8 Outrageously Annoying Tech Videos

Most TV commercials are annoying, but the tech industry takes the cake for making ads so bad that you have to question if it was intentional.

Ever seen Snakes on a Plane? Now imagine that the creators were given the Microsoft account and told, “Make us look cool with one of those ‘viral videos’ that we hear the kids are so excited about these days.” What else explains the awfulness of these commercials and infomercials?

//

Who, in their wildest imagination, would think a video of a woman puking on her husband — three times — would increase the appeal of Internet Explorer 8? Or that a creepy, unbelievably diverse group of weirdos hosting a “Launch Party” would help sell Windows 7? We were close to puking ourselves.

Those are just a few examples of what you’re about to witness. Here, we round up a list of the 8 most God-awful, weird, and horrible-beyond-apprehension tech video ads we’ve ever seen. In Jay Leno fashion, we’ll run down the list in reverse order, from least offensive to most offensive, for the sake of your stomachs. Hang on tight.

[watch videos]

The Original Human TETRIS Performance by Guillaume Reymond

TETRIS played by real human-beings sitting in an auditorium: TETRIS is the 4th video performance of the GAME OVER Project, directed by the Swiss artist Guillaume REYMOND (NOTsoNOISY creative agency…

Avid Introduces Fast Track With Pro Tools Essential To Record On Mac Or PC

Avid has introduced M-Audio Fast Track with Pro Tools M-Powered Essential, a combination of hardware and software that delivers studio-quality features and tools for creating professional-sounding recordings right out of the box.

Building on the success of the M-Audio Fast Track USB, the best-selling recording interface in its category according to MI Sales Trak, the Fast Track with Pro Tools M-Powered Essential is the easiest way to record audio on a PC or Mac.

The Fast Track interface has been completely redesigned to provide improved usability and lend a sleek new look to any desktop.

Simply connect the unit to any computer via its USB 2.0 connection and use the upgraded preamps to capture any audio source in better than CD quality sound.

Users can record guitar and vocals at the same time, without any latency, and capture performances without the distraction of hearing delayed playback through headphone monitors.

Additionally, they can use the onboard 48-volt phantom power to connect professional condenser microphones and add studio quality sound to any project. [read]

Twitter Users Twice As Receptive To Advertising – Report

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)–People who use Twitter Inc. appear to be much more open to advertising than those who use other social media, a tendency that might pay off for investors in the micro-blogging service.

The finding, published in a report by Los Angeles-based research group Interpret LLC, provides a shot in the arm for the wildly popular micro-blogging service, which has so far been unable to make money.

The Interpret report, based on a survey of 9,200 Internet users, found Twitter users are twice as likely to review or rate products online (24% vs. 12%), visit company profiles (20% vs. 11%) and click on advertisements or sponsors (20% vs. 9%) as those who only belong to traditional social networking Web sites like Facebook Inc. and News Corp.-owned (NWS) MySpace. News Corp. owns Dow Jones, publisher of this newswire.

The report comes as San Francisco-based Twitter on Friday announced it had closed a “significant round of funding,” which The Wall Street Journal said a day earlier could top $100 million, valuing the fast-growing Internet-messaging company at about $1 billion and giving it more time to figure out its business model.

Interpret said the data suggest that Twitter users uniquely demonstrate higher engagement with brands.

“Twitter has gone from digerati fad to industry force,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at Interpret, in the report. “Vendors ignoring Twitter users along with their reach and influence do so at their own peril.”

The micro-blogging service, which lets people broadcast short text messages to anyone who wants to read them, has grown from about 4 million unique visitors in August 2008 to almost 55 million unique visitors world-wide one year later, according to comScore Inc.

But Twitter, which has attracted interest from Internet titans like Google Inc. (GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and faces competition from social networks like Facebook, has thus far failed to explain how it might make money. [read]

USB 3.0 may finally kill Firewire.

Coming out next year, USB 3.0 promises blazing speeds. The Universal Serial Bus changed everything. No more interrupt requests or configuration issues. It’s just plug and play. USB 1.1 was fairly slow. USB 2.0 which is much faster, to the point that video has used it. But now, USB 3.0 is on the way which will provide provide 4.8 GB of data per second! That’s FAST. Some boards will ship by the end of the year, but mostly by next Spring. This will probably put the final nail in firewire’s coffin, though. Source: Leo Laporte

Not sure about this.  One of the things that Firewire still can do which USB can’t – daisy-chaining drives.  NICE FEATURE. Time will tell.  Apple backtracked and are now offering Firewire on their MacBooks.

At Tony Bennett's $78M school, arts education trumps fame

NEW YORK — Tony Bennett is stuck in one of those trademark traffic jams that afflict midtown Manhattan most mornings, but the gridlock barely registers. It just gives him more time to talk about his new school, his childhood in Queens and, of course, music.

As the car crawls over the Queensboro Bridge, the singer whose career is well into its seventh decade attributes his longevity to one thing: “I had good training.”

At 83, Bennett has become an unlikely but eloquent advocate for public schools in general and arts education specifically. And he has put his money — and his prodigious Rolodex — where his mouth is.

On Monday, his advocacy gets its most visible reward yet as the new, $78 million Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (FSSA) opens in a dazzling permanent home in Astoria, Queens, just blocks from Bennett’s boyhood home. Classes started there Sept. 9, but a ribbon-cutting and celebrity gala will serve as the school’s coming-out of sorts.

Among New York City’s newest public schools and one of its few audition-only arts high schools, FSSA has actually been operating since 2001, mostly in borrowed space in other schools. But its founders, Bennett and his wife, Susan Benedetto, and students and staff wanted a bigger, brighter, more comfortable space. [read]

At Tony Bennett's $78M school, arts education trumps fame

NEW YORK — Tony Bennett is stuck in one of those trademark traffic jams that afflict midtown Manhattan most mornings, but the gridlock barely registers. It just gives him more time to talk about his new school, his childhood in Queens and, of course, music.

As the car crawls over the Queensboro Bridge, the singer whose career is well into its seventh decade attributes his longevity to one thing: “I had good training.”

At 83, Bennett has become an unlikely but eloquent advocate for public schools in general and arts education specifically. And he has put his money — and his prodigious Rolodex — where his mouth is.

On Monday, his advocacy gets its most visible reward yet as the new, $78 million Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (FSSA) opens in a dazzling permanent home in Astoria, Queens, just blocks from Bennett’s boyhood home. Classes started there Sept. 9, but a ribbon-cutting and celebrity gala will serve as the school’s coming-out of sorts.

Among New York City’s newest public schools and one of its few audition-only arts high schools, FSSA has actually been operating since 2001, mostly in borrowed space in other schools. But its founders, Bennett and his wife, Susan Benedetto, and students and staff wanted a bigger, brighter, more comfortable space. [read]

At Tony Bennett’s $78M school, arts education trumps fame

NEW YORK — Tony Bennett is stuck in one of those trademark traffic jams that afflict midtown Manhattan most mornings, but the gridlock barely registers. It just gives him more time to talk about his new school, his childhood in Queens and, of course, music.

As the car crawls over the Queensboro Bridge, the singer whose career is well into its seventh decade attributes his longevity to one thing: “I had good training.”

At 83, Bennett has become an unlikely but eloquent advocate for public schools in general and arts education specifically. And he has put his money — and his prodigious Rolodex — where his mouth is.

On Monday, his advocacy gets its most visible reward yet as the new, $78 million Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (FSSA) opens in a dazzling permanent home in Astoria, Queens, just blocks from Bennett’s boyhood home. Classes started there Sept. 9, but a ribbon-cutting and celebrity gala will serve as the school’s coming-out of sorts.

Among New York City’s newest public schools and one of its few audition-only arts high schools, FSSA has actually been operating since 2001, mostly in borrowed space in other schools. But its founders, Bennett and his wife, Susan Benedetto, and students and staff wanted a bigger, brighter, more comfortable space. [read]

Will AT&T’s Network Hold Up Under the MMS Strain?

Will the AT&T network collapse under the weight of photo-happy iPhone users sending MMS messages? That’s the crucial question behind today’s launch of picture messaging capability on the AT&T network, which has been dogged by criticism since the first iPhone launch. Despite the explanatory video offered up earlier this month by “Seth the Blogger Guy,” which outlined “preparing radio access controllers” and “calibrating base stations all over the country,” sending photos over the iPhone today may not go smoothly.

According to Karl Bode over at DSLReports, AT&T is justifiably nervous. Sources have told him that the carrier estimates traffic will be 40 percent higher on the network as AT&T users get the MMS capability they’ve long been denied. (For AT&T users without the iPhone, this means you, too!) But the network has to work, something Bode’s sources doubt: [read]

Cultural Wisdom: Seth Godin

It’s very easy to underrate the value of cultural wisdom, otherwise known as sophistication.

Walk into a doctor’s office and the paneling is wrong, the carpeting is wrong and it feels dated. Instant lack of trust.

Meet a salesperson in your office. She doesn’t shake hands, she’s fumbling with an old Filofax, she mispronounces Steve Jobs’ name and doesn’t make eye contact.

Visit a website for a vendor and it looks like one of those long-letter opportunity seeker type sites.

In each case, the reason you wrote someone off had nothing to do with their product and everything to do with their lack of cultural wisdom.

We place a high value on sophistication, because we’ve been trained to seek it out as a cue for what lies ahead. We figure that if someone is too clueless to understand our norms, they probably don’t understand how to make us a product or service that we’ll like.

This is even more interesting because different cultures have different norms, so there isn’t one right answer. It’s an ever changing, complex task. Cultural wisdom is important precisely because it’s difficult.

And yet… [read]