Politics

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-hais-and-morley-winograd/sopa-blackout_b_1222318.html


Crowd sourcing is not just for consumer products anymore. It now can maybe used to help push legislation that may actually be good. Recently their has been talk about the threat of Internet piracy and how it affects businesses like the movie industry. This will negatively affect consumers but positively affect things like the movie and music industries. So basically people are going to get screwed. To prevent this, the Internet has fought back with a blackout day where the most popular crowd sourced sites such as Wikipedia were blacked out and users were unable to access the site. Instead they were directed to help fight legislation that constrained consumers while just helping to bloat the wallets of the movie industry. It worked as the people of congress were backing out their support for the SOPA bill and have received favorable support from their own constituents. Crowd sourcing seems to be even a new way for the people of Congress to figure out what the people that elected them want. Hopefully they will do what is best for the people of the country and not what is best for the capitalist fat cats that only care about the bottom line.

Beer

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/08/black-crown-budweiser-crowdsourcing-beer_n_2094434.html 

         Recently Budweiser decided to diversify its product line to appeal to a more wide range of customers. There has been a decline of traditional beer sales while there is an uptick in the craft beer industry. To capitalize on this like any other good capitalist company they decided to create their own set of craft beer. They did this by asking customers to vote for their favorite beer and dubbed it Project 12 like some science fiction movie probably to add to the fun of the campaign. These three new beers will be part of the the Project 12 that are getting released for a limited run. Most likely if they do very well and the company makes mucho bucks on it then they probably will keep it or change it up again like Apple does with its technology so people want to keep trying new types of beer. Hey, any reason to drink good alcohol is a great reason to drink but we should keep in mind it is Budweiser doing this. It's kind of like American Idol producing a folk singer to capitalize on the popularity of folk rock but we know it is not genuine but people still like it. So only time will tell how successful this campaign and product launch will be.