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internSHARE is an all-in-one internship job and review portal where students can not only find a internship but also access the reviews of internships at companies, submitted by former interns. Internships can often be a hit or miss in terms of experience. Some companies merely make interns fetch coffee and make copies while others let interns step into the roll of a full-time junior employees. Regardless of how a company decides to handle its interns, it’s always helpful to know exactly what your role will be prior to the internship.
InternSHARE
The site’s reviews seem fairly comprehensive, offering overviews (provided by Wikipedia) and reviews of a range of companies including Research in Motion, IBM, and Amazon.com. The site also has a feature where existing interns can post descriptions about the interview process and give prospective interns tips about the interviews. Another cool feature is the ability to use Facebook Connect to integrate Facebook friends and features into internSHARE.
internSHARE, which is student-run, recently merged with Coop.com, another Canadian-based internship database, boosting its users from to 8900 and creating over 2400 reviews for companies. Its seems that the site is slightly Canadian-centric. Most of the mid-size and smaller companies reviewed are Canadian based. And the job data base, whose listings are pretty paltry (there are currently only 6 internship listings, all in Canada), needs to be expanded in order for the site to really serve as a all-in-one solution to prospective interns.
InternshipRatings provides a comprehensive database of U.S. internship reviews but doesn’t feature internship listings. InternshipIN and AfterCollege just offer internship listings. I think internSHARE has a good idea in trying to be a comprehensive database for students but needs to add internships in a variety of areas to appeal to U.S. students as well. And the site needs to offer more than 6 prospective jobs to college students.
by Leena Rao
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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- The CIA isn't just advertising for recruits for its National Clandestine Service unit. It's also working with college students to create on-campus marketing programs.
Students Create Marketing Programs to Juice Recruitment for Spy Agency
The little-known effort, called the CIA Collegiate Marketing Program, funds three university business classes each semester. This semester, its the University of Southern California, the University of New Mexico and Michigan State University. The CIA gives each school a $2,500 budget.
"One of the main goals of the program, which has been very successful, is to elicit ideas from very talented marketing students," said CIA spokesman George Little. "Those ideas are routinely and seriously considered."
Publicizing employment opportunities
Mr. Little said the Collegiate Marketing Program is "one of the ways we receive feedback on how we make known employment opportunities with the agency." The other is mainstream media. In one two-week period in January, Mr. Little said, the CIA aired recruitment ads on about 30 TV and radio stations across the country and placed more than 100 print and online ads nationally. The agency behind them couldn't be determined at press time -- perhaps not surprising for a secret organization.
The CIA teams with California-based EdVenture Partners, a marketing consultancy that manages partnerships between education and industry, to implement the Collegiate Marketing Program. EdVenture's clients include the FBI, the State Department, Chevrolet, Nissan and Honda, among others.
Jennifer Hershiser, the CIA account manager for EdVenture, said the program benefits both entities. "The end result is the client receives creative marketing strategies that focus on difficult-to-reach market segments through customized marketing and recruiting solutions that are developed by the students," she said. The students "receive educational value in that they get a real-world experience in working with a real-world client that they can put on their resume."
From ad class to ad agency
At USC, 27 students are no longer in the Practicum in Advertising and Promotion Design class of Therese Wilbur, assistant professor of clinical marketing. Instead, for the 15-week semester that ends in May, they are the Imprint Advertising Agency. Ms. Wilbur is the CEO.
"We do everything you would normally expect with the agency-client relationship," Ms. Wilbur said, including client briefings and submitting the work for client approval. Each twice-weekly, two-hour class is basically an agency meeting.
Two of the students act as Ms. Wilbur's account coordinators; the other 25 students are divided into the creative, research, media, traditional-public-relations and nontraditional (event-planning) departments.
"Our budget is $2,500, so you can imagine how much we can place for that," Ms. Wilbur said with a laugh. "But it makes us be creative and nontraditional. We're mostly focused on the campus, but we are doing outreach" to other local colleges.
Creating a campaign
The "agency" is in week nine of creating a campaign with the tagline "Discover the CIA. Be part of something bigger." Graduating senior Allison Kosty runs PR and has already helped coordinate an on-campus recruiting event for April 7. A website, discoverthecia.com, will be up and running by April 1.
"I've had the opportunity to help form a fully functioning agency and work on a real campaign with an actual client," Ms. Kosty said. "Like many of my peers, I had my own preconceived notions about the CIA. I had no idea of the tremendous career opportunity made available to me as a graduating senior. I don't think many people realize this, but in a time where almost no company is hiring, the CIA is seeking new officers. "
Mr. Little said all the advertising outreach is not in response to dwindling recruiting numbers. "Recruitment numbers are actually rising," he said. "Last year we received over 120,000 job applications. Over the past several months of fiscal year 2009, we've seen a pattern that, if it holds, would result in at least a 40% to 50% increase in applications over last year."
By Rich Thomaselli
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Today Rixty announced that it would partner with Coinstar in the May rollout of its new youth-oriented payment service intended to help unbanked teens pay for microtransactions more easily online. When Rixty launches, users will be able to feed coins and cash into any Coinstar kiosk and have the money added to an online Rixty account that they can then use to pay for virtual goods and other transactions in any of Rixty's partner platforms, which will include both online games and virtual worlds.
"We want to focus on providing a payment mechanism that lets young users meet their own needs without extra fees, that is also convenient and economical. We feel everything on the marketplace today fails on one of those counts. Credit cards and mobile phones aren't youth-controlled, and prepaid credit cards are very expensive and have a lot of fees for reloading," said Ted Sorom, CEO of Rixty. "Everything in the marketplace today doesn't really meet the spending needs of the youth consumer."
While there is usually a small service fee charged for use of Coinstar kiosks, Rixty users will be able to use Coinstar to add funds to their online accounts without being charged any extra fees. Coinstar estimates that $10.5 billion in loose change is sitting in American households right now, roughly $90 per household. Rixty hopes that, thanks to the Coinstar partnership, the roughly 32 million potential users in the target 13-24 unbanked audience start feeding that $90 per household into Rixty accounts so they can spend it online in games and virtual worlds.
There are about 10,000 Coinstar kiosks nationwide, usually located at local grocery stores, convenience stores, and shopping malls. Users adding change and loose bills to the Coinstar machine can opt to get their "payout" in the form of a Rixty voucher containing a unique PIN number. Users than enter the PIN at their online Rixty account to add the value of the funds they deposited in Coinstar to their online spending account. Rixty also intends to sell prepaid cards at convenience stores, available at initial price points as low as $5, that can be linked directly to Rixty online accounts.
Sorom was able to name vSide, GamesCampus, NHN USA, Perfect World International, and Ntreev USA as platforms that would support Rixty payments at launch in May. Deals are still being worked out, but Sorom expects that at launch Rixty will be supporting roughly 50 different games and other platforms through deals with about 10 to 15 different partners. Integration with Rixty involves installing Rixty's API, which is designed to be compatible with subscription fee payments as well as microtransactions and virtual goods purchases.
“Today, a sixteen year old with $20 in his pocket can spend that money on anything he wants at a local store. Rixty believes he should have that same freedom online. No other online payment system addresses the teen payment challenge as completely,” said Sorom. “We’re thrilled to have a local presence through our Coinstar partnership that will allow teens to connect to the world of online entertainment."
What Rixty is offering sounds very similar to the Ukash voucher system already popular in Europe and other parts of the world, but not available in the US. While services that let you pay across several different games are nothing new, the Coinstar partnership and the ensuing ability for teens to convert change into funds for online payments is interesting, a sort of Spare Change for the unbanked set. Rixty will definitely be a pay provider to keep an eye on later this year.
This post by Alicia Ashby originally appeared on our sister site, Virtual Goods News.
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A Milford, CT middle school recently banned all physical contact between students, including high-fives, handshakes, and hand-holding, in an attempt to cut down on "horseplay." Because teenagers always respond well to no-touching rules from adults!
The ban was implemented after a student was injured in a "groin-kicking" incident; school officials decided that instead of cutting down on bullying and educating students about the difference between violence and hand gestures of a celebratory nature, they'd just ban ALL contact. Every touch is a bad touch at East Shore Middle School, dig?
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Plantation High principal inspired by MTV News interview with then-candidate Barack Obama.
Then-Candidate Barack Obama responds to MTV News' Sway Calloway in a November, 2008 interview
For one day, at least, nobody at Plantation High School in South Florida was sagging.
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A few weeks ago I received an invitation to my five-year college reunion. My reply was swift, unhesitating and final: No, thank you.
I have no desire to join the rest of my fellow University of Virginia graduates in sipping mint juleps on the sun-dappled Lawn and taking tours of the Rotunda. Why would I?
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PaidContent reports that The Walt Disney Company and Google are close to settling a series of programming deals with Google's YouTube that would see clips from ESPN, ABC and other Disney properties appear on the Web's largest video sharing site.
The blog has also learned that a YouTube deal would preclude a deal with Hulu, the joint video venture from News Corp. and NBC Universal. As part of the arrangement, Disney and YouTube would share revenue, with Disney controlling the ad inventory, although Google could get some inventory to sell, too. YouTube would also refer traffic back to Disney's properties. Both companies are also negotiating a full-episode deal that would put Disney programming on YouTube instead of on Hulu.
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A higher percentage of 15-24 year olds in the UK have watched a music video on YouTube than on dedicated music channels, according to a new study.
The report found that 57% of 15-24 year olds watched music on YouTube, compared to 56% watching them on TV.
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MTV is adding more music videos to its schedule — at 3 a.m.
MTV moves to 3am
On Monday the network starts “AMTV,” a six-hour block for music and advertising experimentation. From 3 to 9 a.m. Monday through Thursday, it will show music videos, news, interviews and performances, harking back to the network’s origins as a 24-hour home for music videos.
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LOS ANGELES — Who got slimed?
That's the question on everyone's mind when it comes to Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards.
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