David ex Machina

There has been some confusion surrounding the name of my blog? The purpose of this post is to settle all current and future rumors regarding the title "David ex Machina" once and for all.  Let me start by explaining the difficulty in choosing the name for a blog, or any website for that matter. It's hard. Ever heard the quote: "There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt." -Audre Lorde Well for the most part, it's true, and the best practical example of this is trying to register a domain on the web. I mean there's an entire business behind " domaining ," the business of buying and selling names on the internet, most easily appreciated by the sale of "sex.com" for $14 Million ( article )! There are a couple of ways around this however: actually come up with a new idea, be clever at rearranging words for your needs that still get the same message across (i.e. Digg ), or just take an ego hit and buy one.  I tri...

One of the things that bothers me the most about the holiday season is the advertising blitz that engulfs you the minute Thanksgiving rolls around the corner. Right after we spend a day being "thankful," we immediately get pestered into going on a spending spree, gleefully awaiting reciprocal presents from our friends and family. Like clockwork, the same old holiday songs takeover the airwaves, festive lights are dangerously hung , and your favorite TV shows are on hold. This holiday commercialization rant is not new, and I think The Simpsons "Trash of the Titans" episode sums it up the best. However, just because it's the holidays doesn't mean you can get away with annoying, meaningless commercials. The one that got to me this holiday season was Walmart's "Carol of the Bells" advertisement (embedded from whereschristmas ), take a look:  Now this seemingly innocuous video might seem harmless at first, but after watching it a few times I reali...

I've decided to have a "column" of posts under the tag of " ad nauseam ." The motivation behind the column is to analyze and/or criticize the modern world of marketing. Advertisements are becoming the most ubiquitous things on the planet , hence the label. It is essentially impossible to go through a full day without encountering some form of branding or advertisement (if you have please let me know). Email alone is over 90% spam . Google would not be in business without ad revenue ( 98.91% of all its revenue in 2007), and that goes for any other web businesses that rely on AdSense -like programs. Whether we like it or not advertising has an enormous impact on our lives.  With so much money riding on the marketing industry, I started wondering why there could be so many awful advertisements out there. I mean, people are being paid to make commercials that are purposely difficult to unstick from your head. It's amazing that such a large industry can exist ...