Persona Blog Post – iTunes Music Store

Max Fernandez landed in the United States after a solid twenty years of life in the Dominican Republic; he recently studied Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. Max was just offered a paid internship for Google where he’ll make a little over thirty thousand a year. He has been around the Internet twice in his lifetime (figuratively speaking of course). Our young graduate grew up with Napster, and was immune from the fines that were flooding music fans around the United States for about 22,000 songs, where his almost obsessive collecting came to an abrupt halt.  Moving to the United States meant that he was within firing range of the Music Industry and their fearless lawyers, so his music collection stopped growing for his college years.  During his life at Carnegie Mellon, he was one of the earliest adapters of the iPhone, and has upgraded to the latest & greatest, like clockwork, every June. He’s an avid supporter of the MacBook family and has even managed to convert a few of his friends over from the PC world.  His house reflects his personality a bit, and his sense of style is written all over it.  Open spaces, windows from the floor to the ceiling and enough wiring to play music in every room of the house, he calls one of the so called-ghettos of san Francisco home because it reminds him of home; the streets don’t seem to follow a grid like the rest of the United States, the restaurants have a beach-vibe and his community walks about in the afternoons.  Our protagonist is as loyal as they come; his house is layered with record covers, A&F, Prada, and leather jackets, which he uses extensively since more than ten months of the year he drives his Jeep Wrangler with the top off.  Recently, his itch to build upon his music library was answered by the iTunes Music store, since the songs come cheap, and he’s still paying off his student loans.  Max is a sucker for convenience, so having his Credit Card information saved within his iTunes account is a life saver and he tends to shop when he gets home from work and wants some new tunes to jam to while he cleans up his house, does his laundry and takes his nightly shower.  iTunes is the second icon from left to right on his dock and automatically opens when he turns on his computer so the Music store is really just one click away-just the way he likes it.  Most of the time he finds his music through Genius recommendations and off the iTunes Music Store homepage, where the store already has his preferences saved and recommends new albums from artists that already populate his library.  He tends to try to use ping to recommend songs to his friends, but most of the time, recommendations come from his friends on Facebook, and he is in dire need to link Facebook to his iTunes account to buy music off the web just as easily as he does from the iTunes store.

Gotta love Google

    It’s hard for a great majority of people that have only lived in the United States to grasp subjects and decisions taken by companies in foreign markets.  More than once I’ve found myself discussing business in other countries with fellow classmates, and ended on a bad note.  So a discussion about Google in China is bound to lead me on a path like the one described above, but here goes.   I admire Google’s decision to pull out of China, because the turmoil that they were causing as a search giant, and their ability to pinpoint just how devoid the people of China with regards to freedom of information on the internet was massive.   Sure, they are giving up a huge market, of over “400 million users” (The Independent) but the harm that they were causing, in my opinion, outweighed the profits.    When I think about it, opening Google.cn was a move in the “belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed [their] discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.”  (Google Blog) But making information available, and then censoring results like the government wanted is completely against what Google believes as a company. Google believes in an open Internet, in the organization of the information of the world. So that anybody can access it, and censoring results does not hold true to what has made them successful thus far.  Its just a shame that, like many have said, “Nobody will come out of this unscathed.  Whether it’s the Chinese users who no longer have any competition driving domestic search engines to improve their services or Google shareholders who don’t get paid a piece of the China pie.” (Zdnet)  I appreciate Google, because for the most part, except for one episode when Google sided with Verizon on the open internet policies in the United States (not to be mentioned because I’m hurt by it), they stand by their ideals, and promote the openness that they preach with every step they take toward global dominance of the waves of information across the world.

The Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/google-set-to-pull-out-of-china-over-censorship-1925052.html

Google Blog:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

Zdnet:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/google-pullout-from-china-imminent/1830

A quick thought about today.

I believe that we all carry around a “feel-good-check” in our pocket. A check that is made out to our name, but few of us choose to cash.  

A check in your wallet does you very little good. It represents opportunity, sure, but not action.

Most of us are carrying around a check, an opportunity to make an impact, to do the work we're capable of.

No, the world isn't fair, and most people don't get all the chances they deserve. There are barriers due to income, to race, to social standing and to education, and they are inexcusable and must fall, don’t get me wrong. 

But the check you have remains in your pocket, now more than ever. The opportunity to step up and to fail (and then to fail again, and to fail again) and to continue failing until you succeed is greater now than it has ever been.