Archive
Please Pay Ad-tencion
The Ad puns are Back!!!!!!!!! and worse than ever!!!!!! Today was our second last day at CTYI. Today we spent most of the Day putting out Google ads and Facebook ads for the helix . We worked as a group and the ads came out great!!! I hope The Helix gets a lot of new traffic to their website, and for their conferences!!!!!
By the way , if you need to hold a conference in the Dublin area with full catering services, and various venues, from the spacious Mahony Hall or the intimate Gallery for smaller gatherings, call the Helix. Unique conferences, no drama.
Yaaaaay for accidental/intentional advertising!!!!
Facebook… turns out it can be counted as work!!!
Today we went on the second field trip in the course. Today’s destination: Facebook headquarters!!!! And no, Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t there! The headquarters are very close to the grand canal theatre, about 5 mins walk. We took a bus from DCU to the grand canal theatre and walked the rest of the way to the the Facebook headquarters. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past few years, Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004. Facebook has more than 600 million active users. If Facebook was a country it would be the third biggest countries (in terms of population in the world). Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college room mates. They even made a film about Facebook called “the Social Network”. Anyway, when we got to the FB HQ we were all given name tags. (again, very official.) We then headed into one of the offices and we received a talk on how Facebook can be used for marketing. The talk was focused on how to use ads on Facebook. Later we had a competition to see who could design the best ad for the Helix on Facebook Ads. Our team won so we got a laptop case each filled with goodies like sweets, earphones and Hilighters. All in all it was a very good trip and I really enjoyed it.
Our field trip to PayPal.
Today in CTYI was a very exciting day. Our first field trip!! We went to PayPal, which, as I’m sure you know is an online payment service, which is extremely popular. We went in the morning and when we got there we each got name tags (very official!) After that we were given a power point presentation by a PayPal worker, a man called Jonathan, who was in charge of helping companies in selling products or services online with PayPal. He gave a very funny and interesting presentation on what PayPal is and how it works. Then we had a break for lunch. I had several plans for lunch, including a chicken tikka sandwich, a banana and a bottle of water, but my plans were halted due to a complimentary lunch of Pizzas and soft drinks provided by PayPal. (I’m not complaining though, it was delicious!!) After that we had another presentation, this time about mobile technology, apps and how PayPal fits into all that. Afterwards we had a competition to see who designed the best app that used PayPal. Our group designed an app that located the nearest taxi to your location and gave information about it. I personally thought it was a brilliant idea but unfortunately we didn’t win. A team that made an app that if you play a game you get free ice cream won.(I know, that didn’t make sense to me either!) And to make it even worse the prize was digital cameras for every one on the winning teams. The runners up did however, get a consolation. We received a PayPal goodies bag filled with PayPal pens, sticky notes, pens, pencils, markers and more pens. So as I went home feeling very happy having enjoyed my time in PayPal immensely, aswell as learning allot that day. Thanks PayPal!!!
No more Dog-Eared web pages
Today I’m feeling in a particularly productive mood so I’m going to post 2 blogs today. The first one is about Social Bookmarking. Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren’t shared, merely bookmarks that reference them. We signed up on sites such as Digg and Reddit. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.I posted a post about the helix on both Digg and Reddit. Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata, so users may understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves. Social bookmarking revolutionized the way we share data with people. And this blog might be DUGG some time soon!
An Ad-venture
Today, Tuesday June 28th in CTYI history we learned about Ads.( Hence the title.) 2 people came in to teach us about Google Ad Sense and Internet ads in general, Conor Barron and Alan Harrison. In the first half of the morning they introduced the concept of Internet ads and Google Ad Sense. They used a power point presentation on how SEM (Search Engine Marketing) isn’t just SEO (Search Engine Optimization, which was covered in an earlier blog) but it can also be SEA (Search Engine Advertising.). The next time you go on Google pay attention to the bar at the side of the screen. That is an advertising spot (SEA), which is what we were studying.
In the second half of the morning we had another power point presentation on how to use Google In sight, a program that lets you view who clicked on your ad, calculate the demographics, see how the time of day and the the seasons affect the amount of clicks your ad gets.
And finally, after a nice lunch, we headed to the computer lab to face yet another power point presentation, this time focusing on how to use keywords to optimize your website to search engines (SEO) and we put that in to practice by examining the helix’s keywords and comparing them to its competitors on the conference market.
Well, today was full of Ad-renaline and I think I’m Ad-dicted now.
Ad-ios.
I think, therefore I blog…
As the sun rose up over the hills this morning, forcing me to get out of my comfortable bed, I realized that today of all days, I shall blog.
From morning to afternoon, I blogged, learned how to blog, learned about blogs and played Angry birds. We set up an account on Word press, and well now, the sky is the limit!!! We found out about blogs through a very interesting video which I can’t remember the name. We basically learned how to run a blog and how to operate all of the many complicated functions of blogs, from learning how to place a calendar on your blog, to finding out how to synchronize your twitter and flickr accounts with your Word press account. After we had finally set up all the functions needed to run a decent blog, we actually had to write something!!! So I decided to write about day to day life in CTYI, which is what you are reading now. We also have to manage our whole blog. We have to be a moderator to all comments posted on our websites,check our blog statistics, and basically look over the smooth running of the blog as a whole. We can also go over and look at other blogs and subscribe to them if we like their content. Likewise, other bloggers can check out my blog and if they like what they see they can subscribe. So basically today we learned everything we need to know about blogs in general. I can’t wait to find out what we are going to do tomorrow! And in the mean time, I go by a famous philosophical statement by Descartes….: I think, therefore I blog! (Descartes was the one who said that, wasn’t he? I’m pretty sure he was.)
My Thoughts
Words I associate with my first days at CTYI.
Made with Wordle.
The machine is using us….. This video basically sums up what we’re doing in my course.
Click the link above to see the video.
21st century technology CTYI blog
Hi. My name is Daniel Ferreira and I am a student in the 21st century technology CTYI course. I’ve been instructed to write a blog about my course as a project. I might expand this blog later on. So here goes:
Today is my 2nd day at CTYI. So far I’m enjoying it. I’m a commuter to CTYI which means I don’t stay here the night. I attend the course 21st century technology skills. I’m finding it very interesting. On my 1st day here, in the morning we found out what we would be doing for the rest of the course. In the afternoon, we learned about the dangers of cyberbullying, and how people can track you down through your posts on the internet. We learned that you leave a cyber footprint when you go on the web which can be tracked back to you. It was very interesting and I would like to learn more about how you can be tracked down on the internet. On the 2nd day, we learnt more about how businesses take advantage of the internet for marketing purposes and how they use people to provide them with services for free. (e.g . Wikipedia, people who write information for others to obtain for free.) In the 2nd half of the day we focused on brands and their demographics.
I’m really enjoying CTYI and I can’t wait till tomorrow!!!
By Daniel Ferreira
dannyferreira 