The article: http://gizmodo.com/5440911/google-and-adobe-bringing-flash-101-to-nexus-one
This has been my biggest complaint about the iPhone, and if it works well, this may well be the jolt Apple needs to get it together and get Flash on the iPhone too.
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This is a good read for anyone into marketing, ads, commercials, or technology. Microsoft took 3 spots. I seriously have a weak stomach, and was surprised I didn’t get sick at the puking video the first time I watched it. While I have seen about 6 of these before, I have to give some props for the pets.com ad, since sock-puppets will always have a special place in my heart. That reminds me that I do have a video I made in school involving sock-puppets. I’ll upload it some time.
I am having a contest. If anybody includes a comment that has a link to a bad advertisement on it (that isn’t on the linked list), I’ll enter you into a random drawing to choose the next big technology I should invest in (and I’ll blog about the results). Good luck.
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I’m busy today, but I’ll talk about this article his evening. Check it out.
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Just read this this morning on Yahoo! Tech news (link).
While removing the copy protection is a huge step foreword for them, I have to say that I hope they maintained some way of tracking these files, or preventing illegal sharing of them. Lowering the price will do no good if people feel they can get them for free.
I have never been a huge fan of DRM in it’s current state. I do support DRM, and I imagine it would be frustrating to see people just kind of stealing and using your work as thought they were entitled to it, however the way it works now is just not working. My issues here are twofold: One, I really hate being treated like a criminal when I am not. Programs like Starforce, or the policy that EA was going to implement into Mass Effect basically are ways of telling us that we are guilty unless we can prove our innocence. Accusing us of theft, by having to track us is not the way to keep the customers happy.
Second, and more importantly is that DRM does not work! A quick check at the pirate bay, or any other bit torrent site will tell you that it is as easy as ever to get around copy protection. In the example above with Apple, to get your music onto another computer, all you had to do was put it on a CD, and take it off of it again. Many free programs can rip files as MP3s and even strip tag information. With Mass Effect, I found that it didn’t run on my computer, but when a friend suggested a cracked executable that bypassed Starforce, the game ran smoothly!
I am not really looking foreword to the day when my computer has to check the validity of every file before it can be opened, but I do think that the developers will make it happen if piracy remains unchecked.
Category: Article, MusingsTags: Apple, DRM, iTunes, Mass Effect, MP3, rant, Starforce, Video Games | Comments (0)
For some reason, when I think of vulnerable programs, Internet Exploder comes in near the top for me. That is why it surprises me that Bit9 called Firefox the most vulnerable Windows program in their top 12 list.
I suppose there are reasons for the false sense of security. See, back when I used Internet Explorer, I got so used to popup ads showing up (even when I had no IE windows opened), that I probably got a little too relieved when I heard about FireFox, and the pop-up attacks just sort of stopped. I may have taken the quick, easy access to Private data (Cookie) removal for granted too. It’s an impulse, something shiny and new (like tabbed browsing), just felt like it must have been better in the areas we don’t see so easily.
Ok, that may have been a bit sarcastic. The article goes on to state that in 2008, Mozilla patched FireFox 10 times. What this means to me, is that Mozilla is on the ball here. Vulnerability happens, because hackers are not an idle group. Of course they will try new things, and have new methods of trying to disrupt people’s lives! The author of that article managed to forget this point: The browser was patched. Often. When was the last time IE was patched to fix it’s vulnerabilities?
Category: Article, MusingsTags: Explorer, FireFox, IE, Internet Exploder, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, patch, patched, popup, Tab, Tabbed, Tabs, Vulnerable | Comments (0)
According to this article, the beta of Windows 7 has ben leaked to the press quite early. This is good, since this means that Bill Gates was pretty accurate when he said back in April that Windows 7 would be out sometime in the coming year. So far, most of the reviews online seem to be good. Of course, they are also calling it innovatve, which I disagree with. The article at the top of this post describes a feature called ‘Aero Snap’, which sounds like it would be familiar to anyone who has ever used Ubuntu. Of course, this has been a recent trend of Microsoft, having utilized a dock very similar to the one on a Mac in the initial releases of Vista.
So, I suppose only time will tell. Personally, I’m still having some trouble adjusting to Vista, so we will have to see if I want to make another switch anytime soon.
Category: ArticleTags: Bill Gates, IE 8, Ubuntu, Vista, WIndows 7 | Comments (0)
Well, tomorrow is a really big day for me, so I’m going to keep today’s post short.
I wonder how much extra effort a user would go to in order to actually see an advertisement effectively. I guess this also depends on the product. A fully viewable 3D model of a female movie star might generate more attention than an ordinary like a roll of paper-towels. A car _definitely_ fits the bill of things I would pay to see in 3D.
Category: Article, WidgetTags: 3D, ad, advert, advertisement, cool, cool ad, magazine | Comments (0)
I’d like to discuss Spore, which struck a sour note with me on it’s DRM policy, which was luckily removed before they launched. Treating a customer as a criminal (guilty until proven innocent), is not right in any industry. The larger point the article makes though, is that they promised their users a certain level of detail. They got their mouths watering for it. So many people were looking foreword to it, and then, they took us users for a ride, and took a good chunk of change (game sold for about $40 at release), and did not deliver. Sad.
I think that people who do the marketing (or developing) in any industry in which their product may gain a fan base, need to be held responsible for delivering it. Yeah, not everything works out exactly as planned, but this isn’t an excuse for missing a large amount of the content that had gotten your fans worked up. Another few months of development would have been tolerable (plenty of games take development time beyond their initial scope), but in other industries, not delivering on a promised expectation would be career-suicide. It should be the same here.
Category: ArticleTags: design, games | Comments (0)