hiester.com

By now, you’ve probably been exposed to IBM’s ad campaign, “Let’s Build a Smarter Planet Together.”

Naturally, such a bold proposition invites a few questions.

1. Forget for a moment about building a “smarter” planet. How does one build a planet at all? Where would you put it. There’s only one ideal place for a planet that can support life that we’ve been able to find and it’s currently occupied.
2. How big will this planet be? If it’s going to be anywhere the size of Earth, then where does IBM plan on getting the materials? Is there a Planet Depot out there somewhere?  And what’s the construction process? How do you keep the molten core from cooling off while you wrap it in the mantle, crust, etc. ? Where do you get the water? How about all the minerals? While they’re building it and it’s getting bigger, its gravitational force will increase. But in the early phases, how do you prevent the bulldozers from just floating into space?
3. There are, of course, various theories about how our current planet was “built.” Some believe it was just a random lucky set of conditions–a cosmic lottery winner. You have just the right temperature range, water, evolution and BAM! next thing you know Times Square appears. Others believe that the Earth was created by God (or Gods or Deities of one sort or another). I realize that this is a gross simplification–there are countless faiths each with their own cosmological story–but for now let’s just classify them as the “not random” school. Either way, the challenges to IBM are mind-blowing. Does IBM think it can replicate the perfect conditions for life; can it guess a lottery number whose odds are 999 million-gazillion-squllion-to-one? Does it have billions of years to tinker with the conditions until it gets them right and single-celled protozoa materialize out of a bolt of lightning? Or does IBM think it can pull this off with the same speed and ease as beating Garry Kasparov in a chess match?  What’s more of a concern: Does IBM think it is God (or a Deity or Gods)? Will IBM build this planet in six days? They usually take six months just to write a requirements document for a relatively simple thing like an ecommerce web site.
4. Who will govern this planet? If IBM builds a new planet, is it still also an earth-based corporation? Will it pay taxes on income from this new planet? How about all these mid-sized business that IBM says are the “engines” of this new planet?
5. Will this new planet have a new ozone layer with no holes in it?
6. Who will be allowed to immigrate to this new “smarter” planet? Will there be a test? If Jerry Springer somehow gets in, isn’t that going to ruin everything?
7. Is IBM saying the Earth is stupid?

UPDATE: 10/22/2008

It’s now been NINE days since Microsoft said that they would  initiate a payment to me in approximately 7 days.  Apparently the margin of error in their approximation is greater than plus or minus two days. So much for Microsoft as a company that’s all about precision. When is the approximate release date of Windows 7? Let’s review: Microsoft’s Live Search cashback program advertises that it will refund a percentage of the price of a purchase made via live.com within 60 days. It has been 70 days since I made my purchase and I haven’t seen dick from Microsoft. I followed all of their instructions carefully. Maybe they’re delivering the cash in a burlap sack (all nickels) via donkey from Redmond to Omaha. Yo, Microsoft: Give me my stinkin’ money!

On August 14th, 2008 I bought a Nintendo Wii system on ebay via Microsoft Live Search cashback. I was offered 25% cash back. I would just have to wait 60 days until the funds were available to me. A few weeks ago I decided to check my cashback account to see how long I would have to wait to collect my savings. The cashback site said that the funds would be available on October 13th, 2008. If you count from August 14th (not counting the 14th–using the 15th as day 1), then October 13th is the 60th day from August 14th. So on October 13th I logged into my cashback account and what did it say? My funds would be available on October 14th. OK. No problem. It’s just one day.Alas, today is October 14th. So I log in and find that my funds are available. I choose to redeem them via Paypal (the only option). How long would you expect it to take Microsoft to make a payment to my Paypal account? My freelance clients who pay me via Paypal send me payments that I see literally minutes after they enter the payment in Paypal. So you can imagine I was a little surprised to receive this message from Microsoft:

Microsoft will initiate a payment to you in approximately 7 days.

I have to wait seven more days? This cashback refund which is supposed to be paid back in 60 days is actually (we’ll see) paid back in 68 days. That gives Microsoft an extra eight days to hang on to my money. Greedy, lying bastards.

The Microsoft TV commercials featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld trying to connect to “real people” are being pulled. In episode 2 of the ads, Bill Gates asks, “Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Seinfeld replies, “you and I are a little out of it. You’re living in some kind of moon house hovering over Seattle like the mother ship. I got so many cars I get stuck in my own traffic.”

The fact is that Gates is not “out of it” at all. He recently retired from Microsoft to devote more time to his foundation. He is passionate about solving a problem that kills three million real people every year: malaria. In a 2005 New Yorker article by Michael Specter, Gates says, “It just blows my mind how little money has been spent on malaria research.” The Gates foundation has spent somewhere in the area of US $10 billion on global health issues. So why does Gates go along with an ad campaign that paints him as a detached hedonist when he so clearly is nothing of the sort?

The other pieces of this confused ad campaign are coming to light. There are the celebrities claiming “I’m a PC.” Getting Deepak Chopra to soberly look into the camera and claim, “I’m a PC” has the momentary effect of making the Mac ads look juvenile. I say momentary because when I clicked through to the site I encountered two glaring problems.

1. The pop-up window where (I presume) a video testimonial is supposed to play was blank–just a black box. This was on Firefox 2.0. I tried the site on Internet Explorer 6 (the only version of IE I’m allowed to use on my work computer) and I got the same result, a black box.
2. My CPU usage shot up to 100% and I couldn’t do anything on my PC until I closed the window with the broken PC ad. I guess that’s the high quality Silverlight software leaking memory like a Xenical clinical trial patient.

Then there’s the “Windows vs. Walls” portion of the campaign with some of the worst copywriting I’ve ever seen. I felt like I was reading The Bridges of Madison County. For instance:

But, most importantly, to connect all of us to the four corners of our own digital lives and to each other.

What the hell does that even mean? The four corners of our own digital lives?

To go on doing the little stuff, the big stuff, the crazy stuff and that ridiculously necessary stuff.

Ridiculously necessary? So things that are necessary are worthy of ridicule?

An approach dedicated to engineering the absence of anything that might stand in the way…of life

Say what? Engineering the absence? I feel a Danny DeVito (auditioning for the role of Louie De Palma) rant coming on–”Who wrote this shit?”

Today, more than one billion people worldwide have Windows®. Which is just another way of saying we have each other.

Oh, I get it now, Windows® is human. I guess that’s why it is so deeply flawed.

A note to the model who is looking through the “window” he just chopped out of the wall on the ad site: Dude, next time you take your reciprocating saw to a wall filled with fiberglass insulation, you might want to put on some gloves, a dust mask and goggles. I predict OSHA will be the next regulatory agency to knock on Microsoft’s door.

(Disclosure: My everyday computer is an IBM Thinkpad running Microsoft Windows XP. I’m not a Mac snob. However, I do need to replace my laptop soon and I will probably get a Mac. I don’t like the idea of having to shell out a lot of extra cash for new licenses for things like Adobe Creative Suite, which I use daily, but I probably will anyway.)

When a company has to issue a press release to explain its new TV ad, you know it’s a stinker. The nice thing about Apple’s Mac vs. PC ads with Justin Long and John Hodgman: they just work. The response to the vanguard of Microsoft’s $300 million campaign has been universal befuddlement. I’d bet that the Google bot scooped up more question marks this week than it has all year. The blogosphere was one big “Huh?” on Friday. Shoe Circus? Conquistador? Moist, chewy computers that you can eat? Bill Gates shaking his ass??? Even the pointy-headed semioticians at Cahiers du Cinema would strain to find any meaning in this fiasco.

According to Microsoft, it will all make sense later. This sounds like a typical Microsoft operating system release. You’ll get it later. We just have a few bugs to work out. Like firing the turkey who came up with the TV commercial. This is classic Microsoft. Try to copy another company’s successful innovation, only to find that when you’re finished, the world has moved on. Mac -> Windows. Netscape -> Internet Explorer. Flash -> LiquidMotion Silverlight. iPod -> Zune. Google -> Live Search. Why did it take Microsoft five years to release one new version of Internet Explorer? They had to sit back and wait to see what great new features Firefox came up with, then try to cram them into Internet Explorer.

While Microsoft was taking a magic carpet ride back to the halcyon days of Seinfeld’s 1990′s, Google, with little fanfare other than a comic book introduction, released its own web browser called Chrome. Out of the gate, it is the fastest browser on the market. I’m sure Microsoft will release a version of Internet Explorer that employs all of Chrome’s innovations (e.g. multi-process architecture vs. multi-threaded). We’ll just have to wait five or ten years.

It’s such a comfort to know that all the money you are paying in interest on your auto loan is going to build a really robust customer service web site. Maybe all the IT folks had to go meet their new bosses in Abu Dhabi.

• Broken spy satellite. Bought it in 2006, but it never really worked and I didn’t send in my warranty/registration card on time! Can be dropped at your approximate location in a few big pieces or disassembled and shipped in fragments. Great for target practice.
• Presidential Campaign paraphernalia: bumper stickers, lawn placards, hats, hoodies, web hosting plan prepaid through 2016, 30 minutes of prime time on the Hallmark Channel, 600 folding chairs, 8,000,000 frequent flyer miles. Pick them up at the Chappaqua town dump.
• 750,000 unused election ballots. Easily transferred from Kenya to your location in Florida or Ohio.
• 400,000 HD-DVD players. These make a pleasant night-light or clock. Easy to convert to a garage door opener if you have a soldering iron and a few gizmos from Radio Shack. One HD-DVD movie (Ishtar) and a case of Betamax tapes also available.
• Box of DVCAM tapes that I found in a dumpster near the NFL offices. Looks like guys on the sidelines of a football game making crazy hand and body gestures. Also offering a box containing old bloody gauze, beer cans, used hypodermic syringes and a pizza crust. Call 212-WE-CHEAT and ask for Roger (at Video Bargainville!).
• 13-year-old web portal, search and advertising business. Runs a little slow, backfires frequently, has rust and needs major engine repairs. With a little TLC and a one-time charge to cover severance packages, it could be a nice component in your business empire.

(Disclosure: I worked for Yahoo! on the FIFAWorldcup.com project in 2006).

First of all, get rid of all the gossip/tabloid fluff (i.e. the Terry Semel Hollywood slant). The lead on the Yahoo! home page right now is a chicken-wing recipe for the Super Bowl, followed closely by a list of videos from American Idol alumni.  Hey Jerry, this country is at war and in a recession! Leave the crap to the “old media” and Perez Hilton and show us some of the innovation that made Yahoo! what it is. Stop trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Respect your audience and imagine that they secretly strive to be more than donut-eating couch potatoes.

Nice going, Adobe. Friday at 11:00am EST is a GREAT time to go down for “scheduled maintenance.”

Have you seen the new Photoshop web site? Who is directing these people, Ed Wood? It’s so obvious that these people are small-time actors and not really web designers, radiologists, etc. You can tell that the way “Adobe Photoshop” stumbles out of their mouths, like they’ve never said those words before. Plus, why are they all hunched forward with their arms akimbo? And why is it that only one person talks for the teams of two? Why not split their lines and have them really look like a team? I’ll admit I haven’t “watched their stories”, so I’m only reacting to the intro videos. However, there’s nothing in the intros that would make me want to watch further.