Old Spice does it again!

Now seriously I never really pay that close attention to a commercial let alone about deodorant but the guy on the Old Spice commercial is truly mesmerizing. I just so happened to be surfing the internet when I came across this advertisement.

Anyway I ended up clicking on the link and was greatly surprised to see that they took the campaign to the next level actually answering all of the inquiries of everyone leaving comments. What a brilliant campaign to get everyone talking. At one point there was even back and forth banter with one @Alyssa_Milano who tweeted back and forth with the Old Spice guy.

Just take a look at the end of the interaction to get a better idea where this all went.

Finally the Old Spice guy left us with his final video where you get quite a surprise at the end of it all.

Old Spice, pat yourself on the back for an excellent campaign!

A boss in information security forgot to lock his computer..

I just have to say this post that is going around the internet be it real or not is a typical prank you can usually find around the office that hurts nobody and in this case even educates the user that they should be aware to lock the computer when leaving the desk. What are your favorite backgrounds to put on a co-workers computer? Post it in the comments.

It May Be Time For You To Re-think Free Internet Radio: Pandora vs. Jango

Until recently, I never really got into the whole free Internet radio fad. It seemed like everyone in the office was using some free Internet radio site, but I just never really looked into it—most of the time I was content to use iTunes shuffle.

Lately, however, I have been getting a little tired of what iTunes shuffle has to offer and have been looking for a simple solution to find new music while working, without having to put in too much effort.

Pandora was the first free Internet radio website suggested to me by a co-worker. I was using it for about five to ten minutes before I got annoyed and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Not only did it limit the amount of times I could skip through songs—only 12 songs a day across all of the stations for the free service—but there was also annoying advertisements. Now, obviously I know sites like Pandora have to pay for their service somehow, mostly through advertisements. It just seemed like the ads came up a bit too often for my liking, but perhaps that’s just me and I’m too impatient for many free Internet radio sites.

I liked the idea of Pandora, but wasn’t satisfied with what it offered enough to ignore what I didn’t like about it and continue using it. It limited the amount of times I could skip a song, there were lots of ads, and I could only listen to 40 hours of music a month.

While Pandora states that, “Most Pandora listeners never hit the 40-hour limit,” and that may be true, I am just not a big fan of limits being imposed on my music-listening time.

On top of this, I just didn’t like the set-up of Pandora. Again, being impatient, I was looking for a site that I could enter into my address bar and just start playing good music without having to figure out all the in’s and out’s of the site first. Perhaps I was asking for too much? I know many people who do like Pandora, but at first glance I was just not one of them.

And so, after trying Pandora for only a short time and almost instantly not liking it, I went back to my iTunes shuffle for the rest of the day.

I was beginning to think that perhaps free Internet radio and I would just not mesh well together. After all, I absolutely hate listening to most regular radio stations—they don’t play what I want to hear, there is too much talking/advertisements between songs, and if I have a particular artist stuck in my head, I’d like to listen to them without calling in a request.

And then…I found Jango.

Now, if you are a Pandora enthusiast, at least hear me out. For me, Jango proved to be the much better free Internet radio alternative to Pandora.

After the first five to ten minutes of using Jango, I thought to myself, “I love this. This is SO MUCH BETTER than Pandora.” And here is why.

Jango offers, in my opinion, a much easier set up than Pandora. Within the first few minutes of using the site, I had already heard music that was new to me that I instantly wanted to add to my iPod. I just typed in artists I liked, added them to my station, and off I went on my merry way listening to songs I liked and songs I was soon to like.

Not only did Jango quickly serve up songs that I was really enjoying, but it seemed that if I wasn’t enjoying one track, or if I wasn’t in the mood to hear a song, there was no limit to the amount of songs I could skip.

Now, I can’t tell you that I’ve personally sat at my desk hitting the skip button to see exactly how many times it would let me do so—let’s face it, that would be a huge waste of time. However, I have definitely hit the skip button more than 12 times in a day on Jango and I have not run into a problem with a limit to the amount of songs that I can skip yet.

As for the advertisements, yes Jango has them. But, they are far less often than on Pandora, and you can ‘x’ out of them when they come up. Also, the ads on Jango do not interfere with the music that you’re listening to at the time the ad pops up. It’s a crazy concept—but most people who are enjoying the song they are listening to do not want to suddenly be listening to an annoying advertisement. Weird, huh?

Jango also offers what appears to be a much more social experience. Not only can you add friends to your profile on Jango, but Jango tells you who is like-minded to you with very similar music taste. You can also see who is listening to your station and thank them for tuning in, or tune into another user’s station to see what others are listening to.

Jango gives a user the ability to send private messages to other users (like e-mails), or short private messages to users that will show up directly in the other user’s player (like DMs on Twitter), and public comments on other user’s profile pages.

To be fair, Pandora does allow users to connect to their Facebook accounts. On Pandora, you can see who on your Facebook friends list is on Pandora and what songs/artists they like.

In my opinion, the atmosphere on Jango still just seems more like a social networking experience than on Pandora. You can even tweet or send out a Facebook status of what you are listening to on Jango right now, which may get more of your followers or Facebook friends interested in using Jango.

While I appreciated the idea of Pandora, I appreciate Jango even more. To me, it seems like Jango took the idea of free Internet radio and improved over its competitors.

From now on, I won’t have to decide between Pandora or iTunes shuffle. I’ll be on Jango.

Video game novice

Guest post written by Debbie Piland

My grandson had begged me since Christmas to play this new video game I gave him as a present. I had never really played any games beside Tetris and other puzzle ones before, but I decided to give it a try one day a few weeks ago.

It was a car racing game, so I thought it may be easy to play because I’ve been driving a real car for decades. Well, the controls weren’t really anything alike, but I picked up on them after a little while and found that I really enjoyed playing the game!

As we played more, I kept turning the volume on the TV up louder because I couldn’t hear what the announcer for our race was saying. Eventually my daughter came in the room to fuss at my grandson for the TV being too loud but was surprised to find me in there too. She suggested that maybe I should get a hearing aide and coaxed me into scheduling a free hearing test.

I know that my grandson didn’t mind me turning up the TV loud, but that makes me wonder what other similar things I’ve done because of my hearing.