Rants and musings, without care for substance.
Posted in advertising, google, money on Jan 14th, 2010
I was surprised to read about Google’s new approach to China. Very public. On the other hand, the search magnate seems to like grand and shocking departures from norms, even theirs. While I wouldn’t consider censorship and humanitarian issues “antics” per se, it seems like Google is fed up.
We have decided we are no longer [...]
Posted in advertising, observations on Jul 4th, 2009
In the course of one hour of Comedy Central — watching Christian Finnegan — I observed no less than six advertisements with Transformers themes. Six ads in less than sixty minutes. That’s pretty heavy rotation, considering the movie is already out.
It seems like that’s a lot of different companies and products to be merchandised and [...]
Posted in advertising, observations, oddities on Jun 18th, 2009
GQ is still referred to as “Gentlemen’s Quarterly” on the spine of the print edition. That’s odd, since publisher Conde Nast puts out twelve issues per year. Actually eight issues worth if you exclude the advertisements, but that’s a tangential thought and one that could be directed at much magazines.
Posted in advertising, complaints, technology on Jan 29th, 2009
For all of its flaws and with all of the advances of DVD, I think VHS had a few notable benefits. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss futzing around with the tracking on an old tape. Or fishing the magnetic tape out of the VCR once it got frayed and ruined. What I miss [...]
Posted in advertising, oddities, youth on Dec 11th, 2008
I keep hearing advertising on the radio for Syke Energy Drink. Whether there’s a drink or not, the ads sound awfully familiar. It sounds like the writers ripped off the spoof ads for Brawndo, the “thirst mutilator” featured so prominently in Idiocracy (and now available as an actual product).
I’m fond of the Brawndo ads (linked [...]
Posted in advertising, humor on May 24th, 2008
I’ve never used Old Spice and I couldn’t tell you what it smells like. Have you seen the cross-promotional Jackie Moon commercials for Old Spice?
Everybody sweats, but most people would be surprised to know that they sweat 6 liters per day. Now I’m not familiar with the metric system or any other foreign language but [...]
Posted in advertising on Apr 7th, 2008
I was meddling with FeedBurner settings early today — researching something for a customer — and wasn’t able to tell how the FeedBurner Ad Network and/or Google AdSense for Content actually appears in the feed body. Based on their advertising specs I know they’re in the feeds, but it wasn’t horribly clear from the documentation [...]
Posted in advertising, gadgets, oddities, technology, things i'd like to see on Jan 14th, 2008
Heading north on Russell Street just before Ravens stadium there’s a billboard that proclaims “Marriage works” while depicting a cheery-faced couple. What are the advertisers trying to sell here in Baltimore? A church? the institution of marriage itself? As far as I can see from the street there isn’t a sponsor listed. Lots a people [...]
Posted in advertising, software, troubleshooting, web sites on Jul 26th, 2007
I find ProcessLibrary to be incredibly useful when diagnosing Windows systems. The site — with a refreshingly clean interface despite it being an advertisement-page-disguised-as-a-tool — will tell you all about processes that you find listed in Task Manager. A quick summary of whether it is good or bad, but with details of what it does, [...]
Posted in advertising, conspiracies, web sites on Jul 5th, 2007
They came out of nowhere and now they’re everywhere. How do they have the bandwidth to support all the hotlinking? Are IPOs coming back?
The Mingle2 quizes are cute in a 1996 sort of way, but they’re hardly worth pasting cheeky HTML. Hideous text is better. To answer the handful of people who have asked [...]
Posted in advertising, food, gaming, humor, money on Jun 26th, 2007
I don’t gamble that often, so I was a bit suprised when I got a letter from the Assistant Vice President of Marketing of the Tropicana last week. Now I’m sure there’s a dozen Assistant VPs of Marketing at every major casino in Atlantic City, but this letter made me laugh.
“I’ve enclosed your latest Tropicana [...]
Posted in advertising, culture, idiots on Jun 22nd, 2007
I was flipping radio stations on the way home today and heard of HOT 99.5’s Kane Pays Your Bills promotion. The premise is simple enough; tell them why they should pay your bills and they might choose to call you and pay them.
I don’t have a problem with the promotion itself.
I have a problem with [...]
Posted in advertising, boozing, humor, in the news, oddities, television, web sites on Jun 11th, 2007
If you query “retarded wheelchair semi“, you find this jewel. A man was taken for 50mph ride when his wheelchair somehow got lodged in the front grille of a semi parked at a gas station. Neither the police nor the driver of the semi believed the initial reports from passing motorists that there was indeed [...]
Posted in advertising, site news on Jun 8th, 2007
To make my blog stick out, I decided to submit a face to Blogtimore. I do enjoy free things, you know. Then it occured to me that I had no suitable images; the only images I had came with the theme. So being the geek that I am I whipped out my (literally) dusty copy [...]
Posted in advertising, food, oddities on Jun 6th, 2007
Take a packet of Lipton’s French Onion dry soup mix and knead it into a pound of ground beef. Form the beef into patties and cook on a charcoal grill. Serve on a plain flour roll with ketchup and one or two pickles. We used to make these when I was a kid. Refreshingly different, [...]
advertising annapolis baltimore bars beer blogs books cars chicken chinese columbia concerts contests driving dvd email flickr food gasoline google insurance linux memories money movies music office parties phones photos pizza politics quotes restaurants reviews rnr road trips rss sandwiches snow songs television weather web sites youtube
