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Archive for April, 2005

Start SomethingPC

19 Apr 2005

The recent post about Apple’s Tiger made me dig around a little, searching for the release date of Longhorn. Then I stumbled on Microsoft’s release of their new and largest ad campaign ever.

The ’startsomethingpc’ campaign uses a total of 51 television spots, 39 printed ads for newspapers or magazines and 250 online ads across the globe. Microsoft will show off the hundreds of thousands of software applications and devices designed for Windows XP. The goal, says Microsoft, is to demonstrate how Windows opens the door to a wide range of activities.

A massive campaign for the WinXP’s Fourth birthday, and it should run for fifteen months. That places the Longhorn release more than a year and a half ahead of us. Fall ‘06, if nothing goes wrong. Meanwhile we can enjoy the huge amount of mundane advertisement.

“All advertisements will direct consumers to a Flash-based Windows.com, where they can find downloads and hardware from Microsoft partners across a number of interests. The campaign will showcase 13 themes spanning education, science, music, sports, family and life management, gaming, photography, cooking, travel, and more.”

“Microsoft also posted a teaser video at StartSomethingPC.com, which says, “It’s time to start something inspired.”

The site announces a launch date : April 25 th. I’ll go check out and make sure if it’s safe. If I’m not back to blog about it, don’t surf there !
 

Microsoft

BetaNews reports that developers will get a preview of the new operating system at WinHEC 2005 next week, with Longhorn Beta 1 slated for a fall debut.

Read it on BetaNews

 
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Posted in Campaigns, Corporate News, Marketing

 

Microsoft VS. Adobedia

19 Apr 2005

From BetaNews:

“In a stock deal valued at $3.4 billion, Adobe on Monday announced it has acquired rival Macromedia. The merger, which brings together Adobe’s ubiquitous PDF document format and graphics suite with Macromedia’s market-leading animation tools, pits the combined company squarely against Microsoft.”

“Through the combination of our powerful development, authoring and collaboration tools — and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash — we have the opportunity to drive an industry-defining technology platform that delivers compelling, rich content and applications across a wide range of devices and operating systems,” Adobe said in a statement.”

Wow. Nice one. This would bring Photoshop and Dreamweaver together too, and that makes designing web pages just more funny and interesting than it already was. I can’t wait to see the output of this merge, especially when it comes to the possibilities of Flash, DreamWeaver, Illustrator, Indesign and Photoshop. I also look forward to Microsoft’s answer to this very tactical joint venture between these graphical giants.

Furthermore, I believe that this could be a great event for the graphical industry, as seen from a creator’s point of vue. The possibilities with Premiere and Flash shouldn’t be underestimated neither. It’s going to take a lot of money and adaptation efforts from all of us, but once we have patched ourselves out of this fusion, I believe there is no limit to the things we can combine. A lot of ‘import and export’ restrictions will vanish and merging will become much more comfortable.

Read it on BetaNews

 
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Posted in Corporate News, Legal, Technology, Thoughts

 

Apple’s Weird Policy

19 Apr 2005

The Register reports on the launch of a new patch for Apple’s Mac OS X 10.3, just ten days before the official and bombastic release of the 10.4. This is rather confusing, since the 10.3 update contains some sort of pre-getting-ready-for-the-Tiger-patch. Funky Marketing by Apple?

I’ve been talking this through with Nathan, and we both don’t seem to find any logic in this, to us, commercial suicide. Why would you release an upgrade for all your potential customers ? Wouldn’t it be more logical to release the patch AFTER the Tiger sales have boomed, so that stubburn users who still want to use the .3.9 system and didn’t want to change to the Tiger (.4) can be helped with their little ailments as the Powerbooks scrolling trackpad?

Imagine Microsoft releasing a patch for WinXP, with a lot of extras that will also be featured in Longhorn. Imagine your XP finetuned, with all the little bugs fixed. Why the hell would you go buy Longhorn then? Exactly. Apple just shot down 10 % of it’s opening sales, I’d say.

Unless I get this wrong, this is an example of very bad planning.

Read it on The Register

Patch Your Mac

 
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Posted in Corporate News, Marketing, Thoughts

 

Webvertisement Gains On TV-Ads

19 Apr 2005

Reuters reports that companies tend to spend their advertisement budget more and more in favor of the internet publicity. Predictions are television’s share will slip by 2007. Newspapers and magazines are expected to share the same mournful faith.

It was predictable, and it’s a logical evolution, but instead of largening the marketing budget, companies spread it amongst the different channels they need to use to reach their targets. On the one hand, I think spreading the investments is wise, as seen from the company’s side. But there are some serious consequences for the existing, older media, who no longer gain through the ads. They survive for the lion’s share on the income they relish from advertisement. With these sources drying out, many ’smaller’ or independent agencies, magazines or papers will cease to exist, especially those who swim against the (main)stream.

A dramatic change is about to occur in daily life as we know it, for independent news gathering might be on the ridge of a profound cleft. Imagine the future when only major news companies bring the solid, non-digitalized news. There will only be ‘ONE’ opinion to be read. Those who are deprived of internet access can no longer rely on ‘freely’ gathered news. And believe me, that’s a lot of people.

“Television’s share is expected to peak in 2006 at 37.9 percent of global ad spending, before slipping to 37.8 percent by 2007, according to a new study by ZenithOptimedia, a division of French advertising group Publicis”

“Newspapers and magazines are also expected to see their market share decline. Newspapers are expected to end 2005 with a 29.8 percent global ad spend share, and see their market share fall to 29.3 percent in 2007.”

Click here for more facts and figures from Reuters.

 
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Posted in Advertising, Marketing, Trends

 

Dot Life-Where The Watcher Steps In

13 Apr 2005

How far can you take things in Virtual Cyberland? BBC News reports on the origin of a new species: the in-game detectives. Apparently, some people in real life are wondering what their legal better half is pulling on his/her computer every night and day. Second-Life, an online virtual game, allows his participants to join a mob squad or to have a ‘closer relationship’ with someone else. Cyberfumbling, as I call it, seems pretty innocent. But is it really? This boy/girl you meet in cyberland… what is he/she doing when you’re offline?

Quick word about the game:

“Like its name implies, Second Life is an online world that encourages people to create a character and live out another existence doing almost anything they want. It’s an imaginary world without the elves and dragons people tend to associate with the “fantasy” tag. Characters can buy their own island, create their dream house, become a clothes designer, go fishing, spend nights partying in clubs and bars and, of course, have virtual sex with virtual people.”

“But, he says, the humour of the situation swiftly disappears when they realise they are about to ask the detectives to spy on someone they care about – even if they only know that person through the game.”

As the cyberdetectives say in the article, sometimes real life companions can’t cope with the virtual reality either and hire a pro to set up a honey trap to lure the cybersexer into. Luckily sometimes it turns out ok.”

“One of the cases Mr Au wrote about for Second Life that involved a honey trap ended well. All the target did during the meeting with the foxy female avatar was talk about his real world girlfriend who had set the detectives on him.” – Hah. That’ll teach her. :)

Fact is, the girlfriend actually paid hard cash for the investigation, and that brings a totally new profession onto the market. e-Detective.

Question that pops up randomly in my head is:

How healthy is your relationship when he’s e-dating all the time and you hire a detective to spy on him in cyberland, only to find out he likes you? Time to TALK. Remember that?

A psychotherapist or relation-counselor would have been less expensive. As for the detective filling his days with cyberhacking someone’s personal feelings and setting up traps… Clever, but very disgusting.

Click here to read more about this virtual thing.

 
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Posted in Ethics, Games, Legal, Thoughts

 

The Ringtone Marketing Trend

13 Apr 2005

By now it’s become very obvious to any marketeer that the potential business to be pulled out of the commercialization of ringtones is one that can’t be underestimated. Bands are very eager to enter the charts of the most downloaded ringtones with their latest new hit single, because it tends to be a very good popularity index. But what if we were to reverse this ongoing business and release the hit single after the ringtone has hit the charts? Cingular Wireless is trying it out with Coldplay’s newest.

They’ve signed the deal with EMI Group’s Capitol Records, and went ahead with the testcase. CNet has published the following about it :

[For the music industry the] “labels want to make up for falling CD sales figures, and to date, digital-song stores like Apple Computer’s iTunes have filled only part of the gap. The strong interest worldwide in ring tones has led the labels to see the prospects of new profit potential.”

“The Coldplay ring tone, drawn from the upcoming single “Speed of Sound,” can be accessed by Cingular subscribers on the company’s website. The song isn’t due to hit radio airwaves until April 18, and the album won’t be released until June.”

“John Burbank, Cingular vice president of marketing, said the program came out of discussions with Coldplay’s manager, who was looking for an original way to promote the band’s new album. The wireless carrier afterwards took the idea to other record labels, which also agreed to provide content for the program.”

Let’s see if this new approach works. If so, it could be a great test to see if a song has a serious ‘hit-potential’ or not. That information could save producers and record companies a lot of money on the marketing budget.

Click here and read it all on C Net’s News.com

 
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Posted in Marketing, Trends

 

Coolz0r Royale On The BeachFrequency

13 Apr 2005

Yes. For those who don’t know it yet: Coolz0r, est. 1979 on the 9th of March, has planned a very keen and spectacular birthday party. To celebrate my full-grown quarter-of-a-century-ness in style, I’d like it very much if you’d join me at my favorite club for a drink and a shake.

Why is this on April 16th? Because I had no time to do it earlier. So…
Here’s the invitation : 

BeachFrequency

To the readers in the other countries, you’re invited and if you get there,
I’ll pay you some drinks ;)

In concreto :

We meet at 10 PM on the Zimmer Plaza, Center of Lier.
Pre-party is hosted at café ‘TOREN’. Free Entrance.

Those who are still allowed to drive at midnight take their own cars, the rest goes by cab. It’s a ten minute drive from the bar to the club. If you go on foot, you’ll be cold and sober when you get there.

Don’t underestimate the distance. Especially when drinking. Take a friend with you who’s strong enough to carry you, if you decide to walk. Or look for a designated driver. Comes in very handy.

The club is located at : ANTWERPSESTEENWEG 384 – 2500 LIER

We hang out in the backstage area of La Rocca because it’s more convenient to meet, of course you can join the crowd in the main area. No strings attached.

Main area that night : Philip, Ramses, Joeri & Benne
Live percussion by Hanson ( Sweet Coffee )

Get Wild Free Hairdress Styled By Steven St Clayr ( for those who dare )

La Rocca hosts Papaya VIII – SUPERCLUB that night, and as the site states :

“Superclub is proud to be part of the Papaya madness at La Rocca backstage in a superb mixture of techny electroclash. Quality house music by Brian V and Goya, smooth vocals by The Dukes, hosted by Mei Lian.”

 
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Posted in General

 

The Ten Failures Of Technology

13 Apr 2005

David Berlind, executive editor at ZDNet, wrote a very very long post about what he calls “Technology’s 10 most inexcusable failures”. It’s a long list of the everyday shortcomings you experience yourself. Funny enough you’ve made peace with these helpdesk items and just continue doing your thing, working yourself ‘around’ the problem. You’ve come to accept the fact that technology ‘just can’t do everything’. But it can.

Mister Berlind has grown very tired of the idea of having to continue dealing with these failures and shortcomings any longer and explains the various little flaws that uncomfort his daily doings. To bring the topic closer to your screen, he generalizes the matter, saying:

“These problems are blatantly killing the productivity of thousands of people, and there’s no excuse for them to not be universally addressed.”

What kind of problems is he relating to? For instance:

“I’ve complained about this before, but it’s worth mentioning again. When I upgrade to a new system, I invariably need to buy some third-party software to help migrate 80 percent of the data on the old system over to the new one. Then I have to spend several weeks doing the heavy manual lifting to cover the remaining 20 percent. That’s ludicrous. If I owned a Dell notebook and the company made it possible to migrate to a new Dell notebook by attaching the two to each other and pressing one button, I’d think long and hard before buying a competing laptop. Same goes for desktops. Booting into a Firewire-based hard drive mode, as some systems can do, seems like a step in the right direction, but one that should have been taken about 15 years ago.”

Click here to go there and read it all.

 
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Posted in Technology, Thoughts

 
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