Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft’s slowed the pace of Windows Phone 7 ads after saturating the airwaves at launch, but it looks like another campaign is about to begin — WinRumors has a leak of a new set of “Real Time Challenge” interactive web ads that challenge you to complete tasks using your phone against a WP7 device. Challenges include taking a photo and posting it to Facebook, checking Xbox achievements, getting directions, and telling meeting participants you’re running late. Not surprisingly, the WP7 device performs handily at everything — although we’re definitely wondering why you’d be checking Xbox achievements in a hurry while on the run. WinRumors also says that the “Your Phone” image is just a placeholder that will be filled in by other devices in the final ads, so we’ll see how MS decides to portray other platforms and their apps — there’s a lot of ways to do some of these things on Android and iOS devices. (And, sigh, we would note that “Update system software without fatal errors” is not a listed activity.) In any event, it’s a clever ad idea — check the video below.

[Thanks, Irv]

Continue reading Leaked Windows Phone 7 ads challenge your phone head-to-head

Leaked Windows Phone 7 ads challenge your phone head-to-head originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While passing through Shinjuku station last Sunday I happened upon a neat sampling gimmick on one of the large poster ads. Two workmen were literally sticking free plastic packages in rows all over the billboard for passing consumers to peel off and take home.

The ad itself was for a manga called Itsuka Tenma no Kurousagi and the plastic sets each contained a mini sample of the book. The staff told me they replenished the samples four times a day, though Sunday marked the end of the campaign. They seemed to vanish quickly; returning a little while later all the samples had been taken.

Part of the Fantasia Bunko series from publisher Fujimishobo targeting adolescent readers — though most of the people I saw claimed the samples were adults — the book is half manga, half novel, and actually contains good old text pages too.

If you hadn’t noticed, Intel’s running huge MeeGo ads all over the place today, including here on Engadget. That’s got our attention for a few reasons: first, our editorial staff wants the hair-trigger audio playback and content-obscuring animation disabled as badly as you do, and second, we’re sort of wondering what Intel is trying to accomplish by pushing MeeGo now that Nokia has strongly backed away from the OS in favor of Windows Phone 7. It’s hard to understand, especially since Intel’s directing these ads at developers — who’s going to develop apps for a platform that has zero shipping mass-market devices? And even if there were a groundswell of MeeGo development action, why is Intel leading the charge, when it has yet to ship any chips suitable for a phone or tablet, and MeeGo tablet development appears to have completely stalled out? It’s very curious.

Now, we have great faith in Intel — the company is smart, capable, and big enough to succeed at anything it wants to, and it’s made it very clear at MWC that devices with Medfield mobile processors will ship sometime this year and be competitive with the best of what ARM can offer. That will be an enormous and noteworthy accomplishment when it happens — Intel’s been promising a serious mobile chip for years now, and it’ll be exciting to see the company finally join the race. But let’s be honest: any viable Medfield device will be running Android, not MeeGo. To quote Nokia’s Stephen Elop, the battle of devices has become a war of ecosystems, and MeeGo simply doesn’t offer an ecosystem that’s competitive with iOS, Android, or what Nokia and Microsoft are planning to build with Windows Phone 7. It’s a harsh truth, but it’s inescapable. Sure, maybe Intel can convince a second-tier manufacturer to ship a Medfield / MeeGo device — it’s using the Atom-based ExoPC Slate to demo the MeeGo tablet UI, for example — but it’s simply not going to entice the Samsungs and HTCs of the world to invest the serious capital required to make MeeGo a success without some sort of major industry disruption.

Now, that disruption isn’t impossible to imagine — let’s say one of the various IP lawsuits aimed at Android is successful, or something — but unless and until that happens, we’d say Intel’s far better off investing its resources into working with a vendor on a top-tier Android handset that can run with something like the Motorola Atrix 4G or the HTC Thunderbolt. That’s a sure way to get back into the conversation — and after years of empty promises around Moorestown, Medfield, Moblin, and now MeeGo, getting back in the mobile conversation is something Intel desperately needs to do.

Oh, and figuring out how to make ads that don’t autoplay audio wouldn’t hurt, either.

Editorial: Intel keeps pushing MeeGo, but why? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Feb 2011 19:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Starbucks has given the caffeinated crowd a new reason, other than the free WiFi, to stop by a couple of locations in Toronto and Vancouver — interactive window displays! Taking sidewalk passers-by on a journey to assemble their favorite Tazo teas, the interactivity comes via a vinyl screen, projector, and gesture controls. We’ve already seen an interactive storefront in the US, so its about time our friends up north got some geekified advertising of their own. Vid’s after the break.

Continue reading Interactive storefront displays show up at Canadian Starbucks, window licking discouraged

Interactive storefront displays show up at Canadian Starbucks, window licking discouraged originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Feb 2011 22:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It may be hard to believe as you read Wired on your iPad, but heating oil and metal plumbing pipes were hot tech topics just 100 years ago.

They were businesses, too, on which inventors pinned their hopes and corporations placed their bets in the form of factories, salesmen, and marketing budgets.

For a peek inside 100 years of cutting-edge inventions, take a look at this gallery of 20th-century advertisements. They show how products that we take for granted today, like bicycles, electric trains and radios, were once strange and wonderful enough that they needed bold, artistic introductions.

The posters, from an upcoming exhibition by the International Vintage Poster Dealers Association, show a century of massive change in technology, from plumbing to iPods. They also provide a glimpse of changing design trends: Bare-breasted beauties gave way to stark abstractions, which were succeeded by eye-catching color photos, which were replaced with primary-color silhouettes.

For more images and background, see the online  exhibit, titled “Innovations in Technology: From the Turn of the Century to Today.”

Images courtesy IVPDA.