We have seen movies and television use the tactic of viral marketing a bunch over the past couple years. The TV show LOST has had commercials for the fictional airline Oceanic and there was even a Mr. Clucks commercial with Hurley. Movies such as the Dark Knight have gone to great lengths to get people interested long before the release of the film. People were sent the Gotham Times newspaper with articles made to look real and even featuring advertising for Gotham businesses. There were websites for the Bank of Gotham and Gotham News Network. There was even an elaborate scavenger hunt in various cities and fans had to keep going to find the next clue. Finally, the use of viral marketing has made its way into music, but not by who you’d think.
Viral marketing has made it’s way to independent hip hop label QN5. They are employing the technique for their release Chico and the Man, a duo composed of emcee Tonedeff and producer Kno (of CunninLynguists fame). What’s interesting is that an independent label would go the viral route first, and not a major label with unlimited supply of resources. This goes to show you the power of the internet and social media sites.
So what do we know about this album? There’s not much. Everything that has been found has been by the dedicated fan base working hard at finding any sort of possible information, making guesses, and taking leaps. Only a few clues have been released, but let’s take a look at the clues that were given, how they were given, and the resulting news. All the clues have appeared on the Chico and the Man Twitter account.
Before we look at the clues given, I should point out that the Twitter account background is a clue in itself. If you look at the background file name you see that it’s called fulgenciobatista01011959. Fulgencio Batista was a Cuban dictator, and 0101959 = January 1st, 1959. On that date, Batista was forced out of the country by Castro’s revolution. Could the History of Cuba be one of the topics. There is also the line catm: work for it. twitter is the key. commented out in the code.
Clue number 1: waiting to breathe
No one is sure what this means quite yet. It may be the title of the album or a title of the track off the album.
Clue number 2: love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides – maya angelou
The rest of the poem is as follows:
“Love builds up the broken wall
and straightens the crooked path.
Love keeps the stars in the firmament
and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides,
each of us is created of it
and I suspect
each of us was created for it!”
It seems that the ocean is a major theme for this album, but what does it all mean?
Clue number 3:_fanned by a _pale mist the heart _flutters
There is a lot of speculation on what this one means, what the underscore means, etc. Far too much for me to reprint here, but read what fans have to say.
Clue number 4:18/5/1/3/8/ 23/8/9/20/5 13/1/18/9/16/15/19/1
This turns out to be code for Reach White Mariposa. What does this mean? Well, fans have found White Mariposa. Again, there’s a lot of clues here. Could the tagline “Su Amigo Para más de 45 Años.” mean anything for the album? What about the image titles. The logo is punto4. Point 4. Also, if you call the number, it is for this fake business described on the page, but the message is in Spanish. So if you want to translate an audio message that would help the fans out a great deal.
Your’s truly found the next bit of information. Commented out in the code is cada punto confirma el último. Translated that means “each point confirms the last.” That takes us to…
Clue number 5: cada punto confirma el último
It seems we are on the right track.
There is a lot of information that I have not posted, from meaning of butterflies to speculation on the initials HCK. It is all very fascinating. If you want to play along and love riddles, someone has made a thread to catch everyone up with what we know so far.
I’m excited about this use of marketing. This is definitely innovative. QN5, like one of their slogans says, is always 5 steps ahead of the game.
If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again
After seeing this town halls lately, I have become increasingly afraid of what direction the right wing is headed in our country. They have made it so that rational thinking is bad and that lies and falsehoods are good. The worst part about it is that people are actually falling for it. It’s one thing to disagree with policies of one party and to back up your position with facts, it is another thing entirely to spread lies and fear monger. Seriously, is this what the right wing has become? These people are disgusting in every sense of the word. The Democrats need to stop the bi-partisan crap and do what needs to be done. It’s been clear since day one that the Republicans are nothing but petty children upset that they didn’t win and will do anything they can, no matter how crazy, to try and get their way.
You lost, get over it. Move on. If you don’t like the policies, draft new ones instead of just saying them bad, us good. They want to kill old people and he was born in Kenya and Heil Hitler. The new motto of the Republican Party should be, “If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.”
A note to Democrats, take note of Barney Frank. This is how you should respond to these loonies.
Bat for Lashes Saved My Life
The band Bat for Lashes saved my life this morning. No, really. Let me explain. It all started last night while reading Questlove’s tweets. Questlove is the drummer for The Roots. If you don’t know The Roots, they are a fantastic band and also the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Bat for Lashes was a guest last night on Late Night, which is why Questlove was tweeting about them. He said how good they were, so I purchased their album last night.
Fast forward to this morning. I wanted to listen to my newly purchased album on the way to work. Normally I listen to hip hop or 90’s alt-rock on my way to work in the morning, and usually at a fairly high volume. Since I decided to go with Bat for Lashes, a relatively chill band, the volume was not up too high. This is what saved my life. I was driving down highway 94, like I do every morning, and I come to the intersection at Harvester and 94. Shortly before I reach the intersection I notice the car in the left lane was not moving. Normally I would have thought the driver was having car troubles and kept on through the intersection. Normally I would have been listening to the music loud enough that I would not have heard the St. Charles County Sheriff’s sirens going off as he comes speeding through the intersection. But I was listening to Bat for Lashes. So I did hear the sirens, I did stop in time, and I did avoid running directly into a Sheriff’s car at 55 mph. My life was saved because of what was playing in my car this morning.
While I didn’t collide head-on with another car, I did almost get hit from behind. The person behind me was not as observant as I was and almost plowed right into the back of me at 55 mph. Luckily he was able to slow and swerve and avoid hitting me. It was scary seeing him miss me by inches and wind up along side of me. Two catastrophes were avoided this morning and Bat for Lashes saved my life. Nothing like a near-death experience to wake you up in the morning.
Why I Will Not Use Bing
With Bing gaining a percentage point in search market share I would like to point out there are very good reasons on why I will not use the Microsoft search engine.
First off, the msnbot practices in referral spam. If you look at your stats and see random one word searches coming from Bing, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This isn’t anything new, it has been happening for a while. If you are a company that uses search terms to help determine your ad campaigns, this could really pollute your field, making it harder to determine the best keywords. Website owners see a lot of false visitor data, thinking they rank for generic keywords when they don’t.
Another reason you shouldn’t use Bing is because of the fact that Microsoft changed (or tried to change) a user’s default search engines to Bing in order to help them gain more market share.Cnet’s Dennis O’Reilly caught ‘Windows Search Helper’ trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. Not cool Microsoft. You should never change a user’s settings without approval from the user. What you’re doing is essentially what malware does.
Lastly, yet probably most importantly, is that they game their search results. How do you know you are finding the best information if Microsoft chooses what should be shown first according to their own interests? You can’t, and you can see a very real example of Microsoft gaming the results right now. Go to Bing and search Why is Windows so expensive? When you search that phrase the top results are all Why are Macs so Expesnive. Who knows what other results they are gaming to benefit themselves. This is just one example, there could be many more. There have also been other reports of Microsoft censoring Bing results. I do not trust Microsoft and I do not trust Bing search results.
Music Goes Viral
We have seen movies and television use the tactic of viral marketing a bunch over the past couple years. The TV show LOST has had commercials for the fictional airline Oceanic and there was even a Mr. Clucks commercial with Hurley. Movies such as the Dark Knight have gone to great lengths to get people interested long before the release of the film. People were sent the Gotham Times newspaper with articles made to look real and even featuring advertising for Gotham businesses. There were websites for the Bank of Gotham and Gotham News Network. There was even an elaborate scavenger hunt in various cities and fans had to keep going to find the next clue. Finally, the use of viral marketing has made its way into music, but not by who you’d think.
Viral marketing has made it’s way to independent hip hop label QN5. They are employing the technique for their release Chico and the Man, a duo composed of emcee Tonedeff and producer Kno (of CunninLynguists fame). What’s interesting is that an independent label would go the viral route first, and not a major label with unlimited supply of resources. This goes to show you the power of the internet and social media sites.
So what do we know about this album? There’s not much. Everything that has been found has been by the dedicated fan base working hard at finding any sort of possible information, making guesses, and taking leaps. Only a few clues have been released, but let’s take a look at the clues that were given, how they were given, and the resulting news. All the clues have appeared on the Chico and the Man Twitter account.
Before we look at the clues given, I should point out that the Twitter account background is a clue in itself. If you look at the background file name you see that it’s called fulgenciobatista01011959. Fulgencio Batista was a Cuban dictator, and 0101959 = January 1st, 1959. On that date, Batista was forced out of the country by Castro’s revolution. Could the History of Cuba be one of the topics. There is also the line
catm: work for it. twitter is the key.commented out in the code.Clue number 1: waiting to breathe
No one is sure what this means quite yet. It may be the title of the album or a title of the track off the album.
Clue number 2: love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides – maya angelou
The rest of the poem is as follows:
It seems that the ocean is a major theme for this album, but what does it all mean?
Clue number 3:_fanned by a _pale mist the heart _flutters
There is a lot of speculation on what this one means, what the underscore means, etc. Far too much for me to reprint here, but read what fans have to say.
Clue number 4:18/5/1/3/8/ 23/8/9/20/5 13/1/18/9/16/15/19/1
This turns out to be code for Reach White Mariposa. What does this mean? Well, fans have found White Mariposa. Again, there’s a lot of clues here. Could the tagline “Su Amigo Para más de 45 Años.” mean anything for the album? What about the image titles. The logo is punto4. Point 4. Also, if you call the number, it is for this fake business described on the page, but the message is in Spanish. So if you want to translate an audio message that would help the fans out a great deal.
Your’s truly found the next bit of information. Commented out in the code is
cada punto confirma el último.Translated that means “each point confirms the last.” That takes us to…Clue number 5: cada punto confirma el último
It seems we are on the right track.
There is a lot of information that I have not posted, from meaning of butterflies to speculation on the initials HCK. It is all very fascinating. If you want to play along and love riddles, someone has made a thread to catch everyone up with what we know so far.
I’m excited about this use of marketing. This is definitely innovative. QN5, like one of their slogans says, is always 5 steps ahead of the game.
The Teacher Meeting Paradox
If there’s one thing that teachers hate it’s meetings. I don’t think I’ve ever met a teacher that is excited to go to a meeting where the higher ups tell them how to do their jobs. Here’s the thing though, get a bunch of teachers together (especially the female teachers) and you will see that while they may hate the meetings they do nothing to help the cause and get through the meeting quicker. Teachers have to make comments and tell stories about their students.
Tonight I had a meeting at Sylvan. The agenda was 26 points long. If I was running the meeting we would have been out of there in 30 minutes tops. I don’t need to expound on every single point. I don’t need to hear stories from every teacher about an experience with that point they’ve had. It is not necessary. At all. Especially when the meeting is all just a review of your job description and how you should be teaching. How long did this meeting last? 3 hours. Yes, 3. And we weren’t even covering new material, it was all on how everyone should have been teaching to begin with. I know I’m not perfect and I have probably made some of the mistakes covered in the meeting, but we really didn’t need to sit there for 3 hours and go on and on and on these topics. Talk about beating a dead horse. So yes, teachers hate meetings, but more times than not they are willing to extend everyone’s pain and misery just so they can tell stories. Give us a break and be quiet so everyone can get out of the meeting after a reasonable amount of time. Remember that feeling you had before the meeting started. We all feel that way. We all want to get out of there as soon as possible and you aren’t helping.