Survival Tips for Christmas Shopping!

It is almost Christmas time and I can't wait to be home decorating the house, singing Christmas carols and hanging out with family. But if you are like me, you probably have left your Christmas shopping to the last minute. Even the thought of wrestling all those stressed out, angry shoppers for the last copy of The Hangover, gives me nightmares.

It is a great thing I stumbled upon these 10 great tips that the Toronto Star recommends to survive the malls during this crazy holiday season.

1) Use the malls extended hours. Certain malls are open later around this time, not as many people will be in the malls that late.

2) Hire a personal shopper. I know what you are thinking. Personal shoppers are expensive. But they don't have to be. Sometimes they even end up being free.

3) Make a list. Lists are always helpful so you are not spending too much time wondering around. You can get in and get out without a tear.

4) Map out a route. Visit your designated mall website and plan out where you will go and in what order.

5) Use valet parking. Take a load off and treat yourself, you deserve it. Don't worry about trekking through the snow or rain, get your car delivered right to your feet.

6) Dress appropriately. Don't wear those fabulous designer pumps. Put on those trendy sneaks, a light jacket and a lightweight purse. Believe me it is worth it when you are half way through your list and your dogs are barking.

7) Don't try to wrap it yourself. If you find yourself getting stressed out about making your gift look presentable, leave it to the experts. Use the wrapping stations in the mall. It may cost you a little more but the money is usually donated to a good cause.

8) If you have no choice but to bring the kids, give yourself a break and bring the stroller. This will keep everything in order and you won't have to be chasing the little rascals around all day.

9) Make sure you stay hydrated and full of fuel. If you are feeling a little bit faint after going all day long, stop, take a break. You can clear your mind, rest your feet and refresh yourself for some more shopping.

and Lastly...

10) Instead of trying to do everything all at once, take multiple trips to the mall on multiple days. You will thank yourself.

So let the shopping begin. I hope this helps with the daunting task of last minute Christmas shopping. The best of luck and happy holidays!

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John Mayer First to Introduce Augmented Reality into Music Videos!

John Mayer has been known to be ahead of the curve when it comes to emerging technologies. He started tweeting and blogging before it was trendy to do so. Although he was not the first to do these things he is the first recording artist to release an augmented reality music video.

This idea of augmented reality allows Mayer’s fans to become active participants in the 3D experience. It becomes a way to engage his fans in a whole new way. It provides interactive entertainment by letting fans take part in the virtual concerts as well as it is a promotion tool for the artist. The more people that try it out and tweet about it, the farther it spreads.

“My generation is always looking for new experiences and sometimes the content becomes secondary to the experience.”- Mayer

John Mayer explains augmented reality as :
A digital hologram based off a marker, set graphic, that the camera of you computer recognizes and manipulates visuals off of. This is dependent on where you are holding the marker and in what proximity to the camera on your computer.

Confused? Watch this video!



John’s new music video for this new single “Heartbreak Warfare,” is now available on his website.

The Video



To participate you must:
1) Download either the PDF or IPhone version of the special augmented reality marker, which can be found on the website.
2) If PDF version, print markers.
3) Turn on your webcam and make sure you are in a well-lit area.
4) Line the marker up with the similar one on the screen and wait for the video to begin.
5) Now you can play around by using the marker.

Created by Adobe MAX, this new technology is a great way to get the fans involved with the music. As it is such an interesting and innovative technology people all over the world will want to try it out.

Artists are always looking to advance in the area of technology to try and be the one who pushes the limits and steps outside of the box to gain that extra advantage. With augmented reality John Mayer is sure to do that.


Another band that uses augmented reality is Lost Valentinos. The small band from Australia is using AR to get their name out there. As a small band they were thinking about new, different ways of promoting themselves.

As managing director Andrew explains:
“We’ve basically mapped a full song performance of each band member to 5 individual markers that users can place in their own world and record and share it. In that respect it’s a world first – not a diorama performance on rails in the fan’s hands but totally customizable and modular experience – ie you can have 10 little lead singers playing on your desk or the whole band playing on the steps of the Opera House.”

Lost Valentinos AR Explanation



The best thing about this is that it allows fans to record their own customized music videos. You can have the lead singer perform in the palm of your hand or you can have the whole band perform in your sink. This kind of technology puts the creativity in the hands of the fans so they can customize their experience. And what is better than tailoring your music video so it meets the artistic needs of each and everyone of your fans?


Example of Video

Midterm Bonus Question

Who is the most successful Canadian public relations professional? What makes you say this?

I would definitely have to say Michael Cayley!
This may or may not be because he is grading my midterm....lol

Midterm Exam Question 5

What kind of conversational patterns can you expect to encounter using social media as a PR professional? What will consumers of your content expect? How can you level these expectations?

According to Clay Shirky in the book Here Comes Everybody, we can see three main conversational patterns. The three patterns are Broadcasting, Loose conversations and Tight conversations. As a PR professional we will be encountering all three of these. The best way to describe these patterns is through the use of a long tail graph.

The relationship on the graph is between audience size (vertical) and conversational pattern (horizontal). Web blogs on the left had side, also known as the head of the graph, is the broadcast section. It is called this because of the there are so many readers it is more of a one-directional message to the readers. As size of the audience falls, loose conversation becomes becomes possible as there are less people to interact with. As you continue through the long tail of the graph, although there are less individuals reading your blog, there is an exponentially greater amount of two way interaction. Readers and writer can all pay similar amounts of attention to one another, this then forming tight conversational clusters.

We can see on the web that individuals, including PR professionals can have fewer and deeper interactions such as personal blog posts on a specific subject with a specific audience. Or they could have plenty of superficial ones, such as tweets and social media news releases. An example of this could be your 21st birthday party. You have invited 50 people to the event. You can take 10 guests into the V.I.P section and have long deep conversations or you can have shallow conversations with everyone. I think i order to fully engage your audience you need a balance of both.

Consumers of the context expect you to be actively involved by listening and providing feedback. Also, Building of relationships is important through continual conversation.

Midterm Exam Question 4

Who is Jamie Zawinski? How is the role he played & are design principals he helped spread important to you?


Jamie W. Zawinski, also known as jwz is a former professional American computer programmer. He is known for his significant work on the free software projects, Mozilla and XEmacs, as well as the early versions of Netscape Navigator. Jamie has now left the computer programing world and is proprietor of a nightclub in San Francisco.

Jamie's principals included taking the internet out of the hands of the rich and making it easy free and accessible to all. He also believed that if we do not expand software and improve on it, it will be taken over by something else, or in his case be re-written. "Zawinski was a major proponent of opening the source code of the Mozilla browser, but became disillusioned with the project when others decided to rewrite the code instead of incrementally improving it. He resigned from Netscape Communications Corporation on April 1, 1999."

His principals are important to me in relation to social media. Jamie wanted to make software easy, free and available to everyone. For any social media application, if it is hard to navigate and will cost money, people are less likely to sign up for it. His principle of expand or get taken over is also relevant to social media. These days anything on the internet can be outdated in a matter of days. Everyone is competing for consumer attention. Facebook for example, use to be about social networking but now they have added all kinds of applications in order to keep them in line with other competing social media. If Facebook was still just wall posts and messages do you think it would still be number one? Personally because of the expansions it has made MSN obsolete, as there is now Facebook chat.

Midterm Exam Question 3

McLuhan used a model with four elements surrounding the term MEDIUM. Touching on the four elements, describe how this model can help us in interpreting social media.

Marshall McLuhan states that media is a concise tetrad of media effects. Considering social media as the medium we can answer the following questions, what does the medium enhance? What doe the medium make obsolete? What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? And what does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?
Social media has enhanced the amount of communication between people on the web by creating more platforms for conversation. As well it has created two-way, multi-level and multi-directional (networked) communication. Social media makes face-to-face contact obsolete as well as snail mail. Why go and meet someone or send him or her a letter in the mail when you can send instant information over many social media applications? It also retrieves the idea of individual voice and focuses on individual opinions, not everyone has to be an expert in the subject matter in which they speak. Lastly social media flips the normal top down flow of information and allows a multi-level, multi-dimensional platform for information sharing.

Midterm Exam Question 2

In Wikipedia: The Truth in Numbers the message seems to be: no longer do the victors write the history books, we do: you, me, and everyone else. How is social media (twitter, blogs) forwarding this idea? What gives someone authority to "write history" and why should we listen to them? Is there a hierarchy of authorities? ie. is what someone like Seth Godin says more important? What should be taken as canon?


Twitter and blogs are allowing us to write our own history and news. Individuals want to spread massages in the cheapest, fastest way possible. Professionals broadcasting information to amateurs is gone. Anyone can tweet or post blogs online these days, our personal opinions are available to everyone. Social media knows no boundaries; our messages have no physical limits. Internet is first medium that supports groups and conversation at the same time. Phone is one to one conversation where the Internet is seen as a many to many pattern. Social media allows you to consume and produce information appose to just consuming it, as it once was. As Clay Shirky states in his presentation below, last May China had a large earthquake and it was reported as it was happening. People were taking pictures on their phones, posting online as well as twittering. As the quake was happening the news was reported. The BBC got their first wind of the quake from Twitter, Twitter announced existence of quake before the U.S Geological Survey had anything online. Last time an earthquake of this magnitude occurred it took them 3 months to admit that it had happened. The government was not given the choice this time, citizens presented the news in the form of a tweets or video post. Even the government got their information from Twitter. Formal forms of news just can’t compete with this speed. In the case of the last Chinese earthquake, clearly the government was not interested in publicizing the earthquake so the citizens are now taking it upon themselves to inform the public and create history.

As for the legitimacy of online information and what should be taken as canon, I believe it is all relevant to the subject at hand. Although everyone is given a voice I would agree that some are not worth our time. Someone may have 10,000 followers on Twitter but that does not mean they have more authority than someone who has 1,000 followers. As long as you believe a person to be credible by your own form of evaluation you can judge the relevance and legitimacy of their message. Individuals like Perez Hilton and Seth Godin are both experts in their field and both have an authoritative voice in relation to their expertise. For everyone else posting on line I believe you have to take what individual bloggers and tweeters say with a grain of salt.

Midterm Exam Question 1

In Deirdre Breakenridge's article PR 2.0, Brian Cross discusses how changes in technology will change the function of PR practitioners. In what ways do you think public relations will change and what role will PR professional's play in these changes?

With the new PR movement, brands are able to have conversations directly with their customers in communities on the web. Individuals are invited to participate in dialogue in places where they have never been invited before. Technology is what is leading the new PR movement. Amateur journalists have a platform on the web and the nature of the media and reporting is changing. PR people can get instant information from the web as well as there is no need to use newspapers or magazines to get credible information to their audiences. When companies decide to go directly to the consumer, they often have trouble figuring out which positions are right for them on the large and confusing web. PR individuals are then needed to come in and decide which audiences to target in what web community while showing these companies or individuals how to make themselves more attractive to consumers. This will allow feedback and two-way communication between organization and consumer. Steve Rubel states that Public relations practitioners need to build important relationships with bloggers to help support mainstream media. Bloggers will expect PR practitioners to be competent with blogging as bloggers should be competent of the product and function of the PR practitioner. They need to develop win-win situations to benefit each other. In today’s world one-way static press releases are dying off slowly. As a PR practitioner it is beneficial to bring in bloggers early in a launch of a product or message to help give feedback before sending out these news releases.