Some Great Ads

Most of the news today is pretty short so there's really nothing anything for me to make a main topic out of. However, I saw some ads that I got a kick out of and thought I'd share first. Sony has recently launched a marketing campaign for its new Bravia LCD television line, which seems to just be replacing their Wegas. Anyway, this full-length version of their television spot for it is pretty cool and it must've taken an enormous amount of effort to pull off the exploding paint in all those settings, especially considering that a lot of it (if not all of it, though I slightly doubt that) was actually real paint (i.e. not CG). Remember when tech ads were simpler? PC World does, and has a list of some of the greatest computer ads of the past 25 years or so. If you can't appreciate how funny their strategy was for marketing computers back before they became an invaluable commodity, you have to appreciate the completely random cameos. Where else can you see a young Bill Cosby and a much much younger Steve Ballmer? Especially great is the Commodore ad suggesting that you'll be a failure at school without a computer, and the failed Apple Newton, and the knockoffs of Apple's famed 1984 Superbowl spot. Definitely fun stuff to watch (you'll probably blow too much time on it, too).

Plextor has created a PlexEraser drive to wipe your discs clean, which is primarily useful when you have highly sensitive data that you don't want anyone to be able to reconstruct even after scratches or cracks. I wonder if this will become the next paper shredder in offices now? Ars Technica managed to get a look at Safari 3.0, which is funny because I met one of the team leads for Safari just a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, some of its updates include support for nifty features of CSS 3.0 (including resizeable fields), live search, and much more comprehensive dragging and dropping among windows and tabs. Maybe it'll be more on par with Firefox by the time I get a Mac myself. Apparently, Google will also be lending Safari a hand with functionality to be more wary of phishing or other dangerous sites, which I'm surprised they haven't approached Mozilla about. Maybe Apple is paying them or something? Speaking of Google, they're making their Mountain View office solar-powered, which would make it the largest solar-powered office in the country. Of course their servers will still be on normal power, but with a campus that's always open like theirs you have to imagine that they'll be saving a buttload of money despite the initial cost of setting up the system. Lastly, if you're tired of generic error pages in your browser, you'll love Errorzilla.

There's actually no good movie news, and I have an interview tomorrow (I know, it's craptacular timing for a hard interview), so I'm going to move on to the Tuesday Twosome:

1. The perfect autumn day and what activities you enjoy.
Partly cloudy with the temperature in the lower 70s, and I'd be either taking a nap outside or studying outside.

2. Two things about yourself that make you different from everybody else:
I blog far too much and I actually seem to feel better when I get less sleep (4-5 hours) than when I get 6-7 hours.

3. The last time you laughed really hard and why:
Nirav's plans for the UT chapter of the ACM (and I quoth, "beer and hookers").

4. Two items of clothing that best represents who you are:
Burnt orange football shirt to show my school spirit and khaki shorts to show how lazy I am to not put on full pants with a belt and all that.

5. Yourself as others see you and how you see yourself:
I think others see me as really smart and super involved, but I see myself as barely getting by and regularly losing touch with reality.