Advertising

Seizing what is perhaps its most valuable advertising real estate, Microsoft said on Friday it has launched a pilot program to sell ads on the Windows desktop.

Advertisers can buy the right to offer various themes that customize the desktop image and that promote various gadgets and even custom sounds for the Windows 7 operating system. Microsoft stressed, however, that users will choose which, if any, of the customizations they want to download.

The Windows Personalization Gallery offers a desktop branding experience for users throughout the operation of their Windows 7-based PC, including backgrounds, slide shows, borders, and application audio … Read more

Corporations can be heinous places. All day, people wander around, playing politics like so many Lindsay Lohans in "Mean Girls."

So today, one wonders just what machinations are being endured by Simon Aldous, the Microsoft Partner Group manager who was Wednesday quoted by PCR as suggesting that Windows 7 was rather inspired by the simplicity of the Mac OS. Indeed, Aldous declared that Microsoft's new operating system was designed to "create a Mac look."

In what appears to be a somewhat hurriedly written post on the Windows Team blog titled, "How we really designed … Read more

You might suffer paralysis in several digits when I tell you that there is now a dating site exclusively for those deemed gorgeous.

BeautifulPeople.com exists to protect its members from having to espy the corpulent, the disproportioned, and the downright fugly-puglies.

On its home page, next to a photograph of a quite impossibly eugenic couple, the site presents its most famous media quote: "The sexiest Web site in the world today."

Entertainment Weekly? No, CNN.

Now, another august publication, the Telegraph, has reported some painful news from this online island of the beautiful: BeautifulPeople.com says British … Read more

Early on Monday, we learned that the new Verizon Droid does, indeed, swap "semi-functional, giggling-brat-vanity for a bare knuckle bucket of does."

Now, we have the visual evidence. It's evidence a defense attorney would rather enjoy.

The Droid is, apparently, not a smartphone at all. It is a robotphone, according to Verizon's latest TV ad. Yes, it punches its way through steel walls and crushes rocks. Which, I believe, is known in English classes as poetry.

The lyrical content is only heightened when the giggling-brat-vanity words are uttered by an announcer who sounds like he had … Read more

Everyone and their band seems to be leaping on some kind of wagon with an Apple logo and attempting to rob it of its jewelry and gold coins.

The latest to try to capitalize from poking a little fun at Apple's treasure chest are the Florida Keys and Key West.

In an ad that would feel like it was for the iPhone if it was executed with slightly more style, the Keys hope to persuade you that "There's no app for this."

"This" refers to the fun of wondering if a disgruntled local houseboat … Read more

It seems as if Verizon Droid's avowedly male positioning will now include finger-pointing, high-pitched taunts, and echoes of "na-na-nana-na".

After revealing that Verizon has placed the iPhone on the Island of Misfit Toys, Ad Age is reporting that in the next Droid ad, the iPhone will be the subject of another touching description.

Apparently, the ad says the Droid "swaps semi-functional, giggling-brat-vanity for a bare knuckle bucket of does."

One can never have enough buckets of does in this complex life. And it is refreshing to see someone spending $100 million in an attempt to … Read more

Verizon has decided to take the spirit of Christmas and shove it into the part of iPhone users' chimneys where Santa would need a pick ax.

Some who viewed the first Droid teaser ad, just a couple of weeks ago, were stunned to see Verizon so baldly declare that the Apple uber-machine was, in some ways, deficient.

Rumor had it that this was an isolated attempt at leveraging publicity for the new Motorola device. However, this new ad shows that the iPhone is firmly on Verizon's list. And it's not Verizon's Christmas list.

The ad places the … Read more

If you walked into a store to buy a jacket and had to keep it for two years, you might wonder just how much you felt like paying. This is where companies such as H&M have shown a superior understanding of humanity by pricing well-designed clothes for a naturally short life.

Yet when you buy a new cell phone, even an allegedly well-designed cell phone like the iPhone-assaulting Droid, you have to commit to it for a couple of years, or at least to considerable penalties should you and it have a difficult relationship and decide on a … Read more

Sitting on a flight to the Texan outpost of Houston, I was pleased that the person sitting next to me was not a cigar-chomping, deodorant-free KKK member with a penchant for political discourse and the most troubling TV show in world history, "Wipeout."

Half way through the flight, though, I discovered that had my seat companion been of a difficult personal or political persuasion, I will soon be in the position to eliminate them.

You see, I was clutching a copy of the Atlantic Monthly, where I espied a highly stimulating article by future-thinker Jamais Cascio, whose name, … Read more