By Stefanie Gordon
While walking in the mall, you notice the usual retail gimmicks. Giant signs in bright colors, trendy music blasting from inside stores…and different scents grabbing your nose’s attention in every direction?
Advertisers have recently turned their attention to a new field apart from sight and sound: smell.
Stores have begun to place strategically engineered scents into their stores to attract customers, and hopefully increase sales.
Jeffrey Rosen, university professor of neurobiology of emotion, believes the sense of smell has a profound effect on humans, a source that has recently been tapped by advertisers. (more…)
By Lori Goldson
Released in October 2001, iPods have transformed from minuscule music mechanisms to full-force media machines. The constant revisions of iPods have relieved commuters, students and other users of portable CD and tape players after enabling the small device to carry thousands of songs and videos.
Podcasting was created in 2003, allowing consumers more flexibility than simply watching visual media and listening to music. In three short years, the podcasting phenomenon has become an essential tool for mass marketing and advertisement. In 2006, Pixar Studios director John Lasseter used the medium to promote Cars.
Aside from promotion, the revolution has altered learning experiences as well. Since its release, multiple universities across the country have adopted the new technology, including the University of Delaware. (more…)
By Laura Lopez
MySpace, one the most popular Web sites on the Internet, has a cool new group for everyone to meet — the Marines.
The social network known as “a place for friends” is now home to the U.S. Marine Corps recruitment program. The Marines’ profile, established in April 2006, provides prospective recruits — or anyone looking for a new friend — with information about the branch. It currently has 20,417 friends. (more…)
By Katie Bennett
Whether it was through an elementary school fundraiser, a friend, or just from passing by a collection bin, almost everyone knows about soda tab collections. Said to be exchangeable for kidney dialysis, cancer treatments, or a wheelchair; soda tabs are collected by students, children and adults around the world in attempt to recycle philanthropically.
But are the claims really true? (more…)
By Chloe Gallo
You check a friend’s blog entry on Facebook to find out where a party will be that night. Then you start an Instant Messenger conversation with your internet-savvy mother about your dog. At the same time, your best friend in Iowa IMs you, and you start chatting with him as well. As you are chatting, you are also postering for a concert by tacking the e-flier on various friends’ MySpace profiles, all while you are uploading photos onto your “College is Great” album on Webshots.com. You are officially a college student. (more…)
By Becky Polini
The men are trashy, the women drunk. The lights are just low enough that the sloppy girl sitting across from the equally sloppy guy can’t tell if his looks warrant him a trip back to her place later, but chances are she’ll give him a shot anyway.
It’s Saturday night at Pennsylvania’s Media Inn, and I’m dressed to kill. With my parents.
Dad, already four Rolling Rock Green Light girly-beers deep from dinner, orders himself another as he flips through the binder of songs. Why he bothers perusing is a mystery to me. Mom and I both know what he’s going to sing — Chicago’s “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” He’ll write his name on the song request slip not as Dennis, but Grady — a tribute to his dream brand of boat, the Grady White. (more…)
By Alex Honeysett
We stand outside the theater hall. Neither of us moves as we cling to our sanity before entering. Girls’ perfume floods out of the theater doors. Holly thinks she going to pass out. I think I’m going to cry. We grab hands and walk through the entrance. No turning back now.
We’re greeted by all forms and ages of the female gender. Pre-pubescent teens gather in large circles. High-pitched screams echo throughout the entrance hall. Holly holds her ears and shakes her head. Poor thing.
Twenty-somethings gather around the bar, dressed in New York City club attire: high heels, long earrings and glitter. Glitter on their eyelids, glitter on their shirts, glitter on their purses, glitter on their shoes. Holly is still covering her ears. I avert my eyes. (more…)
