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The Greatest Lesson I’ve Learned From Someone Else

The greatest lesson I’ve learned from Colten Walter was to look both ways before crossing a street. It was middle school and he was riding his bike to class. He was a block away. He turned left on a cross walk but failed to look over his shoulder. Thankfully it was a school zone and the vehicle wasn’t speeding, but he did get hit. He was ok apart from a broken leg. He was in wheelchair for two weeks and on crutches for two months. I was not there to witness the accident first hand but it scared a lot of people.

Since then, the school began to take extra precautions and repeatedly informed the school on how to cross a street safely. After a while it felt a little excessive but you can understand how stressful it can be for parents. Looking both ways before crossing has become second nature, as it should be for everyone. Coltens accident scared a lot of people, including myself, but has taught us to pay more attention to our surroundings and always, always look both ways.

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Personalize It!

Artists write their lyrics as their own way of expressing themselves and they appeal to those who share the same feelings. People tend to listen to music they can relate to. They like their music to be almost personalized to them, even if it’s only one verse or even a line.

Google and Arcade Fire released an interactive music video (directed and written by Chris Milk) in 2010 that is geo-personalised to your specific city. You enter your information and in seconds it generates a video to the band’s song “We Used To Wait” with images tailored to where you grew up.

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

Personalizing a video in such a way can be extremely beneficial as now almost anyone can feel connected and relate to, not just the video but, the song as well. Connecting with you audience is everything and Chris Milk has found a unique way to do so.

Arcade Fire is a band I have recently come to appreciated (I may have been a little behind on that one) and I have been blown away by their distinct sound and thoughtful lyrics. Admittedly, it was not until they earned Album of the Year that I had even heard of them. But after going through their old music and finally giving their new album a listen, I find myself disappointed that I have been deprived of such wonderful music for so long. How is it that every single student at UBC can tell me who Justin Beiber is but maybe only half could say they’ve heard of Arcade Fire? I would say Arcade Fire needs to step up their marketing but I am sure their new title as Album of the Year will do that all on its own.

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Commercial Value

Watching your favourite tv programs online has become a trend in our tech savvy generation. Despite the smaller screen and often lower quality image, there are significant benefits. One being that you no longer need to arrange your schedule to make time for your favourite program; you can watch online whenever you have the time. This is extremely valuable if you don’t already have a pvr.

The second major benefit to streaming online is that you save a significant amount of time as you are not forced to sit through tiresome advertisements. Granted, there are some sites that slip in commercials like ctv or youtube but most don’t (usually the ones that are illegal).

Commercials have proven to be the number one form of advertisement as they result in the greatest response from the public. However, the long term effects of this new trend may be that the value of commercial advertisements will decrease. Time slots for ads may go down, more sites may cave into including ads and reap the cash benefits, or these sites will be shut down one at a time by government regulation (as they have already started by shutting down the popular site, tvshack).

This situation is similar to that of the music industry. Pirating music is illegal and the government does its best to shut down illegal sites (eg. Limewire), but there is no end. It takes too long for officials to go through formalities while setting up a site to share music takes less than an hour. The artists suffered a great loss in profits and now must find other ways to compensate.

Will companies suffer as great a loss with fewer viewers to see their ads? Only time will tell.

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