Microsoft Releases New Ads – Admits Apple’s Marketing Superioruty

Ok, so I am a bit obsessive about the new Microsoft ads, waiting for something interesting to happen. After they kicking Seinfeld out, Microsoft is jut reaping off the Get a Mac campaign. It starts with a Microsoft employee, who says that PC made into a stereotype, and show others who are using PC. Back to lame kingdom.

Microsoft campaign is getting (a bit) better

Here is the second video of Microsoft’s campaign:

A bit better, but still doesn’t match the Mac vs. PC one:

Microsoft Launches The Stupidest Campaign Ever

For two years Apple is bashing Microsoft with their clever “Get a Mac” campaign:

Microsoft’s image, already problematic, already under attack for their failing Vista operating system, took a beating without an adequate response. But now, finally, the Redmond giant woke up to strike back. So they took an amazing creative company, and decided to get Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld together on screen to show that Microsoft is not that bad. Doesn’t matter that Seinfeld show ended ten years ago. Doesn’t matter that in all of its season, one can clearly see a Mac in the Jerry’s living room.

Jerry, Are you nuts???

Nothing will stop the Redmond giant from spending $300M on a campaign to save its dignity – and here is the result:

If you are asking yourself “what was that?” you are not the only ones. WHAT WAS THAT???

It is just sad. I have a lot of respect for Crispin Porter and Bogusky, and they are one of the most innovative and creative guys out there. But what we see here is another round where Apple gets the upper hand.

NBC Olympics Shows The Revolution Is Not There Yet

NBC is using Microsoft’s technology and infrastructure for their Olympics video sites, serving 2 million unique users.

Beet.tv has a great interview with Eric Schmidt, Director of Media and advertising Evangelism in Microsoft:

The network is also seeing this event as a promoter of technology for newbies and non technical people:

…”To some extent, the Olympics are beginning to influence how people use new technology,” said Alan Wurtzel, research president for NBC Universal…

However, the revolution is not there yet:

…By far, however, television is still the preferred format. Of the estimated 107 million people to experience at least a few minutes of the Olympics on Sunday, 95 percent watched it on TV, NBC said….The number of people requesting Olympic content over their phones is still relatively small — 494,506 on Sunday and 476,062 on Monday — but NBC executives say they’re stunned at how many of those never used the phones for this purpose before…

The reason might be that HDTV experience is richer than what online video can offer today. Two questions rise from these figures:

Does this mean that live sports, the holy grail of mobile content – does not fulfill its promise? And would things change when online HD infrastructure, coupled with internet connected TV set will be a common media product?

First look (for me) at Microsoft Deepfish – Cool Unfriendly Technology

Deepfish is a new mobile browser from Microsoft, aimed at their windows mobile edition and Smartphone OS. I was lucky to get a test version and play with it a bit:

Installation – I had to install .net framework on my laptop before I could install the application on my synced i-mate KJAM.

First activation – worked like a charm, though the activation code is 16 digits. I had to use my fingernail in order to type it. Why can’t they do shorter codes?

Usability – the application is based on a nice concept. When you download a page, you get a lossy-compressed version of it, so it pops up quickly. Then you can zoom on specific parts of the page, using the phones joystick and tapping the screen.

It really looks great on paper (or post) but after working with it for 10 minutes I gave up. It took me a lot of time to understand how to operate the zoom window, and it is not intuitive at all (contrary to their description). Also, the concept of zooming around the page is not the way I am used to read web pages. A web page is not a newspaper, where you can zoom on specific articles. In most cases you want to see the full landing page, before reading specific article. In the lossy compression mode, it is impossible to read texts, and you can hardly identify faces in pictures. Furthermore, links behave inconsistently- not all links are working, and when tapping the zoom window, sometimes you find yourself in linked pages.

I played with it for a while, using GPRS network, and the first impression is very good, because sites appear almost instantly (in GPRS terms). But still, the zooming mechanism just gave me sea-sickness.

More to come…