- Saturday, 21 November 2009
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If fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your tooth - Persian proverb
Bing jingle won't make you tingle
WHEN IT EMERGED that omipresent software monopoly Microsoft had paid Rock wrinklies the Rolling Stones up to $10 million (speculation on the amount ranges from $4 million upwards, but we won't let the facts get in the way of a good story) to use Start Me Up to promote the launch of Windows 95, many commentators rightly pointed out that the huge stash of cash would have been better spent on making sure the operating system actually worked before they sent it out to make its own way in the big bad world.
As it turned out, early releases of Win95 were so bug-ridden and overblown that it truly was enough to "make a grown man cry" and Mr Jagger's promise that you could "start it up" and that it "would never stop" were soundly refuted by anyone who had experienced dozens of terminal system crashes a day.
Fast forward to a year or so ago and Microsoft once again showed how it had its finger on the pulse of popular culture by hiring a stand-up comedian who had a hit sit-com about ten years previously. Many had assumed this man was either dead, or had become a Howard Hughes-like recluse, sobbing into his hotel pillows because nobody laughed at his jokes any more (even the people he once paid a small fortune to tell him he was really funny).
Jerry Seinfeld, who some may have said at the time couldn't get a gig opening a supermarket, let alone another hit TV show, was paid millions of dollars to star in a series of lame, and in some cases subliminally homocentric (not that we have anything against that sort of thing) TV ads, most of which were rarely screened on TV if at all.
The public backlash was huge, Seinfeld's contract was cut short, and the former funny-man went back to his emu farm, or whatever it is that such people do once the public adulation and network cash dries up.
Three weeks ago, Microsoft went from the sublime to the rediculous as it announced that it would be spending just $500 of its multi megabucks marketing moulah to promote its Google-killing search engine Bing.
Please note that I use the term 'Google-killing' with a tanker-full of irony. Microsoft thinking it can come to the party a decade late and outrun the might Gurgle is almost as hilarious as the hapless ITV execs who bought Friends Reunited about six months before Facebook blew every other social network out of the water.
So the challenge was set. Write a snappy jingle for Bing (hereafter bingle) and you'll get a $500 American Express voucher. Yes that's right... a voucher. And as the credit card company was mentioned every time the competition was mentioned, we're pretty certain Microsoft didn't even cough up the five hundred bucks.
The competition generated literally tens of entries, most of which are so unutterably, jaw-clenchingly, testicle-shrinkingly awful that to encourage you to view them could be considered cruel and unusual treatment under the rules of the Geneva Convention, leaving us open to possible lawsuits.
So Microsoft chose 'Bing Goes the Internet' by Jonathan Mann, whose main claim to fame is that he has posted a song a day to Youtube for 200 days, all of which would make Ivor Novello reach 78rpm in his grave.
Jonathan sings his little song and does his little dance in what appear to be his jimjam bottoms and a Guantanamo Bay standard issue orange T-shirt, and repeatedly suggests that if you want the answers to all of life's questions, you should head off to Bing.
We urge you not to watch this travesty. You have been warned. But if you choose to ignore our advice and go ahead, remember, this is the winner. µ
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Can some braver/hardier soul confirm that it's not the CNN bloke.
shhhhuuuudddderrr......
could only take 10 seconds of that and I use linux and am happy to gloat at bad MS offerings but video
I will be having nightmares tonight....
goes the rusty tent peg into my eardrums
...but I was quite happily ticking along today without a care in the world and you're the {insert appropriate derogative here} who ruined it, along with the fact you're extracting the result of kidney function from someone else. For those reasons, take your pick from these:
http://www.rediculous.co.uk/
...they could have at least make the video only work on Silverlight on Windows Vista to spare us poor sods from having to endure that big piece of crap.
What was that bloody dance, the Macarena done wrong?
Least they could have done is bought the rights to a 'Bing' Crosby song. Geddit?
Right, I'm going to disinfect my eyes and ears with bleach.
Rob
I did. I looked.
ohmigod
What could be wrong in the high councils of patenter of XML documents and other innovative wonderments?
First word of '95 song:"Problem". then Microsmartz logo. You could start up computer, it just would complete ANY task, wheter internet or anything. Throw it out turns out to be case, those computers in scenes are long gone, $350 CRT monitors, ALL trash, maybe few keyboards, if where PC2(although older PC KB have adapter) or mouse survives.Forget Software people paid thousands for too.
Why waste money today,(OMG) public already knows it unlikely to function Properly. Maybe Micro? dosn't have any more money, really saves on Ad costs. There arn't any.
BTW Tent pegs are usually aluminum. How about piece of broken glass? Really, new songster is good example of what can be done(yet, who'd admire NObody?, you slumps), while '95 was day dream. thats Two Fiffie per song. NOT Bad.
Rumour mill states ?NT7, about 2013 & major change called 8. Eight We Lucky today.(By Then?) Chairman Bill musta got out of prison, as climbing way back into press, so maybe not so lucky.
vondrashek
to illustrate what an idiotic idea Bing is. And as if to prove how out of touch MS is, they picked the parody as their theme. Intentionally horrible jingle, but a beautifully executed joke.
I WATCHED THE WHOLE THING. AND YES I COULDNT TAKE IT BUT NOW THIS FREAKING SONG WONT GET OUT OF MY HEAD....YEA I AM SHOUTING..HINTS THE CAPS
After this travesty, I really do hope that SUN stops distributing the "Yahoo toolbar" with its java updates. To inflict further exposure to Micro-who on the world's populace would be cruel and inhuman. Why would Sun/Oracle do this to us?
Someone should quickly market a Firefox add-on that blocks Micro-who (toolbar and everything else), and especially, this horrid "jingle".
I don't know if many remember a TV show called the 'Gong Show' where really bad contestants on the show got a large Gong rang if they were less than desirable , meaning they sucked , well GONG ,GONG , the Bing use the giant Shepard staff and pull this off the Internet .
That's it. I'm never gonna use Bing again.
Why I looked is the same reason you look at car and train crashes, to see if it is as bad as you can imagine. This indeed, is worse. The guy who did it seems serious as he has produced drivel for over 200 consecutive day and posted the video to accompany it on Youtube. I love that particular irony.
Oh, yeah and M$ can hire Barry Manilow to do the real version of it. It would be really funny, unlike the Jerry Seinfeld ads, in a really awful kind of way.
Theres a great way to get bing working well, it requires one quick modification to a system file...
google.com bing.com
Just throw that line in your hosts file, restart, and bing starts working just like magic!
'rediculous'
'outrun the might Gurgle'
It don't mean a thing
If it don't got that King of Bing
He lurves their company
AAAAaaaAaGggghhhhhhhh!!!
Apparently the target demographic Microsoft is going after -- according to this "winner" video -- is:
-Those with an IQ around 60 (due to the simplistic idiocy of the lyrics and facial expressions used in the video).
- Those who are malleable, easily led, and easily relieved of their few pennies (which can then be added to Ballmer's fat wallet...as evidenced by the happy, compliant little images in the background who gleefully do what they are told by their moronic taskmaster).
- Those with little or no personality (according to the largely expressionless and mindless facial gestures of the "actor" in this video).
With such a low opinion of its potential "customers", it's a wonder that Microsoft has any customers left.
You are just trying to lure us into sharing the pain and agony you suffered when listening to this ... but I am not going to! :P
Get on to youtube, give the video 1 star and then flame the crap out of the gobshite.