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Loading ...Five ways for Microsoft to build upon the Mojave Experiment
Remond has tried to help sway those holding out on its most recent operating system update by conducting a Pepsi Challenge-style taste test called the Mojave Experiment involving Vista and a focus group of Linux and Mac users. The idea is that if they don’t know they’re using Vista, they’ll actually like it and prove that people just aren’t giving its OS a chance!
Shark Tales salutes this kind of guerilla marketing approach, and would like to suggest some other approaches that might yield even better results:
1. The Guantanimo Experiment: Users are locked up in isolation with nothing but Vista and a few breadcrumbs. Eventually, they’ll recognize the value of XP’s successor.
2. The Basic Instinct Experiment: Microsoft sends out “sales reps” who develop a “close relationship” with users that allows Vista to further “penetrate” the market.
3. The Pizza Experiment: The company may discover all it needs is cheap, free food to win over disappointed customers. Hey, it worked for Alec Baldwin’s character on 30 Rock.
4. The Payola Experiment: The company distributes “review” copies of Windows Vista to the media who write fawning articles about its merits in return for getting to keep it. (Oh wait, that experiment is already under way . . .)
5. The Appetite for Destruction Experiment: Microsoft gives users large hammers with which to vent their frustrations by crushing boxes of Windows Vista. If that doesn’t work, let them try them on company executives. With hard science like this, you have to try everything.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Microsoft is never kind unless there’s a damn good reason
It’s hard for a company convicted of monopolistic, anti-competitive behaviour to change its image, so naturally it was up to Microsoft’s nice Canadian GM to talk about its efforts to turn over a new leaf.
In an online discussion form, Phil Sorgen fielded all kinds of questions about what the world’s largest software company is doing around corporate social responsibility (CSR), from employees offering volunteer time to actual programs to benefit the community. The best part, though, was Sorgen’s ease at deflecting the obvious questions about Microsoft’s sincerity. Some gems:
1. “Your image and your reputation can be tarnished by your behaviour,” he said. Can they ever!
2. “We shifted from what some would call ‘random acts of kindness.’” Which were what, exactly?
3. “Young workers are looking for employers who are industry leaders, have high ethical standards, are innovative, have a strong corporate culture and are socially responsible.” Well, four out of five ain’t bad.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Indiana Jones and the Magical, Lazy Approach to Filmmaking
If you sit through a viewing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and feel the whole thing looks a little, well, fake, that’s because it is.
As an AP story notes, “(Indiana Jones) hasn’t been around for 19 years, a time in which special effects has mostly migrated from soundstage to server.” Although Steven Spielberg considered going back to this old-school approach, a visual effects supervisor says, “we realized we could serve the story better by using our digital tools.”
Of course, if there are any more Indiana Jones sequels after this one, the biggest special effects will be making an geriatric Harrison Ford appear to walk without a cane.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Don’t egg Steve Ballmer on, he’ll just stick around longer
Microsoft president and fatboy Steve Ballmer made a visit at a Hungarian University this week where he was pelted with three eggs by a young man who demanded the company return the money it had stolen from his people.
Clearly not realizing that the man was referring to the amounts Hungary’s early adopters have spent on Windows Vista, Ballmer cowered in the corner until the offending visitor was escorted out.
Ballmer’s speech, incidentally, was called “You can change the world.” And you know what, kids? You can change the world — just don’t change your operating system.
A clip of Ballmer’s egg incident comes after the jump.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Man hacks video game to propose marriage, prove geekery
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just go down on one knee like everyone else? According to the Associated Press, Bernie Peng reprogrammed Tammy Li’s favourite video game, “Bejeweled,” so a ring and a marriage proposal would show up on the screen when she reached a certain score. Luckily, she didn’t suck; if he’d tried this with Guitar Hero II he might still be waiting for an answer. Apparently the hack took Peng a month, which approximately more than 10 times the amount of time most men spend helping their brides actually plan a wedding.
Peng and Li plan to marry over Labor Day weekend, and PopCap, the Seattle company that makes “Bejeweled,” will fly the couple to Seattle as part of their honeymoon. Shark Tales wishes these two kids all the best — if it doesn’t work out, we can’t be blamed for all the “Game over” headlines their breakup would inspire.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...From snail mail to smell mail: This product feature stinks!
It’s bad enough that many corporate offices and hospitals forbid people from wearing strong perfumes or colognes (how’s a guy supposed to live out the dream of those Axe Body Spray commercials?). Now NTT Communications plans to offer a way to send fragrances to a cell phone.
According to our friends at InfoWorld, “a trial of the service will take place later this month during which users will be able to select and send certain fragrance recipes to an in-home unit that is responsible for concocting and releasing the various fragrances. Each holds 16 cartridges of base fragrances or essences that are mixed to produce the various scents in a similar way that a printer mixes inks to produce other colors.” If that doesn’t work, you can send it via e-mail directly to the device.
Call me cynical, but it probably won’t take long before these “fragrance home units” are commonly referred to as the Stench Centre. On the other hand, NTT can count on Foot Loops spokesbird Tucan “Just follow my nose!” Sam to be an early adopter.
Smell ya later,
Sharky
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Now Microsoft just needs its own Oprah, too
The Canadian launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server and Visual Studio featured a special guest appearance by Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer. His has the credentials — former Wal-Mart CIO, Sam’s Club head honcho — but it was his looks and voice that caught the crowd off-guard. With his receding brown hair, bushy moustache and southern accent, Turner was the spitting image (okay, slightly rounder) of Dr. Phil McGraw!
“You people are heroes,” he drawled, and we were half-expecting him to end with an authoritative “Let’s do it!” or a stern, “I want you to get excited about your life!”
Turner even had Dr. Phil’s stage presence, asking questions of Microsoft employees during the demo that sounded straight out of a segment of The Shopping Channel, if not Oprah. Ever the media-savvy Redmond exec, however, Turner refused to weigh in on the medical condition or psychiatric treatment of Britney Spears.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...We’re not pulling the wool over your eyes. Honest.
Out of the innovative braintrust in Waterloo, Ont., comes what will undoubtedly be a Canadian IT juggernaut bigger than Research In Motion: SmartPatterns.com!
That’s right: Using a drag-and-drop interface, users simply create their own designs and add the proper measurements. Then, presto-chango, a ready-to-knit pattern! Finally the on-demand model offers something your grandmother could use.
Like a lot of startups, SmartPatterns.com is looking for some investor funding. They will no doubt be able to knit an entire wardrobe before they’ll find it.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Someone needs to say something nice about SAS
SAS is looking for a new Canadian public relations agency. Shark Tales knows this because every other firm in Toronto (other than GCI Group, which had the job until now) is calling into our newsroom asking what we think about SAS, how well it’s “positioned” vis-a-vis the other BI firms (or what’s left of them) and what SAS could do better to get its message out. Here are a few thoughts we neglected to tell our friendly neighbourhood flacks:
1. Stop talking about your “green” Canadian headquarters. Nobody cares, and it just makes the rest of us look bad.
2. Change name from SAS Institute to “Saasy Institute.” That would attract media and possibly new customers.
3. Get Jim Goodnight to try smiling once in a blue moon and to use his status as a doctor to save someone’s life.
Best of luck to whoever gets this gig. The pay will be awesome. So will the pressure.
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Your lips say no, but your artificially intelligent brain says yes
According to a Reuters story, a Russian website called CyberLover.ru is advertising a software tool that can simulate flirtatious chatroom exchanges. It boasts that it can chat up as many as 10 women at the same time and persuade them to hand over phone numbers. Or, in other words, the system scores about 10 times as often in one night as the average IT manager does all year.
