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Firefox Commercial Contest
Robbyboy writes "Mozilla announced an advertisment contest for the Firefox web browser, according to Information Week. They are asking Mozilla Fans to send them samples and the winners will receive prizes. The Contest is hosted at the Spread Firefox site" From the article: "Earlier this month, Mozilla launched the first phase of its Firefox Flicks campaign, which was a testimonial Web site in which fans could sing the browser's praise in short videos. To date, several dozen of the amateur clips, which vary widely in quality and have been submitted from more than 20 countries, have been posted on the site."
....that they do an out takes / freaks release a la viral advert style that can't be traced to them. everyone knows those reality tv shows that are talent contests are funniest when the contestants fail
seriously guys. how do you make something as arcane as auto insurance rates funny? you do it like Geico does. fact is, most people don't find what web browser they're using a terribly fascinating subject either. it might be hard for a lot of slashdotters to swallow, but one of the best ways to get people talking about Firefox is not throwing statistics at them or preaching about open source software. it's proper marketing. this is one of the reasons why Firefox has succeeded reasonably well so far versus, say, Opera. webmasters have 'get firefox' buttons on the bottoms of their web pages. taking it more mainstream would just be easiest, in my opinion, if a bit of humour was thrown in. i can't imagine what exactly it would be, but if you can make car insurance funny, you can make web standards funny too.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
I find this a much better idea than the opera-user-photo concept. I hope they release all the best submissions. They could be quite amusing.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
Father, mother, daughter, desktop computer.
Daughter: "Daddy, the computer stopped working"
TRACK to Daughter walking to computer with Father following.
CUT to computer screen. Screen full of blinking ads and popups. Hint of pornographic content, but not directly on screen.
Daughter: "Can you fix it?"
Father: "I'll try"
Father sits down at computer.
CUT to side view of Father at computer, illuminated by glow from screen.
FADE to side view of Father at computer, looking at screen, intermittent typing.
Daughter (offscreen): "Is it fixed yet".
Father: No, not yet.
FADE to side view of Father at computer, head in hands.
Daughter (offscreen) "I need the computer to do my homework".
Father (annoyed): "I'm working on it".
Mother: (offscreen): "Honey, is this going to take long"? ...
Involves thousands of paniced Japanese running through city streets screaming "MOZIRRA!!!!!! MOZIRRA!!!"
I am not left-handed, either!
Post multiple copies of the same story about the Firefox contest!
> preaching about open source software
I agree that preaching must be avoided, but not mentioning that it is free software is a false economy.
People who don't value their freedom will let it slip through their fingers. i.e. they will install a bunch of proprietary plug-ins, and over time, Firefox will become a platform for a set of non-free plug-ins for browsing the non-free WWW.
...but the preaching has to be removed. Freedom and community could be mentioned without an explanation, and at least the user would then have the option of investigating for themself.
In business terms, freedom is the software's "unique selling point".
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I agree, on the Firefox Flicks globe, the videos I prefer are not the ones that talk about Firefox's features or "coolness", but the ones that are different and original. But there's plenty of other elements that are very appealing to people. For instance, I particularly liked a couple of videos from France, were some dude's little kids talk about Firefox. I don't even know what they're saying, but babies are cute, and the videos are cool to watch. Other stuff that sells: sexiness and puppies.
Hope somebody's taking note, I'm throwing gold at you, gold, I tell ya!
Favorite quote: "
They have some pretty sweet prizes, too:
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Um...why?
Good products don't need advertisements. Bad products- or products indistinguishable from their competitors- need advertisements. When you have a lot of technically clued-in people encouraging friends, family and coworkers to use Firefox...and a market share that is going up...why do they need more?
I just don't get it. Open source isn't about taking over the world, but yet a lot of people seem to think that way. Guys (and gals)...that's exactly what got us in trouble with Microsoft.
Choice and diversity is GOOD, shockingly. What you should be doing is pointing coworkers to lots of different browsers and encouraging open standards support (ie, don't support browsers that have fussy behavior web designers must account for and/or don't support open standards.)
Choice and diversity encourage innovation, and assure users needs are met best. Here's a little parallel- I worked for an advertising agency that was owned by a holding company. The holding company is one of 3-4 of its kind, and together they own a massive percentage of the advertising firms out there. Yet the holding company frequently encourages multiple companies it owns to present proposals to the same client. Why? Better chance at getting one of -their- companies in the door is one reason, but another is that with 4 companies from "The XYZ Group"...well, the client has more selection, there might be a better fit between client and firm, and the client is liable to be happier with whoever they DO pick.
By the way- corporate needs aside, of course...do NOT ram Firefox, or anything else, down a user's throat. They'll quite likely resent it, look for excuses for it to fail or not meet their needs, etc. Where you can, be GENTLE and try to have it be their decision- not yours.
Please help metamoderate.
I'm going to momentarily set aside the fact that this guy is a total nitwit, and pretend that an enlightened and rational person has raised that objection. Why do people care? Why would anyone spend time shilling for a free product, when doing so cuts into their porn-browsing time? In short, who gives a rat?
To answer the question, look back just a couple of years. IE had around 95% marketshare, despite not having done anything terribly interesting to improve the browser since it killed Netscape. Microsoft wasn't working towards supporting new, useful standards like CSS, XML, SVG, RSS, etc., because the incentives just weren't there. MSHTML was the standard, because there was no market for anything else. Security was awful, but the people who made the software just didn't care. Seriously, how much pride can you take in "doing things the right way," when you know for certain that the people developing for your browser will whine, complain, then find whatever dirty hack it takes to get things looking right on your browser?
Times have changed, and it's thanks in large part to the creation of Firefox and the Evangelical Geek Hordes swarming behind it. IE has lost a good chunk of marketshare, lazy webmasters are starting to understand that their website needs to work on multiple browsers. There is renewed interest in web standards.
Even IE is starting to improve its security and standards-compliance, while adding new features.
Before Firefox arrived, Internet Explorer was well on its way to becoming the MSWeb. Microsoft could decide which standards they thought were relevant to the user experience they wanted us to have, and to what extent they would be implemented. But since this power didn't translate well to revenue streams, they gave us the half-baked, annoying web browsing experience that they couldn't get us to pay for.
So long as alternative browsers have double-digit usage, the web will continue to be a more standards-friendly place. Standards don't sound terribly exciting at first, but they allow for all sorts of exciting niftiness that simply wouldn't be possible under a MS monoculture.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
A recent article elsewhere listed a number of problems reported by several hundred users of 1.5 - many of which I have experienced first hand.
While 1.5 doesn't slow down as quickly as the 1.07 when downloading images off the Net, it DOES slow down eventually and eat up all of Windows' virtual memory. Eventually it starts issuing "picture cannot be displayed due to errors" messages. In other words, severe memory leaks. These were supposed to be fixed in 1,5, but clearly have not been, although some may have been ameliorated somewhat.
It also seems to be slightly less stable than 1.07, with a slightly higher incidence of crashes (still thankfully relatively rare.)
If they start trying to add features to this code base, they'll get a rep for having a crappy browser on a par with IE 5. They need to fix these problems and fix them fast.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What about a jar of jelly, but instead of jelly, it says FIREFOX... ahahha SPREAD FIREFOX, GET IT? ...
Anyway, if someone takes this idea, does it, and wins... well, at least think of me when you get your delicious prizes...
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
...the Mozilla team has Adblock switched on. No winner will be announced.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book