Culture

After watching Apple’s keynote for the iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch, it’s safe to say that Apple wants to integrate itself in all possible aspects of our lives. From the innovative Apple Pay to Apple Health, an Apple product a day may be enough to keep you away from traditional items you’ve used for years, such as the newspaper, and even your wallet. We all know that Apple is ridiculously amazing at marketing anything, but are there more exciting features that make me really want the new iPhone 6, or should I just stick to the iOS 8 upgrade?

iPhone 6 Exclusive Features
When I first began watching the announcement Tuesday evening (a little late, yes), I was excited to see what Apple had in store, but also very skeptical. Every product announcement that comes from Apple is “the best iPhone EVER,” a product that’s “going to change everything,” and they always, somehow, manage to convince everybody that they cannot go another day in their ordinary lives without this extraordinary new device. For every iPhone release, we expect the same things: a bigger screen, better resolution, and a better camera. So how would the iPhone 6 be any better or different from the iPhone 5S or 5C? Do I really need to shell out all that money for a new contract and a new phone?

Mobile Wallet
Apple aims to revolutionize the way we go about our everyday life, and the Mobile Wallet is no exception to that. Ever felt so inconvenienced by having to pull your wallet out of your pocket and decide which credit card to use? Have no fear – Apple has solved the issue for you! With the new Mobile Wallet feature, you can pay for lower-priced items using the integration of Passbook and Touch ID. Skeptical about Apple storing your credit card information and purchase history? They claim to do neither – instead assigning your credit card a one-time unique number that is used to complete the transaction with the merchant. Apple claims they won’t see your purchases or track your purchasing behavior.

Better Battery Life
One of the more exciting but lesser innovative features of the new iPhone 6 is better battery life, which means 11 hours of video watching and Wi-Fi browsing. As Apple gives us reason to become even more dependent on our cell phones, a longer battery life is absolutely necessary.

Faster Networking & Internal Processer
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus boast a 64-bit A8 chip processor and M8 co-processor. For those of you who are like me and have no idea what that means, the Apple iPhone 6 is now 25% faster and 50% more efficient than its predecessor thanks to the A8 chip. Additionally, the M8 measures your motion activity for the Health app without draining your battery life. The M8 chip also can measure elevation and tell when you take the stairs,
thanks to a new feature called “Barometer.”

Larger Screen Displays
As people have complained that Apple’s screen is too small to watch movies on (seriously people, go an hour without watching TV I dare you), Apple has announced that its iPhone 6 will boast a screen of 4.7 inches, and 5.5 inches for the iPhone 6 Plus, going for a “Phablet” look.

Improved Camera
Selfie-obsessed Millennials rejoice: the newest iPhone boasts an 8-megapixel camera, an improved sensor, True Tone flash, and an even faster autofocus. This means you can take even more selfies in a fraction of the time it took you before!

iOS 8
Despite these new features for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, most of the cool new features are available from iOS8, which can be downloaded onto your outdated and totally lame iPhone 5. Sure, mobile wallets are convenient, as is better battery life and a faster processor. But let’s be real here: nobody who has an iPhone 5 should be crying poverty. If you are due for an upgrade, I suggest you take it. My mom has an iPhone 4S for example and it’s time for her to trade on up, not because its embarrassing that she has such an old phone, but because the functionality of her phone is decreasing by the day. However, if you have a newer iPhone model and are considering the upgrade, I suggest saving your money and instead downloading iOS8 for free; these are my reasons why.

Health and HealthKit
Arguably the coolest feature for fitness geeks like myself, Apple’s new HealthKit feature syncs with third-party apps and services to measure your fitness activity in order to provide you with a “health dashboard.” You can measure your heart rate, calories burned, blood sugar, cholesterol, and even create an emergency card that is accessible from your Lock screen. While the new iPhone 6 boasts the M8 chip, which is more advanced in measuring your motion activity, it is not essential to the use of the app itself.

Better Chat
Texting just became so much more. Instead of being able to send one picture at a time, now you can send multiple. You can also name, mute, or leave group chats, which we all know can be both annoying and serious battery drainers. You can also tap your messages to add video, voice, or your current location at a much faster speed. لعبة القمار اون لاين Apple has also graced us with the convenience of tapping to see any attachment in the text conversation, instead of having to scroll up through endless messages. Thanks Apple!

Interactive Notifications
Ever been so-in-the-zone playing Candy Crush or Words With Friends that you couldn’t respond to a text? Drop down notifications for texts, tweets, and calendar events are now actionable, meaning you can interact with these features without having to switch out of the app you are currently using. بوكر اون لاين Hallelujah!

Keyboard Enhancements
QuickType will feature predictive typing suggestions, allowing you to not only type out messages faster, but finally your iPhone will stop autocorrecting to “ducking!” Additionally third-party keyboard support will come with iOS8. Apps like SwiftKey lead the way in keyboard support apps, which already embody the predictive typing software by memorizing syntax, slang, and social language usage. I hope Apple can totes keep up with all my abbrevs!

Integration of Siri and Shazam
Siri is now voice accessible with the command “Hey Siri,” and she can even identify songs for you and direct you to the iTunes store to purchase the song. I foresee many “accidental” embarrassing song purchases in the future of those who have had a beer too many. Way to capitalize on us during our weakest moments, Apple!

Self Destructing Photos and Recovering Deleted Photos
IOS8 will feature a “Recently Deleted” album in the photos app, for all those who may have mistakenly deleted a good photo (or selfie). Additionally, following the lead of what Snapchat originally was supposed to be, iPhone users will now have the option to make a photo “self-destruct” after 2 minutes. طريقة الربح في لعبة الروليت

Continuity Between Devices
When Orange is the New Black season 2 premiered, I did not want to do anything else with my life other than watch it. However, I was inconvenienced by the fact that my seating location of choice did not have an outlet nearby, meaning that when my computer died, I was SOL. Now, with Apple’s latest feature of Continuity, you can start something on your computer, and finish it on your phone or iPad (or any other combination of the 3), so long as these devices are nearby. Thanks, Apple, for helping me maintain my addiction to Netflix!

Verdict: Save Your Money & Download iOS8
Unless you’re trying to be the next Annie Liebowitz, suffer an actual addiction to your phone, or are truly inconvenienced by the fact that you have to have a wallet, I suggest keeping your iPhone 5, 5c or 5s, and simply downloading the software update. While the price tag for the iPhone 6 is no different than the price when the iPhone 4 or 5 were released, most of the truly great and useful features come in the software update.

We decided to have a friendly pushup contest one morning at Peak Seven HQ: designers vs. Darren. Who won? Check out the contest by clicking here!

Thanks to iScrap App for nominating Peak Seven for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge! The purpose of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is both to raise money AND to raise awareness. According to the ALS Association’s website, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. When the motor neurons die, the brain cannot initiate or control muscle movement. With our new found knowledge, we nominate Tirso San Jose of SobelCo, Steve Myers and all of the Yatco team, and Tom Buechel from iScrap App for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge! Peak Seven also donated to the ALS Association and encourage all of our clients and nominees to do the same!

Please visit http://www.alsa.org to donate to The ALS Association.

When I was in 4th grade, there was nothing I wanted more than a Geocities webpage to showcase my obsession with Sailor Moon (a popular Japanese anime show). Geocities pages were the perfect beginner webpages: they started free, and almost anybody could design a page to their liking. “Cool” webpages had tons and tons of images and not a lot of text. But webpages that really were worth sharing were the webpages that had your name in sparkling pink letters (thanks FlamingText.com), an “under construction” sign that flipped vertically, or a dancing banana. These moving or animated images are called “GIFs,” an acronym for “graphic interchange format.” After being MIA following the demise of MySpace and the rising popularity of limited design social media sites like Facebook, GIFs are having a renaissance. But like most things these days we have to wonder: are GIFs back for good, or is this just another Millennial fad?

GIFs made their official debut in 1987, hence the painfully outdated name of “graphic interchange format,” Almost immediately the GIF met controversy in a copyright war that lasted until 1994. The disagreement ended in the winning company licensing the GIF format to other companies for a fee. Most people didn’t want to pay, and ditched GIFs for the PNG format by 1996 – a free, non-patented single-image format. By the early 2000’s, time had passed: we survived Y2K, Britney Spears was America’s Sweetheart, and the GIF patent had expired. ربح المال من لعب الالعاب Enter Geocities and inexperienced Internet users.

Before MySpace and Facebook, there was Geocities, and what better way to express your limited HTML knowledge and trendiness than with a bunch of animated images? GIFs are compressed image files, meaning they could more easily load for people with modem connections and outdated web browsers. The ease of loading GIFs made GIFs accessible for people of all Internet speeds and bandwidths. Remember, this is the time before we had YouTube, Vimeo, Netflix, and Hulu: accessing video files used to take hours! How people ever survived is a mystery to me. Somewhere around 2001, a flash music video for the song “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” featuring a pixelated, dancing banana took over the World Wide Web. The dancing banana went on to be one of the most popular GIFs of that time. After the Geocities craze came the next bigger and better Internet trend: MySpace. MySpace was hot for about four years and truly kicked off our dependence on social media. Other than constantly worrying about who should be in my Top 8, I know I was one of the millions of teenagers who spent far too many hours littering their MySpace profile with as many GIFs as humanly possible. قوانين البوكر Why did we love GIFs so much? They were new, shiny, fun, and added a little bit of quirk to an otherwise stereotypical MySpace page. Once Facebook eclipsed MySpace in users, GIFs died out because Facebook only offered, and still only offers, limited customization aspects on profiles. However, like most trends including Jelly sandals from the 90’s and unfortunately overalls, every trend gets a second-go, and now is the time for GIFs.

Today, thanks mainly to Tumblr, the home of many GIF-centric pages, we have GIFs for every situation, every reaction and every feeling featuring clips from TV shows, music videos, movies, YouTube videos, you name it. Furthermore, companies like Victoria’s Secret PINK, J.Crew, and Steve Madden are cashing in on the GIF trend by using their merchandise to create GIF images on their marketing emails. لعبة قمار For example, Victoria’s Secret PINK recently sent out an e-mail promoting their collegiate collection, featuring an image model with the pullover sweatshirt she was wearing changing every few seconds to showcase different colleges and universities. Steve Madden often features GIF images in their emails with rotating images of their latest and greatest shoes. Even K-Mart got on the GIF-train during the 2013 Holiday Season with a “GIFing Out” campaign. This campaign featured commercials of family members doing strange repeated movements after scoring great deals at K-Mart, to which the onlookers would remark that their family member was “GIFing out.”

GIFs have evolved greatly past pixelated images. In addition to having a GIF for any mood, we now have “cinemagraphs,” which feature still images with only a minor repeated detail moving.  But what does this mean for the future of GIFs; are they here to stay, or are they another fleeting millennial fad? Kerry Trainor, CEO of Vimeo, stated, “We really feel like the GIF format overall really represents an interesting connecting tissue between what people typically think of as video and what people typically think of as still images… This is a new area of video creativity that we think bridges the gap between video and still photography.” With the attention span of users shorter than ever and the number of hours in a day ever dwindling, it is important for marketers to provide users with content that can be accessed quickly and easily. Sure, YouTube and Vimeo videos are great, but users’ time is limited, and watching a minutes-long video just takes up too much of their precious time. Not to mention buffer time! Enter the GIF – typically a few seconds long – short enough but to the point. Furthermore, GIFs can be instantly shared through social media, bypassing the inconvenience of having to click the play or pause button like on a YouTube video. Are GIFs the future of video? Will there one day be a social media site dedicated only to GIFs? As the popularity of GIFs continues to increase, I personally believe these are not such farfetched ideas.

So how can you jump on the GIF-train for your business? First, you can share GIFs across your social media accounts: be it Facebook, Google+, or even your blog. GIFs don’t always work on all social media platforms (Instagram and Pinterest for example) but they can help spice up your posts on social media platforms where they do. Whether you are sharing original, curated or repurposed content, GIFs can help tell your story with a little quirk and flare. Another way you can use GIFs for business is by creating GIFs that are centric to your work. In other words – don’t just use or make a GIF just to say you did. If you are using GIFs just to fit in or look cool, trust me, it’ll be painfully obvious. But when a GIF syncs with your brand or campaign, people will know who is responsible for that fun piece of content (you!). Email campaigns are another great outlet to create your original GIFs to market your latest and greatest products. As previously mentioned, Victoria’s Secret PINK has mastered the art of GIF marketing, as has Urban Outfitters. Lastly, if you are a website or blog that frequently posts a lot of tips or how-to’s, GIFs can be used as an educational resource. Showing your readers how to follow your tips step-by-step in a short, repetitive clip will help keep readers from second-guessing your directions, or leaving your page to turn to YouTube for help.

When words can’t say what you’re feeling or thinking, a GIF can. GIFs are like Hallmark cards for Millennials, except free and less compassionate. As consumers’ attention dwindles and patience is fleeting, I believe marketers will eventually have to be even more creative and find a quicker way to reach their consumers, and GIFs are the perfect medium. With GIFs, your creativity is limitless – the only real boundary is your mind, and maybe some copyright laws (watch out for those when using content lifted from movies, TV shows, and anything you don’t). Below are some of my favorite GIFs, and of course, I included the dancing banana. Long live Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/10/19/animated-gif-history
Source: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/7-best-practices-using-gifs-cinemagraphs-business-0939520#!bLjeQm
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-gifs-of-2013-2013-12
Source: http://victorious.wikia.com/wiki/File:Cupcake_dog_gif.gif
Source: http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070819174055/uncyclopedia/images/b/be/200px-Dancing_Banana.gif
Source: http://vspink.com
Source: http://www.urbanoutfitters.com

These past two months has been a great experience for me. As a native New Orleanian, coming to South Florida was a much anticipated change. Spring semester this past year I realized that I wanted to leave New Orleans for the summer for an internship elsewhere. My only criteria was that I wanted to go somewhere sunny with a beach. I eventually began searching for opportunities in Florida.

I found Peak Seven Advertising through a simple Google search and saw that they were a small boutique agency with some major clients. At first glance, I figured this agency may be a good fit so I emailed Kata Breman my resume and cover letter, and called many times (most likely more times than necessary) until I received a response.

Once I arrived to South Florida I knew it would be different for me. Though the weather was very similar to New Orleans: it was distinct simply because I was away from home. لعبه بلاك جاك My first day at the office, everyone made sure to make me feel welcomed as I became acquainted to the agency. I learned many hilarious things about this office on my first day which made me feel as if this could be a place I would come to enjoy and it did.

Here at Peak Seven I learned how daily agency life goes including how hectic it can be to how completely calm some days are. I was able to sit in various creative meetings and client meetings. I was able to witness how we the agency interacted with the client as well as client/agency frustrations all a part of daily agency work.

I unexpectedly learned the most about online marketing. العاب ماكينات قمار At Loyola University of New Orleans I am studying mass communication with a focus in advertising, this sequence allows me to learn about the creative side of advertising, like how to develop a campaign and social media strategies. شرح لعبه البوكر With my sequence I haven’t learned as many online marketing techniques and practices. Though this year will be my senior year and I will most likely learn some about online marketing, it was great to be able to get a head start learning this useful information.

I was able to work with Google Adwords and create a few landing pages for some of our clients. In the process of working with both of those tools, I learned basics of how online marketing works and its purpose. I also became acquainted with moz blog, inbound.com, and kissmetrics blog. These blogs are all great online marketing tools that will be useful in whatever field I decide to go into. I’ve learned some about SEO and how valuable it is.

Overall, I have enjoyed my time in South Florida at Peak Seven Advertising. I will go on to use all of the tools and skills I have learned this upcoming year and in my career. This internship has been a valuable experience for me and am thankful for the opportunity.