Hasta La Gadget!

It’s always interesting to see how games look like before they make the final cut, at least for those who are curious about those kinds of things. Now the original Tomb Raider is still considered by many to be a classic, and while the reboot is off to a great start, obviously there is still some magic about the original that we’re sure many old school gamers can agree on.

That being said, it looks like footage has made its way online that shows off pre-alpha footage from the original 1996 Tomb Raider. This is essentially footage from 20 years ago, or maybe even more given its pre-alpha stage, and obviously it looks nothing like the games we have come to expect and play these days.

According to fansite Planet Lara who released the footage, “This is the pre-alpha build of the original Tomb Raider. It’s not a level as such, rather a collection of vast chambers and chasms styled in what would later become the Vilcabamba level textures. It is believe that it was produced to give Eidos a preview of what the game engine was capable of.”

They also note that the pre-alpha footage shows off a different game from the final, “Lara was sporting her iconic braid, which was later removed as it added too many polygons to the game. Not only that, but Lara is also sporting her iconic sunglasses too! Other unique and interesting features included in the pre-alpha were the ability to dual aim – Lara is able to target two different enemies at once.” If you are curious and have a couple of minutes to spare, check it out in the video above.

Original Tomb Raider Pre-Alpha Footage Surfaces , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

For months, we have been waiting for Donald Trump to implode. No matter how grotesque his claims, no matter how tone-deaf his behavior, his sheer gassiness has kept Trump aloft.

But maybe, finally, his bizarre attempts to use the massacre in Orlando for his own cynical purposes have crossed a line. A terrorist attack was supposed to be good for Trump, but this turned out to be a domestic hate crime. Trump so bungled his response, got so consumed by his own narcissism, that voters got to see which candidate was the better president in a crisis — and it wasn’t Trump.

Maybe, finally, Trump is over-exposed — his own worst enemy. Over-exposure is on occupational risk of media celebrities. Maybe, belatedly, we will get to see Trump crash and burn.

But what exactly would that mean?

Nobody — and I mean nobody — has a crystal ball when it comes to Trump. But here are four possible scenarios to ponder.

Republicans Throw Trump Under the Bus. More and more Republican leaders could conclude that Trump is toxic, not just for the country, but bad for their party. In coming weeks more GOP leaders could decline to support him. The awkward pose of polite distance could turn into a stampede — or to change the metaphor, ships deserting a sinking rat.

Key Republicans could decide that it’s better for Trump to lose big in 2016, and then to regroup, take back their party, and try to make big gains in the 2018 mid-term House and Senate elections, when the party of a newly elected president (Clinton) normally suffers losses.

This scenario would produce a carnival GOP convention, more significant for which Republicans don’t show up, and a blowout win for Hillary Clinton, of which more shortly.

Trump Decides This Isn’t Fun Anymore. The man is such a narcissist that as he becomes more and more a figure of ridicule, Trump could decide to walk away.
He could do this before, or after, the Republican National Convention. This is a long shot, but with Trump you never know.

If more Republican elected officials conclude that he is poison, then Trump’s hard-core support dwindles to maybe 30 percent of the electorate, and he stands to suffer one of the worst election loses in American history. Rather than suffer that humiliation, he could decide that this stunt was fun while it lasted and go back to (un)reality TV.

What then? Well, actually, trouble for the Democrats.

The Republican National Committee would meet. The RNC is far more mainstream and pragmatic that the Trump camp, and would select a candidate with appeal in the general election. Compared to Trump, that nominee would seem moderate (even though moderate Republican nowadays means far right but not psychotic. Thank you, Donald Trump, for that low bar.)

Likely picks: Paul Ryan or John Kasich — far tougher opponents for Clinton to beat. Okay, it probably won’t happen, but with Trump anything can happen.

Trump Gets Lucky. This would require one or more improbable surprises: Bernie Sanders going away mad and taking lots of his supporters with him. A worse than expected Clinton email revelation, some new bombshell from the Clinton Foundation, Bill way off the reservation, or a major real terror attack.

Even so, given how badly Trump has bungled the campaign so far, everything would have to break just right for this to be a cliffhanger election.

Hillary Wins Big. This is increasingly likely. In national polls Trump is now far behind other recent losing Republican presidential candidates at this stage of the campaign — and sinking.

If Hillary Clinton wins really big, Democrats will take back both the Senate and the House. But then the trouble begins.

The Republican leaders — Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan — having distanced themselves from Trump, will not treat Clinton’s win as any sort of mandate. They will seek to block her just as they blocked Barack Obama.

All of the national security crises that helped give Trump his moment in the sun will not go away. Nor will the lousy economic conditions facing regular Americans that powered the appeal of both Sanders and Trump.

Clinton will need to be highly strategic about what she can accomplish by legislative action (not much) and by the use of executive power (some good things) if she is to avoid the fates that befell both her husband in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010, when both suffered landslide losses in their first midterm elections and lost Congress to the Republicans.

For starters, she should avoid Bill’s 1994 mistake of carrying water for Wall Street at the expense of Democrats in Congress, when Bill Clinton spent huge amounts of limited political capital to ram NAFTA through Congress on mainly Republican votes. And she should avoid Obama’s 2010 mistake of listening to the fiscal hawks and declaring the economy in recovery when it desperately needed a second stimulus package being promoted by Congressional Democrats. In other words: govern as a progressive.

These are not easy challenges. But compared to the more catastrophic challenge of a President Trump, or even a President Ryan, we will have dodged quite a bullet if these are the main concerns come next January.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest book is Debtors’ Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility.

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I captured this image early on in my journey as a photographer. Helen and I were amidst a year-long odyssey traveling around the world when we managed to squeeze in a month in Israel. It was barely two months after September 11th and world tensions, especially in the Middle East, were running high. The United States had identified “The Axis of Evil” which included Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The fear in Israel at the time was the Iraq had poison gas that it would launch into Israel if provoked by rhetoric or worse by the United States. All of which is to say, I have two distinct memories of our time in Israel. The first being that every Israeli walked around with a gas mask dangling from his or her belt – a government mandate to be prepared in event of a surprise chemical attack. Of course, when I asked our family and friends if Helen and I were at risk without a gas mask (tourists didn’t warrant them), we were met with smiles and polite laughter. My second memory is the story behind this picture.

Photographing people on the street is not easy. In some basic ways, it’s like many athletic endeavors. The hardest part may be mental. After that, talent takes over. The mental hurdle to be jumped should be obvious. Most of us are wired to be cautious when invading someone else’s personal space. But that’s precisely what’s required to capture an image like this one. As I’ve said before, I don’t take pictures like this with a telephoto lens. All of my shots of people were captured up close and personal. For me, this also requires tacit permission that’s gained without disturbing the shot. That’s a tough needle to thread at times.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in case you’re unfamiliar, contains what is believed by many to be both the site of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and his tomb. As arguably the holiest site of all Christianity, this single building is shared by several Christian denominations: Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Egyptian Copts, Syriacs and Ethiopians. It’s a fantastic melange of people and beliefs, a stone’s throw from the holiest site in Judaism (the site of the First and Second Temple) and the second holiest site in Islam (The Dome of the Rock).

A minor albeit not trivial footnote. The Dome of the Rock sits atop the exact site of both the First and Second Temples and is but 1,500 feet from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Which is to say, no matter your beliefs, it’s hard to ignore that something important for humanity has happened here in this tiny postage stamp piece of real estate.

With that sobering appreciation for the history of where we were visiting, Helen and I wandered Jerusalem and eventually explored this landmark church. As one walks through the church, quite freely, I might add – one is struck by the range of priests and priestly garb – each group sticking visibly clearly to his section of the church.

This was November 2001 – I was shooting with a very basic film camera and a single 35-70 lens. I typically had between 15-20 rolls of film with me at any one time. And I was painfully aware that film was a limited (and expensive) resource for me. Which is to say, I was judicious with my shooting.

When I saw these two Greek Orthodox Priests talking, I knew I needed to photograph them. I also knew this was not a one and done situation. I needed to both get up close and then relax and shoot a series of images from which I could then edit and select later on. My first challenge was entirely mental. Who was I to step in, invade the space of these two priests and take (TAKE!) pictures of them? My mother’s voice rattled around in my head, “photographers don’t give pictures, they take them,” she said with scorn reserved for the only photographer in our family at the time she said this to me, her ex-husband, my father.

The path of least resistance in that situation was clear. I could take a picture from a distance – a bad one at that – and move on. That would have been extremely easy. And it was, truthfully, a very compelling option. The thought of stepping forward, into position, and raising my camera made me nervous. My muscles tensed. I began to sweat. All of this for a photograph? My brain began to rationalize all the reasons to forget the scene and move on. Everything, of course, transpired over a matter of seconds. The shot isn’t worth the effort. By the time you step up and after they notice you, the shot will have been lost. There will be other opportunities to face your fear and photograph people I told myself.

I hesitated. And then decided to subdue all the concerns – the rationalizations. If I were to be a photographer in the tradition that I demanded of myself, then I needed to slay this fear right there, right then. And so I stepped forward into the fray, possibly a bit too anxiously. The two priests were engaged in a spirited and private conversation. Their energy reminded me of my father and uncle at a family gathering, inevitably squirreled away in a corner somewhere discussing (read: disagreeing) on one topic or another and with passion. I had no idea what the two priests were discussing, I only knew that for my photograph to work, they needed to keep at it and resist distraction.

Now standing five feet away from them and clearly facing these two men, one of them glanced at me for a moment. I instinctively lifted my camera up toward my eye while asking with a subtle combination of hand and face gestures if I could take pictures. The priest nodded and went back to his conversation. I was in business. I took several images, moving slightly from left to right as I did. This one image is, hands down, my favorite from the few frames I captured.

There’s a lot going on for me. The dip of the head, the hand gesture, the priest in the foreground who established that this is a conversation. I love the texture of the stone wall behind the priest. And, clearly, the play of light from left to right is near perfect. If I had had lights with me (and knew how to use them), this movement of light is exactly what I would have aimed for. In all, I don’t know if I like the image better for its aesthetic or its story – and that’s what makes it, for me, a great image.

I shot five frames, before the Priest waved me off. “That’s enough,” he said, and he was right.

From “The Story Behind the Picture” Blog

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For the second time, I have been asked to teach a course in Marketing for the esteemed Master of Science in Social Entrepreneurship Program at University of Southern California (USC). While I look at this as a great opportunity. I know it is an enormous challenge. The primary reason is that business people and social entrepreneurs tend to misunderstand each other. Business executives typically look at social entrepreneurs as bleeding-heart do-gooders that waste their time chasing after lost causes. Moreover, social entrepreneurs tend to view profit-seeking business people as money-grubbing and selfish with little concern about the greater good. Even worse, they tend to view marketers as slimy, sleazy liars. In an effort to shatter these stereotypes and bring together both sides for the greater good, it is first necessary to explore the question – Why do intelligent people wanting to use their intelligence to solve the world’s social problems tend to shun marketing?

Many culprits

There are many reasons for this negative view of marketing. Here are just a few of them.

1. Our culture disparages it. From Arthur Miller’s classic, Death of A Salesman, to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, and the TV hit Mad Men, marketers are frequently depicted in a negative light.
2. Many universities don’t teach it. Many academics think it is beneath them and often look down upon marketing as a soft subject. Some view selling as a mortal sin. Those that do offer courses in sales typically hire adjunct professors from outside academia to teach it.
3. Too many have learned on the job. Since there are few good places to learn, too many marketing people learn on the job from bosses that have acquired bad habits. This tends to perpetuate the negative stereotypes about marketing and selling.
4. No quality control or licensing standards. Unlike CPAs, lawyers, architects, and doctors, marketing has no quality control or licensing standards that require passing comprehensive exams. As a result, the marketing profession is populated by a wide range of people with varying skills and ethics – from slimy, sleazy liars to some of the most professional and talented people in the world. Of course, when stereotypes are formed, “stereotypers” tend to use examples from the bottom of the barrel.
5. Fear of rejection. Those that tend to be more intelligent and socially-conscious (the ones who gravitate to social entrepreneurship) tend to be more sensitive to rejection – a natural part of the sales process. The fear of rejection is often given as a reason why so many shun marketing/sales.

Given these misunderstandings and the fact that marketing is a critically important function to the success of any enterprise – social or not – what is the solution?

Better understand the importance of marketing

To explain the importance of marketing and convince a skeptical audience to believe it, it is useful to quote a well-respected independent credible third party who was not even a marketer. I choose the late Peter Drucker – a management guru, professor at the Claremont Colleges, and the person who is considered the father of management consulting. Druker placed marketing on the highest pedestal possible. He is quoted as saying,
“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”
In the same vein, David Packer co-founder of Hewlett-Packard famously said,
“marketing is too important to be left to the marketing people.”
This emphasized its importance at the same he castigated most marketers for not know their subject well enough.

What is this mysterious subject of Marketing?

When asked this question, most people answer either advertising or sales. This proves the point about the lack of marketing knowledge since marketing is so much more than advertising and sales. In fact, advertising and sales are only two of the numerous ways an organization can promote its products. And Promotion is only one of 7 Building Blocks of Marketing. While there are so many definitions, here is the one offered by the American Marketing Association…

“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

The problem with this definition is that it is like so many others. It tries to include everything, and says very little. The one I prefer is…

“Marketing is the process by which products are developed and brought to the marketplace to satisfy the needs of the target audience.”

Products include goods, services, ideas, and concepts.

Marketing Plan

To initiate this process, marketers develop a marketing plan consisting of measurable goals and strategies to achieve them. In executing this process, marketers implement the strategies and continuously measure and fine-tune the process to insure that the goals are being met.

Seven Building Blocks

The strategies to achieve the measurable goals of the plan are crafted from and organized using the marketing “periodic table” of marketing elements I call the 7 Building Blocks of Marketing. An older view of marketing uses the 4P’s, which are the 4th through 7th building block.

1. Marketing Information System strategies to research the market and to continuously collect, analyze, report, and act upon information from the marketplace.
2. Corporate Image strategies to create, protect, and enhance the image of the organization.
3. Positioning strategies that identify the target audience with an unfilled need and fill that need better than competitors with a unique and compelling image of the product.
4. Product strategies that provide the goods and services that the target audience wants.
5. Pricing strategies that offer the product at prices buyers are willing to pay and for which sellers are willing to sell.
6. Distribution strategies that make it convenient for the target audience to find, buy and use the product.
7. Promotion strategies that communicate the benefits of the product in such a compelling way to prompt a buying action.

Since promotion strategies, including advertising and sales, are used to communicate with the marketplace, most people equate these with marketing. However, they are only two of many ways to promote an organization and its products, and Promotion (as shown above) is only one of the 7 Building Blocks. To help insure that the communications are effective, one tool that works really well for clients and students is the Universal Marketing Structure.

Universal Marketing Structure™

The Universal Marketing Structure is comprised of the following seven elements.

1. Headline. Data shows that 83.3%, on average, only read and remember the headline of a communication. Therefore, it should contain (1) unique and important benefits, (2) a hook to interest the reader to take further action, (3) the name of the company and product (unless the positioning strategy requires separation).
2. Body text. The Body Text should provide more information and details for those that are interested to find out more about the product and company. Since only 16.7% get to this point, marketers should not rely on people reading the body text.
3. Close. The Close should (1) Solicit a Buying Action, (2) Tie-in with the Headline, (3) End the communication, and (4) Contain a Marketing Information System code so the success of the communication can be measured.
4. Photo and Graphic elements. The photo and graphic elements should help to communicate the main unique benefits, be visually compelling, show the product looking as good as possible, function as a size reference if necessary, help to break up the body text into “bite-sized” pieces, show before and after examples if appropriate.
5. Format. The Format should make it easy for the busy or lazy members of the target audience to find and remember the main unique benefits of the communication without forcing them to read, listen to, or watch the entire communication.
6. Signature. The Signature (which is comprised of the name, logo and slogan) should give identity to the communication and further the relationship between the target audience, the product, and the company so the prospect is comfortable buying.
7. Everything else. Since people typically can remember up to 7 elements, all other important issues such as design, color, fonts, size, shapes, selling psychology, and putting “the WOW” into the communication should be considered here.

Adding this missing ingredient to Social Entrepreneurship

As discussed at the beginning of this post, one reason Social entrepreneurs lack marketing skills is they have a negative view of marketing. Hopefully, information provided in the preceding sections has transformed this view into the recognition that marketing is essential for success – no matter what the product or cause.

The challenge.

What makes marketing more challenging for social entrepreneurs is that (1) the target audience tends to be more complex and (2) marketing has to be better to finance the business and the social cause. There is often more than one segment that has to be sold and satisfied. The end user of the products may be different from those that select, purchase, and evaluate them. No problem. That is often the case with many products. It just means that social entrepreneurs need to understand marketing better so they can successfully market their products to all the constituent groups that need to be satisfied. This cannot happen if social entrepreneurs look at marketing as some dark art or necessary evil. Marketing needs to be given the importance necessary for success. Rather than be missing, it needs to be more effective and professionally executed to finance the business and pay for the social cause. If you are a social entrepreneur, I wish you the best of luck. Of course, better than luck is marketing knowledge.

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It used to be in the old days when you look into a crowd of concertgoers, you might see a sea of lighters held up in the air, particularly during ballads or slower and more “emotional” songs. These days you look into a crowd and all you are greeted with are the lit up screens from smartphones that are trying to record.

Sure, some might argue that they’re trying to preserve their memories and share with their friends what they’ve been up to, but for the performers on stage, they feel like it can be distracting, which is why musician Alicia Keys has decided to ban phones from her concert. How will this work? Concertgoers are given a small grey pouch provided by Yondr.

These pouches make it impossible to access the phone unless unlocked by one of the concert’s organizers/bouncers/staff/etc. According to Yondr, “We think smartphones have incredible utility, but not in every setting. In some situations, they have become a distraction and a crutch — cutting people off from each other and their immediate surroundings.”

Keys is not the first musician do something like this. In the past we have seen how some actors like Benedict Cumberbatch appeal to those who attend his stage plays to put their phone away. More recently, musician Adele was caught on video telling off a fan for filming her concert, not so much that she was worried about copyright or piracy, but more of the fact that she feels that the fan is missing out as they can’t be in the “moment” if they’re too busy trying to film.

Alicia Keys Is Banning Phones From Her Concert , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.