Microsoft assaults our senses with 'viral' Bing video Microsoft's quest to for cool has seen it endorse a video for Bing that channels the spirit of that other high-tide mark in Web 2.0 entertainment, Star Wars Kid. The company's named the winner in a competition for a Bing Jingle that it clearly hopes will achieve the same so-bad-it's-gotta-be-watched vital status and raise Bing …
If that was the winner, heaven help the losers...
This is just desperate. As desperate as those Seinfeld ads.
Really, all M$ need to do is to give their customers what they want - which seems to be a cheap and secure version of XP judging by the comments here - instead of just copying everyone else with a successful product and doing it badly (mostly Google and Apple).
But then I gave up on them a while back now for my own use, so what do I know?
I just love the "Microsoft “Bing Jingle” Contest OFFICIAL RULES" on their website - which are a classic excersise in Microsoft Legal Department Scroll Wheel Death. One of their rules is that you cannot enter if you're a resident of the province of Quebec. Quebec? What the Hell? Are they afraid Bryan Adams might enter, or something?
I no longer follow the exploits of products and services until they are released and have some effect on me or my life. So, what the heck is Bing? It appeared to be an even more annoying version of Ask Jeeves (which always seems to pop up in my google search, yet it only contains the topics I searched for as its own search).
So I think the video is great. It has taught be to avoid Bing.
Paris, because her viral video was just as bad.
So is "bing" now being used as a verb to mean "looking for something but not quite being able to find it?"
Like when you bing for scissors by wandering around the house making "scissors" kind of motions with your hands? Or the other day when I was binging for my wallet and then remembered I had left it on the desk at home?
If so, that's actually quite a useful word.
But at least it worked - now countless unsuspecting Reg Readers have seen it. Personally I'm praying for Alzheimer's so I can forget it.
I thought the "We're Linux" winning video was clever but pointless - no real clue about what the video was about. This was mindless, boring, aimed-at-the-sub-5-year-old cr@p.
I will now use anything BUT that product.
I've seen some shite on YouTube (and of course it's ironic that MS have to use Google to punt their shite) but that really is up there with the worst.
You really should have posted that with a NSFW tag, there will be a lot of damaged monitors and keyboards throughout the land, but as its Friday everyone can then knock off early and go to the pub and try to drown out those visuals which will be burned into their minds forever.
Would you sell your credibility for $500? I know I wouldn't. The man is obviously some sort of attention whore.
Thanks Geoff Mackenzie you owe me a new keyboard. Mines binged after I sprayed it with a mouthful of tea.
Since Google has become the term for an internet search in the same Hoover is the term for vacuum cleaner. i think we may hear people saying 'I couldn't find what I was looking for I Googled it on Bing'.
"We are already seeing initial anecdotal evidence that people are using 'Bing' as a verb."
I think I ate some bad nachos yesterday, I've had to bing every five minutes. Must have been the cheese sauce. My bing's getting sore from wiping it. Oh wow, you can use it as a noun too.
Side note: Is David Blaine now a bing dangle?
If I wanted to dance like him I would shoot myself. Dad dancing doesn't even come close....
Wear pants like his... Ha ha ha ha ha.
I have downloaded this onto my phone and am going to bluetooth it to anyone who is daft enough to accept an incoming file from a stranger. That will teach them.
Cheers... Ish
Finally I've a reason to thank our binging draconian network policies that stopped this binging video from showing on my screen.
Either that or Chrome is a piece of bing and doesn't show binging videos properly. I suppose I could go home and try to watch it there, except if I were at home I wouldn't be reading El Reg.. At home i'd be binging the girlfriend.
Does *anyone* fall for the anecdotal evidence bing?
"I'm writing a song a day, this is #203"
Firstly, there's only the most tenuous of links between that piece of utter bing and a song.
Secondly, I shudder at the thought of the other 202 - or more. Unless the MS $500 was enough to make you stop.
Thirdly, please stop.
Fourthly, will someone pass the mind bleach please?
Failing that, several pints of icon please.....
It's something I've often wondered
Now I know that we're techy people here and we've got pretty strong view points but how can anyone apart from some brain dead moron think that this can do anything but make people walk away from Bing.
The whole thing says: "We're cheap", "We're an embarrassment", "Frankly we're shit", "You'd be ashamed of being in public with us"
Parody and humour is fine when its done well, I can't make up my mind if this is supposed to be funny or just embarrassing, or just complete crap.
No doubt some coke headed marketing people are going "Woo! Woo!" thinking this is the best thing since sliced bread but its not.
I thought that the Seinfeld ads were bad, along with the "I'm a PC and I'm 7 years old" ones, which just make me want to hurl, but this really is so so terribly bad.
I'd love it sometime if El Reg could get someone from Microsoft on here and get them to review all the comments and then ask them "Is that the sort of response you had in mind?"
This post has been deleted by its author
@Paul Charters --- when you know what the innernet is, you will have no need of the outernet. The world might be binging around you, and you will be blissfully unaware.
I only know MS's idea of what bing is, because a friend who didn't know any better thought she should accept the suggestion to download the latest version of Internet Explorer. Guess what the default home page was? That's how MS will worm its nasty little intrusive ways into many a household --- so maybe bing should become a synonym for breaking and entering?
I made 49 seconds of the movie. I'm not actually too sure of what a "viral video" is (yes, I have been hiding under a rock for a year or two), but if I had to categorise this one, I'd file it under *aversion therapy*
It should be obvious that this is the latest cost-cutting effort from the bean-counters at Micro$lop. After all, they got quality comparable to the Seinfeld ads for a tiny fraction of the price.
It's actually appropriate, since now the quality of Micro$not's advertising efforts matches the quality of their software offerings.
The evil Stevie icon here, for multiple reasons -- mostly for allowing this wreckage to see the light of day, as well as the "standard" ones.
o noes, can 1 haz mai aiqju bak plz? Ah PLZ??/
---
Btw, I 'binged' "get pants like Jonathan" like the clip told me to. The first few pages where not pants vendors, but blogs from and/or about Jonathan Coulton - Mr. Fancy Pants, who ever that is.
Makes you wonder how that advertisement business is coming along, ain't it?
Cheers, I'll have to drink my IQ back this time I guess
Google products: Alerts , Blog Search, Book Search, Checkout, Chrome, Custom Search, Desktop, Earth, Finance, GOOG-411, Health, iGoogle, Images, Maps, News - now with archive search, Patent Search, Product Search, Scholar, Special Searches (Microsoft, Linux, BSD, US Govt. , Apple), Toolbar, Video, Web Search, movies, music, stocks, books, Code(use Google code to build your own search engine), Labs, Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Gmail, Groups, Knol, Orkut, Picasa, Reader, secure group wikis, SketchUp, Talk, Translate(43 languages translate to each other), YouTube.
Good luck Bing, you'll need lots of it with that attitude.
The first reference I had seen to "Badda Bing, Badda Boom", before the Sapranos was in the film The Usual Suspects.
Rather the warm and fuzzy feel good all over image EmS is trying to manufacturer for Ding, as usual with Ems, there is a sinister and evil side to Ding. Apparently, if you type "why is windows so expensive" into the 'decision engine' it brings back results about why APPLE is so expensive! So if these dishonest and corrupt fukers want to rule in search, they will have to give unbiased results. (yeah right) No doubt other entities like the Republican Party will get EmS to make sure when people search "why is the Republican Party so vile and evil" it will return links only explaining that the Democrat Party is evil.
http://advice.cio.com/shane_oneill/bing_search_tainted_by_pro_microsoft_results
Google is; Google is; Alerts, Blog Search, Book Search, online purchases Checkout, Google Chrome browser, Custom Search, Desktop, Earth, Finance, GOOG-411, Google Health, iGoogle homepage, Images, Maps, News - now with archive search, Patent Search, Product Search, Scholar, Customer searches(US Govt., Microsoft, Apple Mac, Linux, BSD), Toolbar, Video, Web search, web search freatures (movies, music, stocks, books, etc.), Google code(use google code to build your own API), Labs, Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Gmail , Groups, Knol, Orkut, Picasa, Reader, secure group wikis, SketchUp Build 3D models, Talk IM, Translate (43 languages translate to each other), YouTube, Mobile search and [roducts, Maps for mobile , pack.
I rest my case
Just not a *complimentary* ones as they'd hoped.
Dear Microsoft,
Please take this as a sincere opinion from someone who had long been a loyal customer but whom you've driven away from the fold by calling a pirate one too Bing'ing many times.
This is utter, complete, and total Bing.
You need to stop spending billions on advertising that could be produced for free by a team of stoned, five year olds with a hand full of half melted crayons sitting on an Earth Quake simulation table.
Spend your money improving your main offering to the market, your OS.
I realize you want to push Win7, but YOU need to accept that "Average Joe" consumers, "Tech Dude" pro-sumers, and "Business Bean Counters" industry people may NOT want to jump through the hoops it will take to upgrade to it.
Accept that, and continue to support XP for those who are sick of the constant upgrade churn & burn; a new OS should NOT require a new computer to run, and forcing the purchase of one is a major hurdle to those who would otherwise be willing to at least TRY your new OS.
Offer Win7 to those who want it, but do NOT completely abandon your already-proven, tried-and-true, almost-all-the-kinks-ironed-out, cash cow that is XP.
XP runs on older hardware, and will run on newer hardware if available.
With a simple addition to a boot configuration (enabling the PE), you can enable XP to access larger amounts of RAM, but since 2 Gig of RAM is more than enough for the "Average Joe", (Techy's, I am NOT aiming that at us, so don't whine) XP can already handle it perfectly fine as-is.
Win7 *supposedly* runs on "lower spec" hardware, but we all know that's NOT what it was designed for.
You designed it for quad-core CPU's, 3 Gig of RAM or more, SATA-3 1Tb HD's systems that can do some serious computational acrobatics.
That's fine, and a perfectly acceptable market to market it towards.
But not at the expense of alienating all your other customers who aren't ready to upgrade their computers yet.
If Granny's 500MHz, 512Mb RAM (16megs of Shared VRAM), 20Gb HD system does the job of accessing the web, reading her email, writing to the Grand Kids, and surfing the web from XP, what makes you think she wants, much less NEEDS a new system with 4x the specs & a new OS, just to continue doing what she's been doing perfectly well...???
Heck, the "Average Joe" system of 1.5GHz, 1~2Gb RAM (128Mb Shared VRAM), 100Gb HD is more than enough to do those same tasks, and even play a few decent games, all on XP.
He has no need to upgrade the system, since it already does what he needs, and in today's economy, dropping $500 on a new computer *he doesn't need* is something the Wife & Kids might beat him to death over, sell off his corpse to medical science, then return the computer for a refund, and use the money to pay that month's rent instead.
*Amused Cough*
All us Techy people, we've got systems that can easily make use of Win7's capabilities, *but XP still does the job perfectly fine*.
Why should we drop $200 to buy your latest & greatest OS, when what we've got is already doing the job we're asking of it?
Then there are the Hard Core Gamers with systems that are probably Sentient and they just don't know it yet.
They may try Win7 to see if it eeks out a few more Frames per Second out of their bleeding-edge High Definition games, but chances are, they'll be rebooting back into XP to get their gaming fix on.
Why?
Because XP works.
YES it has issues, but they are issues the public has grown used to & can be reasonably-sure of fixing fairly quickly.
I am an MS TechNet subscriber.
As a long-time Beta Tester for various companies, I have owned every version of Windows since it's conception.
I qualified for, and purchased, multiple copies of Win7 for my own use, testing purposes, & ultimately to use when applying to a customer's system who wishes for a legit copy of Win7.
But I run Ubuntu on my home machine, and only run Windows in Virtual Machines, because Microsoft has called my LEGIT copies of Windows "pirated" one too Bing'ing many times.
So, Dear Microsoft, you can spend every penny you've got trying to get others to do your advertising for you, and every penny will be for naught.
Until you realize that you've ALREADY GOT a viable product that the people want, and go back to supporting / improving it, your "Flashy New OS" isn't going to do too well because people like me, who used to support you & now steer customers clear of you, will do everything in our power to shine the light of Truth into your sphere of FUD.
Stop being a bunch of Bing'ing Bingers, and get your Bing's in gear.
Give the Customers what they want (XP as the "tried & true", and Win7 as the "maybe, but not until they get the bugs worked out" option), which is *choice*.
Not treating your Customers like pirates might help a bit, too...
So I watched this video and did what it said, I put in a bing for "fixes for all of life's messes" just like it told me to. Top result:
Labour Central: Content Search
Gordon Brown "I will do all that's needed to fix mess" - News of the World ... times people should expect the highest standards from people in public life..
Errrr... Gordon Brown is NOT a fix for all of life's messes. What a big stinking pile of bing. I wouldn't bing on Brown if he was on fire. Bing appears to be a load of old bing.
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