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Firefox New York Times Ad, Soon
An anonymous reader submits "CNet has an update on the status of the New York Times Firefox ad. According to the article, the delays are largely because of the decision to go with 10,000 names rather than the original 2500. The amount of content means each change to the ad requires 15 minutes of rendering. They also must be careful in crafting the ad, so that stay on the advocacy side of things. As a non-profit, they can still qualify for the under $50,000 rate, but if the ad is too commercial, they would need to pay the $130,000+ business rate. They say they're close to finishing, and the ad should run by mid-December, or at the latest, by Christmas. Firefox is also close to 10,000,000 downloads in the first month of release."
Lots of people can't move from windows because the sites they need to look at only work in the Windows version of IE. If the marketshare for IE goes down because of FireFox, sites will follow by making their pages work on it. At the same time, people will have a familiar application they can use when switching, so I would guess that this may help other platforms.
...Will this do any good? Seriously, will some AOL user be sitting, reading the times, see the ad and go "An ad for 'FireFox'? 'Better Browser'? I better switch!" Probably not. After all, AOL already gives them a "better internet." Damned AOL ads.
isn't a non-profit a non-profit, no matter what kind of ads they run?
I can see it now... Wal-Mart's non-profit subsidiary, "The Friends of Sam Walton" (not a real charity) using their non-profit status to reduce Wal-Mart's advertising costs by over 50%.
I'm afraid checks and balances have to be in place, even if they occasionally slow something like Firefox down.
Smells like a troll...
Anywho, I'll take a shot at this. Firefox and other Free, multi-platform software (Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, etc.) reduce dependence on Windows, because people aren't stuck with Windows-specific programs. For me, the only thing stopping me from moving to Linux is gaming (I don't believe Cedega supports the games I play). Basically, Microsoft's got my "patronage" hanging by a thread, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
If anything, Firefox moves people yet another step away from Windows. The more people see the futility of hanging onto M$ products due to superior alternatives being available, the more likely they will say "Hey, why am I still using Windows anyway?" I, for one, plan to migrate away from Windows 100% and this is a step in the right direction.
Eventually they will see the golden island... but for now they can stay on the sinking ship if they want to. I think most of the community is hoping that this will show the majority of people that open source is the better alternative. I haven't recieved one piece of adware since I switched to Firebird (and later to Firefox)
Actually, I think it helps migrate people to Linux because it gives them a browser they are already familiar with.
;)
Just FYI
They might be non profit company making free software but they are threatening other companies' buisness model. Time will tell...
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
Two points, both of which will no doubt get me flamed to hell and back:
1. If 10,000 flies can't be wrong, what does that say about the millions that buy Microsoft products? From the viewpoint of the majority of the readers here, aren't those Microsoft customers wrong? Quantity never implies quality, my friend.
2. It might not be open source, but Opera perhaps meets your description of "the most reasonably standards compliant, light weight, cross platform web browser ever made" more than Firefox does. Opera is available for more platforms, is smaller in size (even with a greater feature set that includes an email client, etc), better integrated and more polished.
Yes, there are some very, very minor incompatibility issues but the Opera development team has always done a good job of ironing out any wrinkles that do appear. And, as you've alluded to yourself, there's no such thing as problem-free browsing (at least on any non-Microsoft browser) nowadays.
Other than that, well done to everyone who's contributed to the development of Firefox, no matter how great or small their contribution.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I think people must come to open source software in general, before they start migrating to Linux. Still, the reputation of FOSS in the general public is not so good, Firefox could change this (although I have heard lots of complaints about it too, like the unability to automatically sort bookmarks out-of-the-box).
--
Roman
www.ontographics.com
Roman Kennke
No it doesn't. If you can have the same web browser on both platforms, would logically that encourage or discourage someone to explore the other platform?
If Microsoft Office was out for linux, many of the people that can justify not moving to linux can no longer justify it. The less Windows-only applications being used, the less Windows-only environments.
My experience with firefox has been if I tell someone to use it they do, most of the time without questioning why. Not a hint of concern about 'publicized' IE security flaws of Microsoft failings. Seems most users just want to surf the net, take care of business or whatever. I guess this can still be claimed as a victory for firefox...
It's precisely the attitude of Linux elitist uber-geeks like you, that is keeping the chasm between Linux and Windows, uncrossable.
The REAL reason for people to have less reasons to move off Windows is because they DON'T find their favorite Windows software on Linux.
So, people need to adopt Firefox as part of their "favorite Windows software", and guess what, it's ALREADY on Linux!
What Linux REALLY needs to overthrow Windows, is a multiplatform RAD environment for C++ (and maybe *cough* Visual Basic *cough* equivalent), so Windows users will start developing multi-platform apps without having to code everything by hand.
Paraphrasing Archimedes: "Give me a cross-platform RAD, and I shall move the world".
So far, Firefox doesn't only give us a great cross-platform browser, but also XUL. And that does much more to help people build bridges between Linux and Windows, than your "screw windows users" attitude.
S'wunnerful, but pop-up and ads drive many sites, so don't expect too ringing an endorsement from sites which get zip-nada revenue from Firefox surfers. Expect many sites to continue to endorse IE, since it helps their bottom line.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Maybe it hurts Linux but it helps free software because it introduces people who don't know what it is to it and give them a good first impression.
But it probably doesn't hurt Linux either because if every software could run both on Windows and Linux like Firefox does then the only reason to stay with Windows would be if you thought it was better than Linux, not because your app doesn't run on Linux.
It also helps Linux because should a Firefox using company/user decide to try Linux it gives them something familiar to feel a bit more at home, making the transition easier.
So your assertion that it hurts Linux certainly is debatable.
Well, I guess IHBT, IHBH so I will HAND.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
As the original poster of the mentioned article about Firefox in Saugus my point was that the New York Times article idea may not be the most effective because many of the New York Times readers are still reading newspapers because they haven't figured out the Internet yet.
I'd personally like to see the energy being spent to go into more effective advertising. The article promoting Firefox on Saugus.net is meant to be just one example... Saugus.net has a history of promoting free software, though; I'd like to see more local sites without such a history getting into the act.
Perhaps it's more about the coverage that Firefox is getting because they are going to place the ad, rather than the ad itself.
Or just edit the list of names in their favorite text-editor, and only paste it in whatever spawn-of-satan wysiwyg gui they're using (or into the xsl:fo) when the list is done already..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
This isn't a branch of government. We're talking about the New York Times. Surely they can decide whether to charge Firefox the correct rate based on the message.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Right, because a party full of computer nerds is going to get everyone's attention.
10,000 people on slashdot criticizing an ad they haven't even seen yet.
Personally, if a person looks at the ad long enough to wonder why there are so many names on the page they're NOT EVEN LEGIBLE, then I think that accomplishes the task at hand -- promoting firefox.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
What about the people who download it once and use it on multiple computers? Not only in a home network, for instance, but for organizations. The numbers game goes both ways.
As an Apple user, I always thought it odd how we Apple fanatics got excited enough about advertisements to discuss them in public forums. Are there forums where people get all hot and heavy over Microsoft advertising? :-)
Currently hooked on AMP
So? To me, I fell that getting people to switch to open, cross-platform standards and programs is much more important than switching people to Linux/*BSD/Mac OS/insert non-MS OS here. Firefox is available on all current, mainstream platforms (Windows, *nix, OS X). If we get Windows users to see the benefits of open source software that conforms to open standards, then whenever they move to Linux/BSD, OS X, or Da Whizbang OS 2010, their data would move seamlessly without lock-in because of proprietary, closed-source "standards" (cough MS Office cough), not to mention that the only things that the users would have to relearn would be things related to the operating system.
Besides that, Firefox is helping to solve one of the biggest problems in Windows Land: malware. With a firewall behind the connection, and a Firefox guiding the Internet, Windows users would be much safer than using Internet Exploder.
Finally, Firefox is bring awareness to the general computing public that not all computer users use Windows and Internet Explorer. Whenever we're browsing on our *nix boxen, Macintoshes, or secure Windows machines, trying to check our credit cards, look at music, or browse other sites, the last thing that we need is for some message to pop up saying, "You're not running an up to date browser. Please intall Internet Explorer 5 or later." No, we want our website! Thanks to the efforts of the Mozilla project as well as makers of other browsers (Opera, Konqueror, Safari, etc.), us non-Windows users can browse almost whatever site we want to.
So, when you say that Firefox running on Windows will hurt Linux adoption, remember the long term goals. What do you want, a world where everyone runs your favorite OS, or a world where everyone can choose their OS, but be able to run applications that share open standards.
It depends who the target is. If you are targetting Corporate "Suits," then the newspaper add makes sense. You would be surprised how many IT decisions are made by non-technical people in big corporations. If they see it in "the legitimate press" then it adds credibility.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Excuse me as I think I haven't seen a NYT since many years ago, but usually the resolution of images, pictures and adds overall in press suck. Even in glassy paper magazines I can hardly imagine 10 000 names in one page. Is it a double page ad? B/W or color?
I know I am wrong, but right now i can only think of a blurry page.
__
Sig: Marine Stock Photos
My company does pre-press work for marketing campaigns. If they need 15 minutes to render a postscript file (or PDF) they need better hardware. We use off-the-shelf gear (PC and Mac, none of it SMP) and nothing we do that is full-page size takes 15 minutes, even at 300 dpi. What're they using, a PII-400???
That's a silly statement to make.
A PS or PDF file can be arbitrily complex for a given page size.
I've personally caused a single 8.5x11 page to take twenty mintues to come out of a fast laser printer.
All you need to do is send it a postscript file of something with a hundred thousand elements or so. (I'm my case, the VLSI layout for a microcontroller.)
If you're starting out with a bitmap then DPI and page size are dominating factors. When you're starting with a list of names in a scaleable font, you're talk about VECTOR graphics.
That is a "proper" way for a professional to work in this instance since they can then produce a result of arbitrary DPI or page size.
Life is too short to proofread.
In reply to your points:
1. That 10,000 people use it doesn't make it good, but the existence of the ad argues a lot of people use and like it, so it might be worth a look. Everyone who uses the web has heard of IE and MS, but not necessarily Firefox. This may convince them to check it out, or to take the advice or a friend or coworker who said they should try it. The only thing that should convince them it's good is how it performs once they try it. Another nuance is, it's not just that 10,000 people use it, it's that 10,000 people payed good money to put the ad in for no direct personal gain (in most cases). I don't know if that would be clear to readers, but you must admit you'd be hard pressed to find people doing this for MS products.
2. I used to use Opera; I even payed for it at one point. The reason I switched for Mozilla/Firefox was that more sites seemed to work well in Mozilla and it seemed to be more polished and well documented in a lot of ways, with a more active community. That may have changed since Opera 6.0, but my point is that I think they both qualify fairly well on those points. I think the important point here is the other, tacit qualification, which is that it's free. Many people won't pay for a browser when they can get one for free (and banner ad free). I know I have felt that Opera and Firefox are pretty competitive, but Opera is certainly not so much better (in my opinion) as to warrent paying the money or suffering the banner ads.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
They have every incentive to charge legitimate nonprofits less, because this lets them split the ad market up and charge each segment the maximum that it is willing to pay. If the NYT allowed pseudo-nonprofits like the hypothetical "Friends of Sam Walton" then they will lose money. It's pretty clear that the system will be accurate based on the nature of market forces here.
Actually, I'm working at Mozilla on their shiny new Dual 1.8GHz G5 PowerMac with 1.25GB RAM.
The problem is that 10,000 names converted to outlines and intersected with a complex, gradiated shape isn't a task for mere mortals. But at the rate this thing is happening... Geez, Firefox 2.0 might be out! (j/k -- I'm almost done.)
Professionalism is a strange thing. I subscribe to a lot of trade mags on fairly technical subjects, and the advertising in them is always basic, but very informative.
They know their market; good on them.
I guess if you want mass market appeal, where the advertising *is* the product (like most sugar water) then it's important, but other that that, I'd rather see some clear pictures and a spec sheet....
IMHO a lot of geeks are blinkered. They ostensibly want more publicity for their favored product, but a lot of these 'home-made' ads have an air of self-indulgence about them. They're not producing adverts, they're producing posters. They're preaching to the converted.
And yes, you have to decide what you're trying to achieve with the advert. But if Firefox comes over as a geek toy, then it's not going to encourage mass-market adoption.
But, of course, many 'professional' adverts are extraordinarily vapid too (hence my dislike of comptuer ads done by advertising people who know nothing about computers).
We want Firefox to be seen as smart and professional.
Incidentally, I love the Firefox logo. It's professional and stylish, whilst retaining some human personality and not smacking of corporate banality. If you want mainstream adoption, getting the small things like that right projects the right image.
Anyway, IMHO the advertising should project the virtues of the browser, without getting too bogged down in geeky details. It should say "this is a professional product", and I think that can be done without making Firefox look too much like a vapid corporate piece of puff.
Umm... sure, let's patronize them.. that makes sense....
I think some people are crazy.
They want EYE BALLS, there for the NYT fits the bill. I mean really, who would you suggest? USA Today?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
If they mention using Firefox then it's going to be commercial.
How is that commercial? They're GIVING THE BROWSER AWAY to anyone that wants it, anytime, anywhere, for any OS, for completely free. Nobody makes a dime off of Firefox. It's completely free. It isn't even a free product from a commercial company. It's a free product from a non-profit, non-commercial public cooperative.
So exactly where is this "commercial"? That's like saying that advertising free dinner for the homeless on Thanksgiving day is "commercial" because your non-profit group is giving away free meals to homeless people which is competing with commercial companies selling $50 dinners.
Bad factoryjoe! Bad!! Never EVER feed the trolls!