1:26 Oct 31st, 2009 | Notes

There is a point at which advertising crosses the line. Microsoft has passed that line by a mile.

I am generally a very liberal minded person when it comes to advertising. I believe advertising can be successfully and sensibly implemented within schools in order to balance out costs of expensive products like computers. While some may draw comparison between my ideas and Microsoft’s recent Bing campaign, there is one major difference. Mine would look like advertising. Thus lies the reason why Microsoft’s Bing campaign is so morally apprehensible.

Bing is Microsoft’s search engine, and search is easy money. Search engines make money through advertisements. Those advertisements are labeled for what they are: ads. Here’s why Microsoft’s campaign is morally wrong: they haven’t applied this same principle to their middle school campaign. Microsoft has gone into a middle school teaching young children a catchy (and frankly awful) song and dance about their search engine. While dancing around in their Bing T-shirts, watching videos about Bing and singing Bing songs, their minds are being moulded and shaped using techniques they don’t recognize as advertising. Their being fed ads that don’t look like, and aren’t labeled as, ads.

It’s using the plasticity of a child’s mind to shamelessly push a product. It’s clear that the children are oblivious to the tactics of the Redmond giant and that they are being brainwashed, which is what makes this so wrong. If you are going to advertise to children, do it in an honest and obvious way. Advertising could be used to lower education costs, to bring technology into the classrooms of children who otherwise couldn’t afford it and would live without it. What this has reinforced in the minds of those against advertising is that the industry can’t be trusted to be sensible when dealing with children, when with the proper oversights it could be.

Microsoft and the middle school have lowered the bar of advertising, and it will take a lot to raise it back up.

No Twitter For You This Tiananmen Square Anniversary Day

10:35 Jun 2nd, 2009 | Notes

It continues to amaze me that the Chinese government continue to think that they can impose such stringent censorship of the internet and still believe it works! Then again, when I was in China, the family I was staying with didn’t understand our bicameral, multi party electoral system when I tried to explain it to them. They were surprised to find that we had different parties we could vote for.

Okay, so censorship is working. Thank goodness I’m not in China at the moment because HOW COULD I LIVE WITHOUT TWITTER!?

TechCrunch says services like Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live.com, Hotmail.com and Blogger have all been blocked in China as of today in the lead up to the anniversary. You may also be interested to know that my blog is also blocked in China! Yay! How exciting!