To start with, I could not figure out who had produced this video. Originally, I suspected it to be a camouflaged Microsoft counter-campaign, but soon found out it was these Onion-flavoured pranksters.

If it had been a viral marketing campaign, it would have been incredible successful in disarming Apple’s coolness. Because it is a media hybrid (satire comedy camouflaged as a news show), the recipient’s brain is busy deconstructing the jokes and images and the I’ll-buy-anything-as-long-as-it’s-shiny-and-made-by-Mac stereotype is easily digested & accepted. That would have been a much better response to Apple’s Mac vs. PC campaign than the I’m a PC campaign.

Semiotics is religion, and if you work in the media industry, you should convert today.
Currently, I am, once again, browsing the books on Roland Barthes, Ferdinand de Saussure et al, and once again, I am convinced of the power of the semiotic theory for understanding modern day mass-communication.
If you work in marketing, and never read up on these topics, it is about time.

This site provides good insight into semiotics.

I have just recently started using mobile broadband, delivered by British behemoth BT. The speed is quite good, although it has a few hiccups now and then. But something strange happened. Suddenly, I was hindered in visiting my favourite blog at www.copyranter.com and 404 redirected to a BT page. Copyranter is know for its harsh language, and I suspect there is some adult content filter on my account.

BT have not answered my emails yet, and this might just be a misunderstanding, but I think, it is a problem that they block some sites without getting my prior consent and redirect traffic to their own site.

ISPs (Internet Service Providers) have begun offering various online services (hosting, business-portals etc.) and I am guessing that it will not be long before they develop their first search engine. And this is a problem, because the heavier the ISPs online presence are, the lighter their incentive to “help” out their online competitors will be. Suddenly, you might experience downtime on some of the major search engines, or a weird redirect to your ISPs own service. And your freedom of choice on the Internet can be compromised. The neutrality of the net might be compromised. It cripples free competition.

My hope is that there will be brought attention to this problem before it has become a harsh reality.

Peace,
Ras.

PS. “B” is now up in the SEO dictionary