A couple of messages recently fell into the spamtraps with the subject, “Someone sent you Snickers Candy,” offering lots of free candy and exhorting, “Don’t resist temptation! Sign-up now to get started.”
One of the throwaway addresses used? dietsthatwork2008 (dot) com.
Obviously, that one doesn’t!
Finally watched A Scanner Darkly this weekend. Better than I expected. One sequence pulled me out of the film, though, and only because I live in Orange County.
In the middle of the film, several characters start a road trip to San Diego. They start on the 5 freeway in Anaheim and drive south until the car breaks down in Irvine. Then they ride in a tow truck back up to Anaheim.
The problem: They used real backgrounds of that stretch of the freeway, but showed them out of sequence. Shots alternate between characters as they hold a conversation.
First you see the squarish beige office buildings lining the freeway near Jeffrey in Irvine. Then you jump 3-4 miles north to the edge of Santa Ana, where you can see a blue glass-lined building in the background near Fourth St. Then you jump back down to the beige buildings. Then up to Santa Ana again. Then down to the office buildings. Back up to Santa Ana. Down to the office buildings again, which finally give way to The Market Place (you can see the giant purple sign as it goes past).
Now I understand how all those Chicago residents felt watching The Dark Knight.
Although thinking about it, it probably wouldn’t have bothered me if it had been set somewhere generic, and just happened to use local backgrounds.
DC Comics recently canceled its Minx line of graphic novels aimed at teen girls, leading to much discussion amongst comics bloggers. I don’t want to talk about why the line folded, but why the line existed in the first place. Why did DC create an entirely new brand in order to go after this audience?
A big advantage to creating a new label: no preconceptions. Prospective readers won’t look at the cover, see a DC logo, and wonder where the super-heroes show up and rip off people’s arms. And they won’t see a Vertigo logo and assume that it’s a “mature readers” book. On the downside, a new label has to build its credibility from the ground up, instead of starting with name recognition.
This got me thinking: an established brand associated with customers of one gender creates a new brand in order to target the other half of the population. Where else have I seen this?
I own a jacket labeled Claiborne, which is of course made by the Liz Claiborne company.
Mervyns sells (or used to) H&H Men clothing, which was clearly a variation on their Hillard and Hanson brand.
All the examples I could think of (other than Minx itself) were companies that had traditionally been aimed at women, but were adding lines aimed at men. It made me wonder: is it the names? Do men feel odd buying a product named “Liz,” while women are used to buying brands named after both men and women? (Sara Lee notwithstanding.) Maybe it’s the stigma of a man participating in something perceived as feminine? Sort of like the assumption in children’s TV that boys will only watch shows about boys, while girls will watch shows about girls or boys (so they make shows about boys instead of girls, figuring they’ll get a bigger audience).
Then Katie pointed out LEGO Belville, the line aimed at girls which entirely misses the point of LEGO by making as much of each set prefab as possible. And pink. On the plus side, unlike Claiborne, Belville doesn’t try to hide the fact that it’s a LEGO product.
That makes it more like Men’s Vogue, a copy of which is sitting in the lunch room at work. In this case they’d have to call it something different (unlike a clothing line) because it’s not just a brand, but the title of the magazine.
I still think the craziest example of this has to be Men’s Pocky. It’s a cookie. One which I’d hardly consider a “girlie” cookie, but maybe it’s more associated with girls in Japan. I still can’t figure out whether it’s a case of cultural translation or deliberate absurdity.
You may have seen my website, the Alternative Browser Alliance. I put it together in 2005, when flame wars between Opera users and Firefox users were at their height, to show that we shared a common goal: opening the web. The most popular page on the site is a list of web browsers, which is linked as a resource from a number of sites and also gets a steady stream of traffic from people searching for alternative browsers.
Of course, things have changed a lot since 2005, so I’m planning an overhaul of the whole site. Continue reading
Looking at the “all ages” shelf in Borders, which seems to be almost entirely made up of novels about vampires and dragons, I noticed that the cover to the Vampire Academy novel Frostbite
This may be the most recognized image from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I just could not believe that the cover designer would copy the layout so closely.
One of the great ironies of phishing is that, these days, identity theft via the web tends to work by preying on people’s fear of identity theft. It doesn’t help that most people don’t really understand the technology. The typical phishing message looks something like this:
Dear so-and-so. In order for us to protect your account from identity theft, we need you to give us all the critical information that we already have. Otherwise, your account will be locked.
These typically use actual bank logos and link to a website that imitates the bank’s real site as closely as possible. The days of “Pease entr yore acccccount infomation hear KTHXBYE” are long gone.
But the one I saw in the spamtraps today was just astonishing in its brazen use of buzzwords to add authenticity:
Dear Wilmington Trust Banking Member,
Due to the high number of fraud attempts and phishing scams, it has been decided to implement EV SSL Certification on this Internet Banking website.
First we have the scare tactic (always ironic in a “there are treacherous people about” sense). Throwing in EV SSL certificates makes it seem a bit more authoritative, since it’s something a lot of companies have started doing, and people may have heard about it in the news.
The use of EV SSL certification works with high security Web browsers to clearly identify whether the site belongs to the company or is another site imitating that company’s site.
It has been introduced to protect our clients against phishing and other online fraudulent activities. Since most Internet related crimes rely on false identity, WTDirect went through a rigorous validation process that meets the Extended Validation guidelines.
And here they talk about EV certs and how much safer they’ll make your account!
Please Update your account to the new EV SSL certification by Clicking here.
And here’s where they demonstrate that they figure the typical mark doesn’t actually have a clue what EV SSL certificates are. Various real businesses have converted from standard SSL to Extended Validation SSL, and the users didn’t have to do a thing.
Now, you might need to upgrade your web browser or switch to one that will show you a green bar (Firefox 3, IE7, Opera 9, etc.), but you’d still be able to access your account even if you didn’t. Unless the site started blocking other browsers like PayPal briefly discussed back in April. Even then, there would still be nothing that would require you to log into your account and make a change.
Anyway, let’s continue:
Please enter your User ID and Password and then click Go.
This one’s presumably a simple phish, just obtaining login credentials to give the thief access to the account through the web.
(Failure to verify account details correctly will lead to account suspension)
And of course the implied threat: Do this or you won’t be able to get at your money. Again, a typical phishing tactic.
On a side note: My favorite spam topic of the last week is “Refinance your ARM today.”. Yeah, I know what ARM stands for, but I keep imagining Cyborg, or perhaps the Six Million-Dollar Man, trying to refi a loan that covers the gadgets in his arm.
Somehow, we’ve found ourselves watching a lot of shows on Fox this fall. And two out of three are returning, so we can be confident that they’ll actually finish out the season. The third is Fringe, and I’m still trying to decide whether I want to keep up with it.
So far it basically seems to be The X-Files as done by J.J. Abrams, with a corporate conspiracy replacing the government conspiracy. Which is fine, except I wasn’t particularly interested in The X-Files. I think I saw about 5 episodes plus the first movie.
One thing I’m not thrilled about is the implication that everything they investigate is going to be part of “The Pattern.” It seems awfully convenient that all the weirdness stems from one lab’s experiments back in the 1970s, with (presumably) one partner causing and the other investigating the weirdness. I’d actually prefer it if they sometimes ran into things that were weird and bizarre, but came from other people’s work.
They also seem to be big on body horror, which is not my favorite topic to watch on a weekly basis. Though that could just be the first two episodes.
The most interesting character so far is the mad scientist Dr. Bishop, played by John Noble. Oddly enough, I didn’t recognize the actor until the second episode.
The pilot episode actually got to a point about 2/3 of the way through where I wanted it to end. I found myself thinking, “Okay, the story’s done, you can wrap up the episode now.” Kind of like The Talented Mr. Ripley, it just kept going. Still, it was a pilot, and it was trying to do setup, so they get a pass.
Something I’ve noticed is that it’s easier for me to suspend my disbelief on things that are completely and totally “out there” than things that are just a little bit past normal. For instance, to bring up some spoilers from episode 2: Continue reading
It seems that Old Navy is branching out into adoption services:
“Hey, what a deal! At that price, you wanna get two?”
Of course some people go the traditional route to save money.
Sometimes, though, you just have to wonder what’s going through someone’s head when they come up with a brand name. 
So is Jonathan Swift the CEO?
If I understand this correctly, it’s apparently okay to compare an entire class of women to pit bulls wearing lipstick, but using a worn-out cliché to compare a candidate’s policies to a pig wearing lipstick is sexist.
So is being called a dog better than being called a pig? Or is it just more offensive to dismiss policies than to make jokes about people?
This is going to be a long two months.
I was looking at Slashdot this morning and found a link to the article on the original iPod launch back in 2001:
“At an invitation only event Apple has released their new MP3 player called the iPod. iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4″ wide by 4″ tall by .78″ thick 6.5 ounces. 5 GB HDD, 10 hr battery life, charged via FireWire. Works as a firewire drive as well. Works in conjunctions with iTunes 2. Here are Live updates”
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
It’s funny to see all the comments about how it’s a worthless unmarketable product that no one will buy and represents the point at which Apple will finally slide into irrelevance…when what really happened was that the iPod became the leading digital music player (“iPod” is practically a synonym for “portable digital music player” today, in the way “Walkman” was a synonym for “portable cassette player” back in the 1980s). As Apple’s best-selling product line, it made it possible for them to open retail stores and move into new markets. I’d bet the iPhone wouldn’t exist without the iPod’s success. And of course there’s the iTunes music store leading the digital music market itself.
