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

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.

I collected primary data and did some market research into the purchasing habits of casual and serious gamers. I made a survey available to both segments of the market, and then queried the results and did data analysis. I made some really interesting results too. Obviously those at Royal Holloway agreed since I was awarded 74.  One of the jobs I applied for in the summer after finishing my Master’s was with Nintendo in Frankfurt. The job required a Master’s degree too, so I thought I’d be a good candidate especially considering that I ran one of the largest Nintendo communities on the Internet. Didn’t get a reply though!

Another unit I did well in was quantitative research methods. Starting the unit, I hadn’t done A level maths and only managed a B at GCSE, so m maths skills were severely lacking. Many in the class had already studied statistics as part of their undergraduate programmes and accordingly I was far behind when starting the module. I can visibly remember spending many, many hours in the library reading statistics books so it’s nice that hard work paid off!

Ah, so pleased

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.

The second facet to my argument is that the nature of the main website I work on daily functions to save the consumer money. While I’m not satisfied that this saved money is necessarily used for a good purpose, it’s probably better in the pocket of the consumer than being distributed to shareholders.

Ultimately one can earn a salary in many ways, and providing that person donates a proportion of their disposable income to worthy causes. At this stage in my career my salary is that of a junior level and have little left over at the end of each month. I am however planning to launch a website this side of Christmas that will be non-profit and feature Oxfam advertising.

I’ve got a long way to go until I am satisfied with my lifestyle ethically, and factors such as pension plans provide further dilemmas, but for the time being there is plenty for me to think about. Welcoming comments.