Downtime has tried but failed to summon up surprise that
General Motors' latest viral marketing wheeze - launching a contest
that lets visitors to its website create their own commercial for
the gas-guzzling Chevy Tahoe "sports utility vehicle" - hasn't
quite gone to plan.
Rather than using the ad-making tool to extol the virtues of the
vehicle, thousands of entries submitted at the site have charged
General Motors with contributing to global warming with its
oversized contribution to the US motoring scene.
One typical effort uses shots of the Tahoe zooming through snow,
mountains and desert along with the words, "Global warming isn't a
pretty SUV ad. It's a frightening reality."
With the less-than-complimentary entries rolling in fast,
General Motors said it would screen the ads for "offensive and
inflammatory" content but pledged not to remove material just for
"negative tone" towards the firm.
Hoof dares wins as staff take a punt online
It looks like office workers up and down the country were a
little distracted from their core duties last week, in the lead up
to Saturday's Grand National.
According to ScanSafe, the excuse for an annual flutter that is
the National was reflected in a huge increase in visits to gambling
websites during office hours. One corporate customer of ScanSafe's
web monitoring and security services had an employee who spent
nearly two hours on one particular gambling site. And Downtime is
guessing he or she isn't the only one.
One thing that did come up is that the horse most often searched
for by straying employees was Hedgehunter, which was searched for
130 times in a single day by employees in just a single firm.
As Downtime went to press, Hedgehunter was still the favourite
for the race, but, barring some unforeseen events, you will of
course know by now whether or not you won that pound-a-go office
sweepstake.
The devil makes work for systems analysts
An advert posted recently on the IT jobs boards of Computer
People may have raised a few eyebrows.
The ad, for a systems analyst, specified that whoever took the
job would be required to take "business requirements from business
analysts and analyse them to a certain evil in conjunction with the
technical architects".
The idea sounds a little wide of the mark - unless Satan himself
is in the process of building up an IT team to do his dirty
work.
If so, don't forget you heard it here first.
The life and times of a computer character
Not before time, the world's best-known computer game character,
Lara Croft, has gone through a makeover in the latest Tomb Raider
computer game.
For this outing, Lara's famously pneumatic breasts have gone
down a size - from 36D to 36C - to be replaced by a more athletic
and streamlined figure with a bit more about her than her
improbable hourglass shape.
"People wanted to know more about who Lara is and what makes her
tick, so we have answered a few questions, including a flashback to
her youth," one of the game's helpfully explains.
But let's not get too carried away, we are still talking about a
character in a computer game.
Obviously readers of Computer Weekly are far too busy for such
frivolousness, but their younger, less time-starved relatives may
be interested to know that Tomb Raider: Legend is now on sale.
Never mind the internet, we're cavemen at heart
Three universities have been handed £500,ooo between them to
look at the whether the rise of technology is helping or hindering
the creation of healthy social networks and communities.
Researchers at Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield Hallam
universities will use the cash to fund a project based on the
theories of evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, who reckons
that human beings, from cave dwellers to the present day, naturally
congregate in groups of about 150 as a by-product of our
evolutionary history.
Downtime has to admit it isn't in a position to subject Dunbar's
theories to the most rigorous critique, but will instead watch with
interest from the sidelines at how that cool half million gets
spent.
Alistair Sutcliffe, a professor from the School of Infomatics at
the University of Manchester claims the research has "huge
implications", and Downtime can only hope he is right.
Sutcliffe says that policymakers in particular are "hugely
concerned" with the disintegration of social capital. On this
basis, he and his cohorts plan to look at how "technology can form
the glue for economic and social communities around the globe".
In Downtime's admittedly jaundiced view, this sounds like an
excellent excuse for lots of interesting foreign travel.