Well it was bound to happen. I read an article from a Trinidadian and Tobagonian newspaper that pushed me so far over the edge that I had to blog about it. The article in question is "Ministry to text SEA results" by Sean Douglas for the Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.
Where Should I Start?
The Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago has decided to text message the SEA results to the students who took the exam.
How is it going to be implemented?
- A private company will be collecting data from parents from June 1 to June 23
- The ministry would also explain the process in advertisements beforehand.
- A text message will be sent at 2PM on June 25th
Cost
- $70,000 for the private company providing the system
- $30,000 for enhancements to the ministry(What does that mean?)
Total: $100,000
What About The Traditional Paper Slips?
According to the Ministry, those slips are the official form of communication of results and they will be continued as normal. Students will also be able to check their results online and maco the results of others.
Keep The Children In Mind
The best part of all this is the careful thought the Ministry has put into the welfare of the children. To protect them, they're only releasing the text messages to students while they're in school, so they could receive "psychological support" from their teachers. Now I'm no Einstein, but doesn't that nullify the entire point of these text messages? If these students are in class with their teachers, who are in custody of the official paper slips, why are they signing up and waiting for a text message?
Why Are They Doing This In The First Place?
Education Minister Esther Le Gendre justified the text message initiative by saying her ministry has a policy to recognise the value of mobile devices in teaching and learning.
Could someone please forward these links to the minister for me please? Thanks.
Cellphone Porn for Schoolboys
T&T Students Post Sex and Violence to YouTube
The education minister also said that the SEA texts would be of great help to busy parents at work. Maybe so, but they certainly won't be a big help for the children who did poorly. Whatever happened to an old-fashion phone call?
And Since This Is A Blog On Advertising...
After the text message is sent out, what is the government going to do with all the data they obtained? Can you say "privacy issues" and "spam"? What else can they do with it?
I said the same thing about President Obama's 3AM text message to announce his running mate.
My Take On This Madness
Trinis like too much blasted show off ting! Do we really need to spend $100,000 to send a text message that has absolutely no purpose whatsoever? Allyuh gon mad oui. And like everything else the government does, this is going to cost more after it's completed. I'll put my head on a block for that. They said that they're going to advertise it, yet there are no advertising costs in the budget they provided the media with. And why didn't Mr. Douglas from Newsday ask about that. His article was dry. I demand some real investigative journalism. Most Trinis don't care anyway. All they want to know is that they're getting a text message from the government on June 25th.
Well That's all I have to say on this. I'm totally fed up with Trinis. From the Laventille mess last week to this nonsense. Seems like every time I read T&T news I have to shake my head in disgust. You know what ticks me off a little more? Knowing that a Trini is reading this and is upset that I'm "disrespecting the country now that I live abroad". Oh how I love hearing that.
Until next time...peace.
Newsday Article: Ministry to text SEA results
Post On Twitter
Hi guys, it's been a while since my last post. Sorry but I've been a bit busy and I also didn't have a topic to speak about. If you want to read my writings more often you could follow me on Twitter(@Nkosi868). I'm very active on there. And that's going to be my topic today.
Recently a lot of people have been asking me "What is Twitter?". My answers nearly always lead to "What's the point of tweeting?". And when I explain that, I get, "Why don't you just use Facebook status updates?" Yikes!
In my opinion, Facebook status messages are geared towards close friends and family, just like Facebook itself, and Twitter is open to everyone to network as they like. It's more of a public forum where you can meet people with similar interests. Facebook on the other hand, I use as a Rolodex and Instant Messenger.
Yesterday, one of my former classmates on Facebook asked me what "RT" was, since she has been seeing it in my status updates a lot. When I told her that my Twitter and Facebook accounts were linked to update simultaneously, another friend of mines exclaimed, "Are you serious?" as though it was bit overkill to link the two. Someone else told me that I should keep them separate. I'm not sure why. They both do the same thing and whatever I say on Twitter is good enough for Facebook and vice-versa. Well that's unless I start talking about you know who, who did you know what, with you know who. You know what? Let's keep that on Macobook Facebook.
A few minutes ago I replied to a comment concerning Twitter in a Facebook group discussion board started by Maria(@PiscesInPurple). She's compiling a list of Twitter users from the Caribbean on her blog, so she decided to post a message in a Caribbean themed group that is administrated by, a guy named Keith, who I assume is another Twitter user I follow(@keith_in_tnt). Anyways, there was one reply to her fairly new discussion board post when I got there.
This is what it said:
"It's a list I wouldn't want to be on - no offense. I simply think that what people have to say is worth more than a few strangled sentences."
This was my reply:
This is exactly one of the things that I hate to hear people say when they don't know much about Twitter. Your comment leads me to believe that you believe people that use Twitter don't have "regular" conversations.
Twitter was originally designed with text messaging in mind. A text message consists of 160 characters. Twitter reserves 20 of those characters for your name. Have you ever sent a text message before? That is essentially what you're doing when you use Twitter.
The service gives you an opportunity in a fast paced world, to connect with people who share common interests. It wasn't meant to replace any other form of "proper" communication. If you meet someone on Twitter and you want to get to know them better, you can exchange information such as an email and have "normal" conversations there.
Do you think your comment was "strangled"?
"It's a list I wouldn't want to be on - no offense. I simply think that what people have to say is worth more than a few strangled sentences."
Guess what? According to your logic, it was. It's exactly 140 characters long. The maximum amount of characters you can use in a Twitter status update.
Yes I know, I talk a lot. Trust me, I've tried to control my tongue. It's not possible. Seriously though, I hate when I have to deal with comments such as this about Twitter. I can't remember being so naive about the service before I started using it regularly. Maybe that has something to do with me listening to technology podcasts and always hearing them mention "Twitter". This was way before the Hollywood invasion began. It was a total Geekfest back then.
Anyways, before I roll on too long, let me wrap this up. The moral of this blog is that some people are technologically challenged and you have to do your best to help them or else they'll be left for dead in No Man's Land(a.k.a Fail Whale Land). Sorry, but we can't save them all. The revolution is coming!!!
That's not really the moral of the blog, but that sounds epic enough. Thanks for reading. :D
So I've just started to learn CSS. I bought a few books and bookmarked many tutorials I found on the internet. One point that 99% of these sources seem to hammering into my head is "browser compatibility". Internet Explorer seems to be the bud of most, if not all the problems in this area. What I fail to understand is, why there are so many people using outdated browsers. And something that annoys me even more is that web developers continue to bend over backwards to make their sites compatible with these dinosaur browsers.
My simple answer to it all is to build your websites to W3C standards and whomever visits it with a browser not built to these standards, redirect them to a browser that is W3C standards compliant. There are countless ways to do this. I am fairly certain I am not the first to propose such an idea and I won't be the last, so why do so many web developers still continue to make their lives unnecessarily harder?
If we continue to bend over backwards for people who don't want to update their software, CSS development will turn into a bunch of hacks to make sure websites display properly on all browsers. Not only that, but the computer illiterate amongst us who visit our websites would never learn and this will never end. I remember hearing the same grumblings when I was learning HTML.
This fiasco reminds me of the DTV transition argument about why the U.S. government should keep postponing the switch to a much better and much more reliable system.
"PEOPLE WOULDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO"
I assure you, if people turn on their TVs tomorrow and realise that they can't view any channels, they will ask questions about why this is happening and get it rectified. This is assuming they missed the bombardment of DTV infomercials that have been airing for nearly a year now. And if any of these people missed the news about DTV, then they don't watch TV and it really won't affect them much if the government decided to ban TVs on June 12th. I watch no more than 4 hours of TV every week yet I hear about DTV almost daily.
Okay I'm getting a bit off topic but the same solution applies to both scenarios.
Do not increase your workload and reduce the quality of your work/product because there is a very small minority of people who refuse to upgrade to the latest technology.
The browsers I use and highly recommend,
Google Chrome
Firefox 3
Welcome to my blog, and to introduce you to my blog and the general content of the posts you'll encounter here, I will be starting off with a review of a wonderful book I've just finished reading.
The title of the book is Rubies in the Orchard: How to Uncover the Hidden gems in Your Business. It was written by Lynda Resnick with Francis Wilkinson.
Lynda Resnick is the woman behind the successful marketing of brands such as POM Wonderful, Fiji Water and Teleflora. She began her business career at the age of 19, when she founded a full-service advertising agency. Other successful ventures throughout her career include corporate management, marketing, product development, and most recently, writing.
Stop Thinking Outside The Box
A major point that Resnick made in this book was to stop searching outside the box for ideas. Ever since I could remember, I've been told by people in authority, to think outside of the box when I get a mental block. I've also been guilty of pushing this ideology on others. When I started to seriously study advertising, I realised that this was the total opposite of what I should be doing if I want to be successful in this field. In the book Resnick points out some very funny examples of when "thinking outside the box" went wrong.
The example that best supported her ideology is the shotgun marriage of Dominos Pizza and Jessica Simpson. Dominos Pizza hired Jessica Simpson to be the official spokesperson of their brand. Unfortunately for them, Jessica was allergic to nearly every one of the ingredients they put on their pizzas and even the dough itself.
Resnicks solution to this PR disaster which could have avoided this entire nightmare is to simply market the product for what it is, PIZZA! This is an ideology that she practices with her brands POM Wonderful, Fiji Water, Teleflora and how she turned around the Franklin Mint.
In my opinion, thinking outside of the box is a desperation move and after you clearly analyze this notion, you will agree that is.
Always Price For Value
This is something that eludes most advertisers because it has become the cultural norm for us to question a product or service being advertised to us. When was the last time you viewed an advertisement or infomercial which promised to make life easier and you didn't question its veracity? I do it all the time. Every time I pick up a bottle of juice I smirk at the words "100% Juice". Most of these brands that push the "100% Juice" banner on their labels are swindling their consumers. Look closely on these products and you'll see exactly how many different "juices" actually make up your beloved apple juice. Drug dealers aren't the only people "cutting their product".
In her book, Resnick discusses the pomegranate fruit from where the book gets its title. As you'll read in the book, the Resnicks are credited with making this fruit popular in America. Studies have shown that this fruit holds many antioxidants that help maintain a healthy body and it even has a powerful effect against prostate cancer. Resnick discusses in the book how she marketed and priced the pomegranate for its worth even though she knew many people would cringe at the price. Although many people advised her to "cut" the pomegranate juice with other natural juices to reduce the retail price, she defied them and bottled 100% pomegranate juice because that was the only way the health benefits from the pomegranate fruit could be acquired. POM Wonderful is now one of the most sought after juices in America even though it sells at a price point many people are not willing to bow to. At the moment, I am one of those people.
There are many other valuable morsels of information in this book and I am very happy that I read it. Lynda Resnick has had a long and successful career in Advertising and this book truly gives you a look inside the mind of a guru.
Happy Reading.
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