2004-12-15 20:05:26

One rant, one lament, and one gloat

Advertising Ridiculum

Does anybody remember when magazines used to put the table of contents just inside the front cover?  That's where readers expect it to be, even though I can't remember the last time I saw one there.

Apparently one day somebody in the advertising department realized they were missing a huge opportunity.  Since readers automatically turn to the inside front cover to see the table of contents, that's a perfect place to put an ad and charge the advertiser extra for "premium placement".

At first I was annoyed with this, but I quickly learned to just turn one extra page.  No biggie. 

But then some bozo decided to put yet another ad before the table of contents.  And why not?  After all, the algorithm can be generalized:  Wherever the reader expects the table of contents to be, just put an ad there.

Where will the madness stop?  Is there a limit to how much magazines are willing to annoy their readers to please their advertisers?

I don't know, but in this week's edition of Fortune magazine, the table of contents is on page 17.

R.I.P. Software Legends

It is with much sadness that I report the apparent passing of the Software Legends website.  I'm not sure when it happened, but sometime recently the site just disappeared. 

I suppose I can't blame them for removing it.  That particular ad campaign was over a long time ago.  The only good reason to leave the site active would be to make sure that people who see my parody site will get the joke.

Maybe someday Microsoft will come up with another campaign suitable for satire.  This one was a lot of fun.

Now all I need is an Xbox

Speaking of actual legends, I recently had the honor of exchanging a couple emails with Alexander Seropian, founder of Bungie, maker of really cool games.  Seropian has a new startup now.  He offered to trade me few copies of Halo 2 for a few a copies of our stuff.  I wonder if Best Buy has Xboxes in stock at this time of year?

By the way, for those of you wondering, SourceGear's current policy on trades is as follows:  If you have a product as cool as Halo 2, we'll be happy to trade.  Everybody else pays cash.  :-)