Daily Mail:
Companies such as Apple have made their name by marketing their products not just as technological tools but as glamorous and fun toys.But this marketing technique is nothing new, as these vintage adverts from the early days of PCs show.They portray computers as fun, easy to use – and even sexy, with the help of a few eager-looking models.
Look how sexy that 4800 baud modem is!
CNN:
Ad Age reports that Craig’s tougher, darker Bond will star in an upcoming Heineken ad, which will do double duty as promotion for the upcoming James Bond flick “Skyfall.” “Skyfall” director Sam Mendes will direct the commercial as well.
Trying to be more like the beard are we Mr. Bond. Pfft.
New York Post:
Over his storied career behind the wheel, he’s ferried movie stars such as John Wayne and Rock Hudson, suffered countless bad tippers — and tolerated passengers getting frisky in his back seat. Well, until the new hybrids arrived.
Imagine the stories he could tell.
[Via NextDraft]
John Gruber responding to Anil Dash about Readability.
This is a great read from Time tech columnist Ben Bajarin.
Ben Brooks has been all over this Readability debate. Another interesting read.
Brought to you by Flying Meat’s Acorn, the Mac OS X image editor for humans.
The Macalope’s 10 fools of the year.
During a match against Berliner AK 07, a group of fans stood behind the visiting team’s goal, each with a large, brightly colored arrow pointing to the net so their team would know where to shoot. And just to clarify their intentions, another group of fans held up a banner that read, “We’ll show you where the goal is!”
WOW, BRUTAL!
Apparently the team hadn’t scored in five games.
TIME:
With a half-billion-dollar multistate lottery jackpot up for grabs, plenty of folks are fantasizing about how to spend the money. But doing it the right way — protecting your riches, your identity and your sanity — takes some thought and planning.Making sure you don’t blow the nation’s largest-ever lottery jackpot within a few years means some advice is in order before the Mega Millions drawing Friday, especially if you’re really, really, really lucky.
I got my ticket – how about you?
RIM says it isn’t abandoning consumers. Who gives a shit?
Many thanks to Oomph software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. If you haven’t seen the special “beard page” they made, you really have to take a look.
This has to be the most amazing sponsor page ever made. The guys at Oomph made this page to promote Sidekick as the sponsor on The Loop this week. (Tip: click on the lightning bolt on the right hand side).
Sidekick is a stealthy little Mac app that automatically updates laptop settings based on where you are. It takes care of annoying tasks so you can focus on what you need to do.
The original rocket engines — “one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second” — that powered that historic launch fell to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and have not been seen in the four decades since. But that won’t be the case for long. Today on his blog, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos announced that he has located the rockets, and he plans to bring them to the surface.
Wow, that’s impressive.
He must be the greatest player in the world right now.
Apparently he forgot to put license plates on the car.
I’m in good company.
Jim Dalrymple is back with Dan Benjamin to talk about journalist responsibility in the wake of Warmgate, international 4G and things Apple didn’t think of, patents and trademarks and how much care Apple gives them when naming products, guitars, domains, and a major announcement.Sponsored by Studio Neat and AppsFire
I don’t know much about photography, but I know what I like. I like these, especially “Park.”
I used to love this cartoon.
WOO HOO! It’s time for March Madness! We’re down to the Elite 8!
Final Four? No – we’re not talking about Ohio State, Louisville, Kentucky or Kansas. We’re talking about The Consumerist’s “Worst Company In America” contest.
Companies like Wells Fargo and Netflix, UPS and Comcast, even Apple have been voted on at The Consumerist web site all month. There are only eight wide ranging companies left vying for the title – Bank of America, AT&T, Ticketmaster, Paypal, Walmart, Facebook, Comcast and Electronic Arts.
This is a contest none of these companies wants to win.
Do you have a cool grandfather? Do you think you are a cool grandfather? Well, you’ll have to go a long way to beat this guy.
He’s built an absolutely amazing remote controlled plane – a scale model of the SR-71 “Blackbird”. Not only did they build its jet engines and include retractable landing gear, the thing sounds amazing.
My grandfather made aquariums. Nice but not nearly as cool as jet planes!
While J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore web site is still in beta, the store to sell you stuff is up and running.
If you have an EPUB reader and a Harry Potter fan in your life, the Pottermore Shop is the only place you can buy the Harry Potter series digitally.
The EPUB format is “the world’s most popular and open eBook standard” and the files are compatible with the vast majority of computers and devices. The eBooks are also in Kindle format for use on Amazon devices and on your iOS devices.
The individual eBooks are between $7.99 and $9.99 but you’ll want to buy “The Complete Harry Potter Collection” for $ 57.54.
Tenacious D is back with a new short film.
Around the world, companies have invested time, talent and treasure in social and environmental efforts for a range of complementary reasons. For many companies, cause marketing—the use of social and environmental efforts to build a brand and increase profits—has been a secondary if not primary motivation.
I’m fascinated with these guys. Lots of talent. […]
TIME:
An annual Easter egg hunt attended by hundreds of children has been canceled because of misbehavior last year. Not by the kids, but by the grown-ups.Too many parents determined to see their children get an egg jumped a rope marking the boundaries of the children-only hunt at Bancroft Park last year. The hunt was over in seconds, to the consternation of eggless tots and the rules-abiding parents.
One four year old’s dad is quoted as saying, “You have all these eggs just lying around, and parents helping out. You better believe I’m going to help my kid get one of those eggs. I promised my kid an Easter egg hunt, and I’d want to give him an even edge.”
“An edge”? It’s an Easer egg, not a college scholarship.
A Microsoft evangelist is making right after an Android Phone user didn’t get his prize after beating a Microsoft Store employee using a Windows Phone in a “Smoked by a Windows Phone” promotion.
The FCC isn’t taking AT&T’s tut-tutting about T-Mobile’s layoffs lying down. They say that T-Mobile admits layoffs would have happened anyway.
Smithsonian Air and Space:
After flying 148 million miles and orbiting Earth 5,830 times, Discovery, first flown in August 1984, was being decommissioned and readied for its trip to the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia, where it will arrive in mid-April.The three main engines had been removed from the shuttle’s aft end, which was now covered by a tightly fitted mask with three white discs the size of the engine bells. Clear plastic stretched across the crater in the orbiter’s nose, where the forward reaction control system—small thrusters that maneuvered the spacecraft in orbit—had been removed.And this harvesting of the orbiter’s components was only the beginning.
I always wish I had seen one of these launches in person.
TacoCopter sends out tacos for delivery by remote control.
