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Jeopardy! Whiz Becomes Encarta Spokesman
Ant writes "BetaNews' story says Microsoft tapped Jeopardy! king Ken Jennings, who recently finished his 75-game run on the show, to become the spokesman for its Encarta product line. Jennings will embark on a nationwide media tour called 'Quiz the Whiz' that challenges news desks to stump the human encyclopedia with questions from Microsoft's Encarta Reference Library Premium 2005."
Jeopardy! Whiz Becomes Encarta Spokesman
By Nate Mook, BetaNews
December 6, 2004, 11:00 AM
Microsoft has tapped Jeopardy! king Ken Jennings, who recently finished his 75-game run on the show, to become the spokesman for its Encarta product line. Jennings will embark on a nationwide media tour called "Quiz the Whiz" that challenges news desks to stump the human encyclopedia with questions from Microsoft's Encarta Reference Library Premium 2005.
Jennings broke the game show record books this year and attracted a cult following by answering 2,700 Jeopardy! questions and raking in over $2.5 million in winnings. Before he takes off to Europe with his family next summer, Jennings hopes to pass on some of his passion for learning.
"It seems like a natural fit: Encarta has a long-standing commitment to furthering education, and I've had a lot of kids tell me that watching me on "Jeopardy!" has made reading and learning seem just a little cooler," Jennings told Microsoft in an interview.
Jennings also warned against relying solely on the Internet for researching information. "The Internet can be an incredible resource, but the scary thing is you never know what's out there or whether the answer you will find will be accurate. In fact, out of curiosity I searched for myself once and turned up all sorts of erroneous information," he said. "One seemingly reputable and authoritative page even had my name wrong!"
Ironically, Microsoft also mixed up his name in the interview, referring to the trivia whiz as "Jenkins."
Stumper question #1: "What is Linux?" either unknown data, or grossly misrepresentive data, or simply undetailed data. Compare "Who is Bill Gates?" for maximum biasm.
this sig no verb
Do a lot of people even use these anymore?
I figured by now, the internet would have overtaken these completely.
Right after his "loss" on the show. I still say it was a throw. Interesting marketing (and I bet it'll be successful) ploy for MS, I just wish Ken had thrown his popularity behind the open source community.
If there were a moderation, "1, Cynical", I'm sure I'd get it, but seriously ... for all of the knowledge apparently amassed by Mr Jennings, there is still a difference between trivia and knowledge. And there is a distinct whiff of one of the most vile of odors: marketing.
I felt a disturbance in the force, as if 10 thousand nerds cried out and then were silent.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
...that when I see the phrase 'natural fit' in a MS press release, I think of some poor bastard yet again taking it in the ass from BG?
Seriously? I thought Encarta died a long time ago. It was useful about 10 years ago, back in the days before I had net access.
Does anyone still actually use it?
Just a guess, but maybe they were talking about someone else?
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
...but we spent so much time on your Wikipedia article!
(Seriously, look at that article... someone put waaay too much time into it.)
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
But I saw Encarta in a computer store the other day and thought... so what? With the internet now common and simple to use to find things (thanks to Google and it's forefathers), why would I want to pay for an encyclopedia on CD/DVD?
As a promotion goes, it's a good idea, except it seems like trying to sell horse & buggy carts to 1920s urbanites. It's a product that is past it's prime and will dissapear soon.
PS: Ken Jennins, works as a programmer in Utah, hired by MS. I can make a conspiracy out of that :)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Give him a real challenge: ask him questions from Wikipedia. Encarta doesn't have half the information that Wikipedia has.
He is the perfect spokes person... i mean sheesh, he swept the "beer and wine" topic one night-- and he's a Mormon folks. He's an information sponge.
He must have thrown it. He got both Daily Doubles, and drew a blank on both of them. Then he answers "FedEx"? And then what's worse, that smile he has afterwards. No, subconsciously or not, he could have won it and didn't.
Of course the next thing to look into--were people betting on when he was going to lose?
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
How priceless would it be if they got his name wrong in Encarta too.
*blinking cursor*
What causes Pip in poultry?
How old is Mae West?
Who was the last British heavyweight champion of the world?
How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?
When did Florence Nightingale die?
What is the height of the Empire State Building? What was the date of General Gordon's death?
and last but not least
What are the Thirty-Nine Steps? Come on! Answer up! What are the Thirty-Nine Steps?
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
I'd like to see a Texas cage match between Jennings and Trebek.... winner gets Jeopardy hosting duties.
Why not give Ken his own trivia show where people try to stump him? It's not that far from what MS will have him doing.
So then I remember that episode of Keen Eddie (great show killed before it's time). The case in the episode involvs an EXTREEMLY famous man in England (fictional, of course) who had a trivia show where no one could stump him. One day he was stumped and then lost his show. He then became a bike messanger who forgot what he did with a package (this is the guy who remembers EVERYTHING). That's where he meets Keen Eddie.
Still, coincidince? Will Ken's memory start to slip untill he is attacked by a group that is trying to rob a bank because he lost their package?
If TV has taught us anything, yes!
I warned it was off-topic.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Let's see... Painfully clean-cut, Mormon, works for Microsoft... Thinks "watching me on Jeopardy! has made reading and learning seem just a little cooler"..
Actually my theory is that Bill Gates got tired of being the nerdiest guy around Redmond...
Does he know the answers, or merely the questions?
42
See if he knows the question.
God spoke to me
Jennings is a progammer. I'm sure he reads slashdot. So - how about it Ken? Where are ya?
Don't Tread on Me
Encarta isn't really 'fine' at all. It started out as a seriously discount paper encyclopedia, and it hasn't improved much at all. For example, take the biographical entry for Alexander Hamilton. It correctly puts a question mark next to the birt date, but then completely fails to discuss the controversy surrounding the birth date. Just recently, Wikipedia was dinged by a reviewer for exactly this sort of shallowness. Wikipedia fixed the problem the very same day the review came out.
The original paper encyclopedia Microsoft used as a source was Funk and Wagnall's New World Encyclopedia. It's not published any more. They used to be sold in supermarkets for $0.99 for the first volume, and $5 for the remaining volumes. I can't tell you how many people in the rinky dink town I grew up in had just the first volume of that encyclopedia, which they got for a buck at the grocery store. Lots of biology science papers were written on the ecology of the aardvark in those days.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Answer: Starting after Star Wars Episode I, these two things are known to cause blindness, deafness and hairy palms in geeks.
Edible? Well, I don't know about the grits...
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
When chickens read Great Expectations.
How old is Mae West?
She's dead. But you're still welcome to come up and see her sometime.
Who was the last British heavyweight champion of the world?
Doesn't matter, the Irish still didn't recognize him.
How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?
It's too cold to tell now; ask again in summer.
When did Florence Nightingale die?
When her life ended.
What is the height of the Empire State Building? What was the date of General Gordon's death?
Is there a connection between the two?
What are the Thirty-Nine Steps? Come on! Answer up! What are the Thirty-Nine Steps?
Here ya go. Bring popcorn, it's great.
Why did Ken Jennings - multi millionaire - decide to hook up with Microsoft to promote a less-than stellar product. Is it...
Because he really believes in it?
Because he loves the celebrity and thinks spokesperson is the next logical step in his career?
Or because Microsoft has agreed to pay all the taxes on his Jeopardy winnings?
KJ would make an excellend slashdot interview...someone shoulud work on that...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
as is proven in this video. His mind wasn't always on trivia it seems.
Does anyone inside of the USA really give a shit about the opinion of anyone outside of the USA of the game show Jeopardy?
Jennings will embark on a nationwide media tour called 'Quiz the Whiz' that challenges news desks to stump the human encyclopedia with questions from Microsoft's Encarta Reference Library Premium 2005.
So the media campaign is to draw attention to what, exactly? If you stump Jennings, he is knocked down a peg and you demonstrate that he was more lucky than anything in getting asked question on Jeopardy he just happened to know. Why bother with any specific education/product if success comes only from a coin flip? If you don't stump him, Encarta is knocked down a peg because he shows that he has more knowledge than what they're trying to sell and that you should probably buy another product if you want a more comprehensive reference. There is no win-win here; someone at MS should be fired for thinking up this gimmick.
Actually there are a many Mormon's (myself included) who believe in evolution...It's those fundamentalist Christians who are insistent on a literal interpretation of the Bible that can be the problem , not the Mormons (excluding Orrin Hatch he can goto Hell ;-) ).
Did anyone else find it just a little bit weird that Jennings lost on the same night as Jeopardy aired the episode in which every category was somehow related to Seinfeld, not to mention the final category that was actually questions (answers?) about Seinfeld, read by actors fromSeinfeld...
The tie-in was a plug for the recently-released DVDs (one week before the airing of the episode, to be exact). Most Jeopardy episodes don't contain this kind of plug... in fact not a single one comes to mind in recent history. Doesn't anyone else find this the least bit weird?
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
I never thought I'd hear of a man making millions of dollars and then deciding to become an encyclopedia salesman.
Encarta has the best computer atlas I've ever seen, though. That's the most valuable part, and I've heard of people buying Encarta just for that atlas.