There is a hundred and one things that I would like to blog about but I’ve been very busy recently. Even my affiliate marketing is on the back burner. I’ve got a killer domain that needs to launch in the first two weeks of November but been entirely focused on work efforts. Past two weeks been working a lot on the Tesco Credit Card page. Later in the year I have a week off when I’ll be updating this more.

A sad day in the SEO community as Google removes the previous interface for the Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool. It’s moments like this when we realise that wars and poverty aren’t important.

If it has, it doesn’t lie in the ability to spell. Photo taken from the pub last night.

Spotted this gem while browsing my local Sainsbury’s. Aggressive pricing from Sainsbury’s.

I have a bit of a soft spot for technology which is not good for my wallet. My Nokia N95 8GB is starting to test me, and since my iPod Classic broke very recently, the lure of an iPhone is becoming harder to resist. Nonetheless, I thought it would be a good time to speak a bit about my little set up at home.

I’ve got a CD2 20″ iMac (which I got Apple to  kindly gave me for free) and I loaded it up with 4GB of RAM. I seem to be one of the few people that doesn’t do cracked software, so I have a bought copy of Adobe CS4 Design Premium.

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded to Office 2008 for OS X. I’m still to get used to it  as I was expecting it to be much like Office 2007 for Windows and it isn’t at all. Ironically my set up at home far exceeds my one at work. At work I don’t really have much paid software, but I have grown to like GIMP. It’s not a bad substitute for Photoshop CS4.

I’m getting the Apple Magic Mouse for Christmas

Distinction, whoop!

Friday afternoon I received the excellent news that for my Master’s I achieved a distinction classification. It was quite a solid distinction too, achieving module results of 68, 71, 71, 74, 75. I completed a Master’s in European Business at Royal Holloway. Probably the module I was most pleased with was my dissertation.

I spent all my summer  working on my dissertation, and for the first time it felt like effort correlated with grade. I wrote 15,000  words on the video game industry. One of the biggest changes in the industry is casual gaming. Nintendo have had great success with extending the market with targeting casual gamers, but what interested me was how Microsoft and Sony are going to juggle targeting both the traditional serious gamer and casual gamer.

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Peter Singer

If advertising as a vehicle promotes consumerism and contributes to the traits of capitalism that has adverse affects on society then it’s a sure bet that digital marketing, a career I’m starting conflicts with my aspirations to live a lifestyle consistent with preference utilitarianism.

In this article I make no defense  of the industry, but provide arguments that my own particular career path at present is one that minimises these adverse effects.

Firstly I would make the case that working in search marketing, a field of marketing that is a little more distant from traditional advertising. It is the case that with search marketing, the consumer knows what they want and my job is merely to help them find it. Whether or not that product or service that they are looking to buy is a necessary purchase or represents value is a different matter, but at least I am not creating false wants – only fulfilling them.

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