I am currently reading Creating Customer Evangelists and it brings up some good points about the 4 “P’s” (Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion) not always having to be the focus of a companies’ marketing strategy. Does a good product sell itself? Should it? Let’s say you are a bank, what are you selling? You are selling service, support, and satisfaction, so basically, nothing truly tangible. So does a bank need to advertise? Probably not as much as other businesses. Why? Well banks are a good example of word of mouth advertising. People who use a bank and are pleased with it will basically advertise to their friends, coworkers, and family members about your bank, even if you do not have the best rates. So you basically get FREE customers by keeping your exsisting customer base happy. Easy enough right?

Service is the name of the game nowadays. However, there are still a lot of people who shop based solely on price (homogenous shoppers), so how do you reel them in? It’s a hard problem to solve because lowering your prices too low causes your product to look cheap.

I am working on a project for my Intro to Java class and it is the perfect example of why Object Oriented Programming is not always the best way to go about things. For this assignment it is basically overkill because the entire system could have been built in little modules with methods doing all the work, there is no need for the abstraction that OOP provides. I will post the code sometime later, so you can see what I mean.

I am still in limbo about what exactly I am going to talk about with the Lubbock Developers and Networking User Group. I told them Web Services with PHP but they said that the topic may be a little advanced for some of the audience… WHA?! Whatever, I’ll dumb it down.

Well, I just got back into Lubbock this morning from a really good Easter break spent with my family and Lyndsay. I went and saw “The Passion of the Christ” and let me just say it has to be one of the greatest movies ever, period. I do not care what anyone says about Mel Gibson, he did an amazing job creating this film and portraying it the way he did. Too much blood?? Only for those who do not live in reality. When someone is whipped or beaten, they bleed, the critics need to realize this. Anyway, it was definitely worth seeing and will be worth buying when it comes out on DVD.

It is going to be a busy and interesting next couple of weeks. I have exams out the wazoo and I have to speak at this month’s Lubbock Developer and Networking User Group about some different topics (mostly PHP and some Java). So that’s my next few weeks in a nutshell.

Well I have been informed by numerous people that I need to update my ‘About’ info. I will update it as soon as possible. I just haven’t had time lately to revamp this site and probably won’t have time for a while.

My Marketing professor spent most of today continuing to prove everything everyone has learned in Economics wrong. The fact that demand is not a function of the supply boggles my mind. He also went over some interesting facts about advertising and whether or not sales are actually effected by advertising campaigns.

I guess the best question he asked was, “Do sales increase with advertising or does advertising increase with sales?”. It is an interesting concept simply because with more sales you have more money to spend on advertising but with advertising you sometimes get more sales. He raised the point that maybe those two things have no relationship whatsoever, or that the relationship between the two is so distant that isn’t noticeable.

Well I finally finished my first article for WebDevReviews.com. You can view the entire article here. I will be finishing up my second review fairly soon and when I finally get this site up and running the way I want I will have some articles/tutorials.

So what does the future hold for http://www.badice.com? Well for one, I am changing the site from a blog type site to something with actual content. I have not totally nailed down exactly what the content will cover but it will probably have something to do with Marketing, Programming, and technology in general. I may decide to throw some Java, PHP, or Python tutorials into the mix. Right now it’s all in the planning stages though, so we’ll see.

As noted by Chu Yeow, Google has a new look. It is a very subtle change but a good one overall. Chu Yeo also mentions Personalized Google which allows you to create a profile and have your search results conform to that profile. Pretty neat stuff actually.

So I am really looking into this internship for the summer. Basically, a job in NYC making $2,900 plus a stipend at the end of the job. Still looking at the details and putting together a resume to send to him. To me this would be an awesome job, I mean, come on, working in New York with one of the best Marketing minds in the world??

Well I was reading A Look at PHP 5 at developer.com and I am now convinced that PHP 5 will be awesome programming tool. Being able to throw (and catch) exceptions so that errors are more meaningful and are easier to debug is something that I think the PHP community has been waiting a long time for.

Also, the SQLite feature seems pretty cool. Not having to use MySQL or another database will be a big plus for those who just want something simple to hold their data.

In other news, CNN Money has a good article on the current gas prices and the expected pricing for the future. It also has a little insight into why the prices are rising (OPEC is expected to slow its production and there are worries about the inventory of crude oil). Anyway, for anyone wondering, that is a good read.

Well I bought a Pepsi today and won a free iTunes song. I don’t have iTunes so I gave it to my boss (it’s only worth $.99) and let him download something since he uses iTunes. This whole song idea by Apple and Pepsi is probably one of the smartest marketing choices for either company. It isn’t about illegal music, it’s about money, pure and simple. They could honestly care less about who’s downloading what, they just use that as marketing to get the kids who are using KaZaA and iMesh to use iTunes.

Ha, my boss just downloaded ‘This Love’ by Maroon 5.