This is the best comment of the day from the Turk survey:

“I think this is a really cool idea - it would be great as an heirloom, or in fact to help individuals with memory loss like the couple in the movie The Notebook only MUCH better because there would be pictures to go along with the words. “

The Notebook. Three out of four girls I know would rate this as their favorite movie of all time. Yahoo! Movies explains The Notebook:

“An epic love story centered around an older man who reads aloud to an older, invalid woman whom he regularly visits. From a faded notebook [his journal], the old man’s words bring to life the story about a couple who is separated by World War II, and is then passionately reunited, seven years later, after they have taken different paths. Though her memory has faded, his words give her the chance to relive her turbulent youth and the unforgettable love they shared.”

Here is The Notebook trailer off YouTube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y7PYWHxgjI]

I know I record all of my intensely romantic dating life in my journal. I think I would have to stick a bunch of lies in it to make it as dramatic as this movie. The best part is that I could, if I wanted

Two weeks ago, we did a random survey of 575 (our stats class says that anything over 480 in any demographic is indisputable) BYU students for pyxlin. We learned three things:

1. BYU student are regular journalers - Out of the 575 students, over 40% of them write in a personal journal at least once a month. Over 20% at least every week. The interest was phenomenal. We were surprised at how many people loved the pyxlin idea.
2. BYU students don’t have a sarcastic bone in their body.
3. BYU students LOVE pyxlin - 38% of those surveyed at BYU left their personal email address requesting to be contacted when pyxlin is released. That is unbelievable! Neal (President of FamilyLearn) explained that this is how you know that someone is really interested. Most people don’t just pass out their email address to strangers. We can safetly assume that 38% of those surveyed are VERY interested in a pyxlin journal.

BYU Journaling Survey:

Click here to take the survey

Real-Time Summary Report Preview

Daniel (an advertising major at BYU) has been working on a little pyxlin’ cartoon movie. This movie is where John Pyxlin came from. The cartoon will be made in flash. “The animation will be similar to a simple South Park look.” Daniel told me.

We have already recorded the audio (a 1 min and a 30 sec) for the movie. Daniel has been working on the flash end. I have added little screen shots from the movie below.

BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE AUDIO IN THE TOP RIGHT—————————->

Click here to skip this post

If you actually made it this far, let us know what you think. Do you think the movie will work? If you have any more ideas we would love to hear them. As I said before, we plan to build the social part of pyxlin around this quirky little cartoon, John. We have already posted him on Facebook.

We have had some great comments in the Turk survey. Here are some interesting ones on handwritten journals:

“I consider my written personal journal a completely different animal than my blog. What makes my written journal unique is the fact that it’s handwritten and unproofed, which makes it most personal to me. I would never want it to be electronic, it would lose the qualities that make it special. “

I know that this is a concern for some because it has come up before. Here is my best answer:

I thought that this photo I used in our marketing presentation at BYU did a better job of answering this comment than anything. You can see Ben and myself in a car on the way home from California, we were driving about 80 mph. It is comparing Ben’s pyxlin journal with Ben’s old handwritten journal.

Here are some other comments from the survey:

“I think this is a really cool idea and love that the journals can be bound with text and photos!!! ”

“Was very interesting and fun to take.”

“This sounds like a great idea.”

“Sorry, just not a blogger or a journal writer.”

“Very good survey, simple to take.” (thank you)

“Neat idea but I have never really had a journal. Requires too much commitment. I can imagine it would be a nice gift for someone.”

“interesting service if this ever comes into fruition”

“I think this is a good service but I dont really keep a journal or write any blogs. I can definately see value in the service and I think its a great idea. The question of course is how much people would be willing to pay.”

“This is a great idea - but I don’t think you can charge all the services in one bundle. Some people wouldn’t want to publish, others would probably want to publish quite frequently. Maybe a two-tier cost system for those who do and don’t want to publish? Awesome idea, though… “

We love your comments. I have saved a few that talk about: the system being FREE, keeping your journals on your PC or Mac, and those who think pyxlin is just a blog. Stay tuned.

If you have any ideas to help us out, we would love to hear them.

After creating John Pyxlin’s profile on Facebook, I started a profile for John on Myspace. About halfway through the process I noticed an ad with a girl in very little clothing that said something like, “find your true love”. The offensive ad was paid for by True.com, a dating website. I was disgusted and logged out of Myspace.

My experience started the discussion of whether or not John Pyxlin should have a profile on MySpace. MySpace is fifth on alexa for overall traffic on the web. Here is a link comparing Facebook to Myspace for traffic. MySpace is a link to millions of consumers world-wide. If this was just about traffic I think we would not hesitate to have John Pyxlin create a profile there.

The main difference between Myspace and Facebook is that Facebook is clean. Unlike Myspace, you do not have to fear stumbling onto sensual content when you are using Facebook.

Any honest person who has used or uses Myspace knows that from the advertising to the lack of content control Myspace is plagued with inappropriate content. A user doesn’t have to search out this content, it is commonly put right on the home page.

myspace & pornography

Two weeks ago, Mari and I went to see a documentary on pornography called “Traffic Control“. The purpose of this film is to help the public understand how the porn industry is targeting minors and what we can do to stop them. It is an excellent documentary. I purchased a copy of it.

In the film they interviewed teens from all over the country. Interestingly enough, the teens said that Myspace was the most common source of porn for people their age. The documentary claims that the porn industry has targeted Myspace and now uses it to market to the teenage crowd. Terrifying, considering that millions upon millions of minors are actively using Myspace. I have also talked to several Myspace users, each one said that they get regular “porn spam” friend requests.

Whether or not myspace is propagating pornography, they are certainly not making it hard for, or stopping, the porn industry from promoting it on myspace servers. There is no doubt that addictive salacious content has helped fuel the rise of Myspace.

So, do we allow John Pyxlin to create a profile on Myspace? Do we turn our heads to the fact that Myspace is becoming a representation of everything that FamilyLearn is not? Or do we stand our ground and hold to our principles of family?

Today I had John Pyxlin’s profile removed from Myspace. FamilyLearn will not put John Pyxlin on Myspace.

So what do you think? We would love to hear your feedback.

Last week we posted “John Pyxlin” on Facebook. We will be building the social piece of pyxlin around John. Here is a screen shot of his Facebook profile:

John now has 48 friends, including our friend Paul Allen (the founder of MyFamily.com)! Yesterday Ben saw how many friends John has made and said, “Man, this dude isn’t even real and he already has more friends than I do on Facebook!”

One girl created a group:

I hooked up with John Pixlin

The group now has 7 members.

John has also joined the groups:

pyxlin’ - journal smart

A Toast for Change: The Freedom Writers Foundation

Write-this! Writer’s Group

I keep a semi-regular journal…occasionally

Freedom Writers

So if you are a member of FaceBook, look up or even hook up with John Pyxlin. After all he is a pretty adorable little guy.

Today we relaunched the Turk survey. Turk is a service provided by Amazon. They call it the “artificial artificial intelligence”. People from all over the world can submit and complete little tasks for pennies. We are paying people $.05 to $.10 per survey taken. It will be interesting to see if we can get accurate data from Turk. It is amazing to me that people on Turk will actually take a survey for less than a dime.

In the past two hours about 30 people have taken the survey. I was worried that all we would get from this survey is foreigners. It seems like a dime would be worth it for someone from India, but in the US it would have to be more of a hobby. Happily 80%+ have been from the US.

Real-Time Summary Report Preview

(once you scroll through all the countries it is less boring)

For all of you who are dieing to take the survey and haven’t click here to take it!

Over the next few days I will be discussing questions and comments from the Turk survey, just like you can see from the past about the BYU Student Survey. I will also be giving more peeks and updates about pyxlin. Please let us know if we can answer any of you questions.

After creating the Survey for my Managerial Economics class at BYU, we needed some way to get students to take it. Using the email system on BYU’s BlackBoard we started our email campaign to get anyone we could find to take our survey. Luckily BYU students are kind and helped out tremendously.

In our brainstorm for ideas, Mari (my awsome girlfriend) and I were trying to think of something to write in an email to her marriage prep class. We made an impetuous decision. We came up with this completely sarcastic email:

SUBJECT: Marriage Prep: PLEASE HELP ME KEEP MY BOYFRIEND!

Hi Everyone,

My boyfriend is doing a VERY SHORT survey for one of
his classes at the business school. He needs as many
BYU students as possible to take it. He promised me
that if I get 300 people to take it, he will
propose; and I am really trying to apply what we
have learned in this class so far. It would be great
if you guys could help out.

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=677631
(click this link to take the survey)

If it works out, I will thank you in the wedding invitation

Thanks a million,
Mari

Our devious plan worked! Loads of people from her class took the survey! I thought sarcasm was dripping off this email. Apparently, we were not sarcastic enough for our sober BYU peers. Here are ten hilarious responses that Mari got back from her marriage prep class:

“why do you want to marry a loser who will only propose if you do his homework for him?”

“doesn’t sound to stable”

“I dont know who you are but if he’s bribing you with a ring then there may be some very serious issues that you two havent discussed. i think that you should seriously look at and examine your relationship before you go doing his bidding. sincerely, concerned”

“If the only reason he’ll marry you is if you help him out with a school project, then I wouldn’t marry him. Haha, sounds like you can do better.”

“hey, yeah of course i’ll take the survey, but you should probably drop him. anyone who will only propose to you on a condition that you get him what he wants isnt worth your time! he should propose to you if he loves you and wants to be with you, not if he gets 300 surveys taken. think about what we’ve learned in class…it kinda sounds like he’s got you on a leash hun! best of luck- [name]”

“I took the survey. There’s one less person to get! Good luck!”

“I hope it all goes well! [name]”

Here is one comment from the survey:

“to the dude whos making his girlfriend do this for a ring. you are freakin whacked!”

LOL! Yes, I can agree that I am a loser and I can’t figure out why Mari is dating me. And as you have learned reading this blog, I am probably not the most stable person either. BUT the email was just a distraction to get you to take the survey! I suppose I owe an apology to those who though the joke was real. But thanks for taking the survey! You’re the best!

This survey stuff is a hoot. We need to do this more often.

Here is a comment that should be addressed:

“This sounds like a great idea, but I hate getting roped into stuff that I have to pay for more than one time (like monthly or annual fees). If it was a one time fee, and then a fee every time I wanted to publish my journal, I would totally go for it!”

Response: Let me know what you think of this?

16% of those surveyed so far say that they journal every 6 months or less. It would be hard to justify a monthly or yearly fee for just 2 journal entries a year. One possible solution would be to have you “pay-as-you-go”. You pay a small fee that buys you unlimited journal entries and a couple of GBs of photos, all of which pyxlin’ would store indefinitely. When you run out of photos in a year, or ten years, you just pay a little more once again for some more photo storage. For the occasional journaler this could be very helpful. For anyone else this would be a solution to avoid “getting roped into monthly or annual fees”.

Once again, let us know what you think.

Marketing to Mormons?

“Please do not market this specifically to mormons. Don’t take advantage of stupid people who will buy anything because they think it has some specific link to the [LDS] church. However, Its a great idea, I think tons of people would be interested. Broaden your horizons…market to every journal writer. Plesae don’t use the ward list next time. I nearly swore myself.”

Response: We are not planning to market pyxlin’ to just Mormons. In fact, I am guessing that the market outside of the Mormon culture is much larger than inside. Take Oprah for example, she thinks you should have 8 journals. Oprah is definitely not a Mormon. She might be someone we may partner with in the future. This is a BYU survey not a Mormon product.