t notice the music.

I began to surmise that retail outlets play sad music to create an atmosphere in which one begins to seek comfort as a form of self-defense. But the truth is far more perverse, as Daniel Leviten, author of The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, told U.S News & World Report, “Sad people are so often made to feel better by sad music.” He likens this phenomena to enjoying the blues, and we’re back to Elton John and his I Guess That’s Why They Call it the Blues. The article paraphrases Leviten’s view that “senses make use of complex systems of muscle and bone, as well as finely tuned neural circuits in the human brain.”

That presents dueling options: one involves my untested proposition that sad music promotes comfort purchases, and the other proposes that sad music itself provides the comfort while the customer associates comfort with the items she buys. It’s a short stretch to the conclusion that this effect is enhanced by by the consumer’s very unawareness of background music.

Because most such background music is now provided via satellite, stores often have limited choice in devising playlists, as they must secure rights to the music, unless that service is provided for them. However, some stores, especially smaller outlets, use MP3 technology to design far more specific “set lists,” and in those shops one will more likely hear “hipper” soundtracks. CDs featuring the background music are often displayed near the cash register: shopping itself for sale.

Interestingly, how the shopper perceives the shopping environment may determine his likelihood of returning to a retail outlet. This study indicates that “emotions have stronger effects on shopping satisfaction when the feelings are attributed to the store rather than being internally attributed” [my emphasis]. One can reasonably extrapolate from this study that shoppers have been conditioned to be conditioned by retail outlets; that is, they expect their emotions to be positively affected by the shopping environment itself, with their preexisting emotions secondary and ripe for comforting.

How do retail establishments accomplish this effect? The Seattle Journal of Commerce explains: “In many cases, successful stores sell lifestyle more than product. Why choose The Gap when you can buy jeans and a T-shirt at every other apparel retailer? Because Gap is Gap. It’s clean, it’s hip, it’s simple, it’s American…The Gap has become a transcendental, category-defining icon. Such icons, the article continues, “have reached the pinnacle of consumer consciousness.”

Notice the key word: transcendental. Thus, the customer has transcended consciousness and is therefore unaware of why she attributes her feelings to the shopping environment rather than herself. I call this the conspiracy paradox, in which any agency may avoid conspiracy by simply rendering its actions so obvious that no one notices the implications of those actions or even the actions themselves. A quasi-conspiracy is as effective as an actual conspiracy and avoids the threat of legal implications, at least until the last ghosts of consumer protection limp to their demise.

However, another paradox may exist as marketers fail to realize the implications of their own quasi-conspiracies. The Seattle Journal of Commerce concludes the essay quoted above by stating an obvious contradiction: “Using the science of shopping in store design will not ‘manipulate’ shoppers psychologically to make them buy products. A shopper may not buy a dress simply because a store smells like roses and plays music from her youth. If she feels better about herself and more comfortable in the environment, she is more likely to buy. This is the goal of a successful retail store design.” Of course, if a store “smells like roses and plays music from her youth,” the shopper may very well feel “more comfortable in the environment” and thus become “more likely to buy.”

The combination lock to the vault containing the entire theory behind modern marketing techniques has now been cracked by its own proponents. Feeling a bit like Geraldo Rivera, I open the vault door with anticipation. There it is, the concept aglow in neon: comfort.

For reasons beyond the boundaries of this piece, the consumer culture is an an anxious culture. Sufficient for now to state that the conditions necessary to a consumer culture generate anxiety, which of course benefits the sale of comfort. The anxiety results from the ever-growing difficulty in procuring enough money to purchase the comfort that work itself requires, just as the purchasing of comfort produces the need for more and more money and thus more and more work.

Stand forth, comfort addict, conditioned to become an addict. Consumers are not born “sinners” who must “take responsibility for themselves” but products of a culture that views everything as a product. With “labor” a product involved in the production of products, reducing “labor” becomes the most obvious means to cost cutting. When the actual people who comprise “labor” become economically distressed as a result of layoffs and other economic circumstances, no worries, for what else will they seek but comfort?

Yet comfort cannot sustain itself, just as the comfort industry cannot sustain itself. Like any addiction, comfort levels must be intensified. To increase profits, an increased “demand” for comfort must also be created. The easy-to-guess outcome of this process is a comfort addiction treatment industry, which includes alcohol, cigarettes, “illicit” drugs…the whole range of human desperation. When these desperate measures fail, one seeks help. Thus, pharmaceutical comfort rises to meet the problem if failing so shake hands with and solve that problem. Indeed, the solution of the problem, if available, would demolish the treatment and comfort industries.

However, dissolving the human need for comfort can rightfully never be resolved or eliminated. Only the psychopath, if not already absolved from the need for comfort by whatever genetic and environmental circumstances created him, would desire such an outcome. For the consumer, the way to outwit manipulation and achieve comfort requires neither psychotherapy nor pharmacotherapy. It merely requires seeking comfort from others rather than products.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

My name is Ricardo Salvidor.  I am 6′3″ 238 lbs.  I’m 1.3% body fat and the ladies love my cool black hair.  I’m the definition of sexy.

I am surrounded by women that love me, guys who wanna be me, and I have the job that everyone wants.  Best part about being me is that all the women around me are 10s, cops don’t bother me and life is good.  I have a 10,000 sq ft. house downtown and I can do what I want, when I want and it’s perfectly fine.

I have 7 girlfriends and I will never get caught.  The sex is always safe, and its not like anyone is infected anyway.  I work but have no idea of when I get paid, and I always have money to buy whatever I want.  Just got the latest Maserati delivered today.   Oh yeah, I’m the man.

…..as the computer powers down

Back to being Ray Johnson.  I’m actually a software developer from Cal State that works for a small company in Gardena, CA.  I have a 400 sq ft. apartment with a bed and a chair.  Let’s see, I’m almost 35 yrs old and have been single for just over 34 years now. At 4′11″, I’m mistaken for a midget and I haven’t seen my …. this decade.  Today will be a good day if my 85 Toyota Supra starts in the morning.  On the good side, the accelerator doesn’t get stuck.

Yes – Life is good…   …when I get on my computer.  No, I don’t live a double life.  I’m merely dreaming when I’m Gardena sitting in this apartment.  My life is Ricardo.

The Survey Magnet crowd is hopefully not this confused.  What do you think?

3G or the more technical term, International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000) is simply the 3rd generation of cellular service technologies.  You may have seen the GSM EDGE, UMTS, CDMA2000, or DECT on your phone signifying your level of service.  These services include telephone, video, and wireless data.  The most noticeable of the 3G services is the ability to use both speech and data services simultaneously.  The largest gain to providers is one word – Efficiency.

So…..what’s all the fuss about 3G?  Is it really all it’s cracked up to be?  All the big cellular companies boast the largest, widest, fastest, most reliable 3G, but who is the actually best.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now that you’ve heard Allie…..What do you think?

Regardless of what channel you watch or shopping center you enter, you are almost guaranteed to see a  cell phone company.  Shopping Plazas, mall booths, and some grocery stores all have someone in there attempting to sell you service, get you to switch your service, or trying to convince you that you need a new phone.

I honestly don’t see how smaller providers continue to exist.  Within the past few weeks, Verizon and AT&T have matched $69.99 unlimited plans that were once seemingly absurd.  With plans like this, I can’t ration why someone would use one of the smaller unlimited local companies.

Most people carry either an AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint phone.  I personally carry Verizon and AT&T serviced phones.  I think the AT&T phone sucks.  I live in a Metro area and it drops while walking or driving down the street.  Verizon has not failed me yet.  But enough with me, how about you?  Who is your provider and how is your service?

If you have a computer, and are between the ages of 12 and 40, I would bet that you’ve downloaded music either legally or illegally.  Has your conscience ever kicked in to question the effects of your downloads on the artists that work those long nights to produce the musical melodies that you enjoy?

There have been several artists to communicate their thoughts on the effects of downloads on their money.  50 Cent blamed part of his latest flop on leakage and illegal downloads (which I don’t think was the case).  However, Soulja Boy proudly boasts that leaking his own album helped him achieve platinum status.

But enough of these minds.  What do the Survey Magnet minds think?