AT&T has a commercial out right now that shows the entire United States being covered with orange fabric:

Remind you of anything? Id est:


Christo and Jeanne-Claude had an eerily similar installation in Central Park 2005 titled, "The Gates". So similar, in fact, that AT&T felt the need (was obligated?) to put a disclaimer on the imagery used in their commercial:

The disclaimer text reads:

Ummmm... I would argue that they do at least have a connection with AT&T. That connection being that AT&T blatantly ripped off their artwork. Gross.

I think you've officially broken the record for number of fonts used in a single advertisement (ten according to my count). And it includes Papyrus!

(click for full ad and ALL the glorious fonts)

Stay classy Olive Garden.

Hey, National Institutes of Health, the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and BU Medical School! Are you short on money?! Dudes, I'll give you the four dollars it take to remove the watermark from an iStock image if you don't have it.

As seen in the Boston Herald today (Feb 3, 2010):

There's no way Microsoft is serious with this idea, right? Is this a little tough-in-cheek humor from a sleep deprived ad exec? Or just a parody? Please tell me it is.

How the hell do these four people know each other? That black dude looks like he standing a little too close to the chick according to other apparent Microsoft advertising policies. But it was the white dude that threw up a gang sign at the 6:13 mark.

Check out how judgmental the old lady is at the 2:40 mark. Priceless. "Oh... you went straight to an activity... well, if that's what you tramps are into nowadays..."

And seriously - do I want to know what the white guy's "third" activity was (2:58)? Judging by their reactions, it looks like the others already do. I thought the blond chick was going to shit herself when he said he did THREE activities.

I don't have quite enough data to prove it yet. But I'm positive that the Nike + website is using a simple PHP counter to represent the number of miles run by its members. THAT'S BULLSHIT!.

I first suspected it a few weeks ago when I visited their (crappy flash) site after Stephanie bought one of their trackers. As a web developer, I know that most objects on a website (images, flash, or otherwise) are named one way or another. It just so happens that Opera (a browser) displays the description entered by the coder when you hover your mouse over the object.

What did I see when I hovered my mouse over their mile counter? "UNIX time"

They are using UNIX epoch time's counter to pretend it's the number of miles that have been run by their subscribers!

I just did a website for a company that has a near-real-time stat of their members. And it's REAL. Not something made up by the developers of the website. That's lame Nike.

**UPDATE**
If you go to their site, and refresh the page, it starts at the same counter each time: 146,075,553.

I still think their using UNIX Epoch Time to increment the counter, but probably using some lame math function to A) reduce it (by a million), then B) randomize the start time within a 24 hour period.

Still really lame. Maybe more so than I even originally thought.

Bottom line, incrementing the alleged miles run by your subscribers every second via a non related script (even if the average might be close) ≠ factual representation.