In honor of St. Edward's 125th Anniversary, I thought it would be fitting to cover a major component of Topper Athletics. Since my arrival on the Hilltop, the baseball team has been Heartland Conference Champions twice. During those two seasons, they have posted 40+ win seasons. The arrival of Head Coach Rob Penders has helped the Toppers improve their record. Prior to coaching for SEU, Penders was the first-base coach for the University of Texas Longhorns.
With St. Edward's being such a small school compared to it's neighbor located a few miles north (UT for those of you who are geographically challenged) the game day atmosphere is drastically different from Divison I participants. For starters baseball games are free and fans are allowed to sit where they please. This includes putting your chairs up against the fence behind home plate, watching from picnic tables, or on the grassy bleachers. Those who choose to enjoy a hot dog or a bag of sunflower seeds will be pleased to know that the concession stand does not have an item over $5. A drastic difference from the concession stands at UFCU Disch-Falk Field, where a drink and a dog can easily cost $10.
On Good Friday St. Edward's hosted St. Mary's for a double-header. At the end of the day both teams collected a win. The Legand of Taylor Johnson captures the Hilltoppers come back against Heartland Conference rivals St. Mary's Rattlers.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Social Media Press Releases
Tom Foremski's widely talked about social media press has become a hot topic in the past week among twitter as well as our class. His release has helped set the foundation for press releases in a web 2.0 world.
According to Foremski," press releases are nearly useless." As an intern who sends out as well as receives a lot of basketball related releases, the text in a release is often overwhelming. It is easy to see why many releases often go unread and end up in one's trash.
Foremski's proposal to deconstruct the press release to make it user friendly is one of those hey why didn't I think of that products. By providing different sections of the release, it is likely that all of the information will be taken in by the reader. This format also allows for valid information to be correctly phrased in newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Writers will be able to spend less time looking for information on the internet.
When readers don't understand something in a release they do one of two things: continue to read the release in hopes of figuring it out or they search what ti is. It's likely to be the first choice because people are lazy.
I think it might take some getting used to, but with time it could very well become the norm in the PR world. Just like every new product, the social media press release is bound to change a few times before people are completely satisfied. What are your thoughts on the social media press release?
According to Foremski," press releases are nearly useless." As an intern who sends out as well as receives a lot of basketball related releases, the text in a release is often overwhelming. It is easy to see why many releases often go unread and end up in one's trash.
Foremski's proposal to deconstruct the press release to make it user friendly is one of those hey why didn't I think of that products. By providing different sections of the release, it is likely that all of the information will be taken in by the reader. This format also allows for valid information to be correctly phrased in newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Writers will be able to spend less time looking for information on the internet.
When readers don't understand something in a release they do one of two things: continue to read the release in hopes of figuring it out or they search what ti is. It's likely to be the first choice because people are lazy.
I think it might take some getting used to, but with time it could very well become the norm in the PR world. Just like every new product, the social media press release is bound to change a few times before people are completely satisfied. What are your thoughts on the social media press release?
Monday, March 29, 2010
Video Editing
As the semester progresses and one project turns into another, it has become helpful to find websites that are user-friendly for these projects. Our latest project, a web video highlighting the 125th Anniversary of St. Edward's, requires shooting video and then editing it down to a three minute video. Previous to this project I had become familiar with Final Cut Pro and iMovie, however since my Macbook was stolen in October, editing footage would be difficult on my PC. Sure the computer labs on campus have both programs, but as a senior down the home stretch of my last semester trying to juggle school, an internship, and work, the last thing I want to do is spend several hours in a computer lab. Fortunately for me my professor provided a list of cloud applications that would allow us to edit footage regardless of the type of computer we were working on. The site that seems to be the most helpful for this project is JayCut. JayCut's layout is somewhere between iMovie and Final Cut Pro. The site allows users to upload, edit, and share video footage anywhere in the world. Check back next week for the final product.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Get Snookied
After reading about memes that have generated negative publicity for corporations, I decided to check out what kind of memes are currently circulating the internet. Thanks to the greatness of Google, I was able to locate a website that documents memes and other interesting phenomena that has popped up on the internet relatively quickly. While browsing through the site, I stumbled across SnookieShop. According to Know Your Meme
"Snookieshop is a single topic blog featuring a series of photoshopped exploitables based on a cutout image of Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, a cast member from MTV's reality series Jersey Shore. In the span of two weeks in February 2010, the Snookieshop phenomenon has spawned nearly 1000 user-contributed images, all of which have been self-archieved by the blog."
Jersey Shore has become a guilty pleasure of mine, so of course I had to check out Snookieshop. After spending close to 30 minutes on the blog, I was able to come across numerous images that literally made me laugh out loud. If you need to kill some time I highly recommend you check out the blog or create your own Snookieshop photo.
The dirty secret about the iPod that's no longer a secret
In Citizen Marketers the authors discuss the success of memes and how they have helped get people's frustrations out into cyber space. McConnell and Huba define a meme as. "a cultural transmitter that distinguishes an idea from the billions of others that float in the primordial soup of daily human existence." A better definition is given by Richard Dawkins, the creater of the term, "Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process, which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation." The book discusses Apple's "iPod's Dirty Secret" which grew after Apple told Casey Neistat that it would cost him $255 plus a mail-in fee to replace the battery on his 18-month old ipod.
I remember this story from when it first broke in 2002. I was begging my mother for an ipod for Christmas, however she refused to spend that kind of money on a gadget that may not last longer than a year-and-a-half. Surprisingly it's a fond memory of my middle-school years. We were walking my dog around the neighborhood and I remember telling her I wanted an ipod so that I could listen to music while walking the dog or riding the bus to school without having to transport a cd player around with. She firmly told me no because she had read a story in the Washington Post about how ipod's were just expensive gadgets that became garbage after the battery died. After pouting to my father about how my mother refused to buy me the latest must have, he finally bought me an mp3 player. Unfortunately for me it was a Nike mp3 player that only held 30 songs at a time.
Since then, I have gone through three ipods (and will be purchasing my fourth in the next two weeks) because of battery related problems/ screen cracking. All three of my ipods have obtained cracked screens that slowly spread to where I am unable to view what songs I am listening to. Has anyone else had problems with their ipod's breaking on them and then getting suckered in to buying a new one?
I remember this story from when it first broke in 2002. I was begging my mother for an ipod for Christmas, however she refused to spend that kind of money on a gadget that may not last longer than a year-and-a-half. Surprisingly it's a fond memory of my middle-school years. We were walking my dog around the neighborhood and I remember telling her I wanted an ipod so that I could listen to music while walking the dog or riding the bus to school without having to transport a cd player around with. She firmly told me no because she had read a story in the Washington Post about how ipod's were just expensive gadgets that became garbage after the battery died. After pouting to my father about how my mother refused to buy me the latest must have, he finally bought me an mp3 player. Unfortunately for me it was a Nike mp3 player that only held 30 songs at a time.
Since then, I have gone through three ipods (and will be purchasing my fourth in the next two weeks) because of battery related problems/ screen cracking. All three of my ipods have obtained cracked screens that slowly spread to where I am unable to view what songs I am listening to. Has anyone else had problems with their ipod's breaking on them and then getting suckered in to buying a new one?
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