The restaurant, Ra Sushi, has quite good food. But don’t plan on holding any conversations over dinner, since they play loud, driving music with the bass turned up to 11.
Tag: advertising
Flash Sighting? Opera: The Fastest Browser Alive!
Opera Software has just released a new beta version of the desktop web browser, Opera 9.50 beta 2. The splash page makes me think of something a bit different, though:
Opera 9.5 beta
Speed, security, and performance matter.Now, we’ve made the fastest browser in the world even faster. Opera’s new beta is quicker to start, faster at loading Web pages and better at running your favorite Web applications.
Hmm, a red and yellow blur, zooming across the view? And an emphasis on speed? That reminds me a bit of this guy:
Opera has long promoted itself on its speed, and it has used a super-hero theme in its advertising before. The vaguely Superman-like* “Opera Man” was used heavily in advertising Opera 8, despite being ridiculed by most of the browser’s user community.
So why not a subtle reference to the Flash?
*Blue costume + red cape. Hey, if a blue shirt and red jacket work for Clark on Smallville, you know the color scheme has become iconic.
Jumping the Gun
Today’s “Super Tuesday,” on which a whole bunch of states hold their primary elections. We still have have Democrats running against other Democrats and Republicans running against other Republicans, hoping to get their parties’ nominations for this fall’s Presidential election.
So it was weird last night to see an ad for Republican Mitt Romney contrasting himself against Democrat Hillary Clinton. Unless he’s changed party affiliation, he isn’t running against her. We don’t know if he ever will run against her. The Republican party hasn’t opted into California’s open primary system, so only registered Republicans are eligible to vote for Romney today, and they’re not likely to have considered voting for Clinton in the first place.
So who the heck was the ad aimed at?
Keep in mind that I don’t watch much TV, so this sort of thing might have been going on for a while, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Priorities: Caffeine!
The new shopping center, The District (built on a corner of the former MCAS Tustin base), has an ad campaign with the slogan, “A million reasons why.” Each poster shows someone posing with a random number and something that can be found, done, or resolved by going there.
Here’s a guy who has his priorities straight. They’ve got Peet’s, Seattle’s Best Coffee, there’s a coffee bar in the Whole Foods, and who knows how many more restaurants that serve it.
Of course, if he wanted more choices, he’d be better off going to the Irvine Spectrum. They’ve got a Coffee Bean, a Kelly’s, 2 Starbucks (and a third on the way), and a Nordstrom Espresso Bar. And once upon a time, they had a Diedrich…
Speaking of Diedrich, the one on Culver and Barranca is still around at least through next summer. I haven’t been by the one near UCI lately, but I seem to recall hearing October, so it may not be long for this world.
Hmm, you know what? That poster lists a lot of caffeine sources, but it doesn’t say anything about coffee. With luck they won’t be too confused if you just order a coffee, as in this strip from Real Life Comics. 😀
Why web ads should not have audio
A few minutes ago, I was looking at the latest Stardust Photo Gallery [dead link] (nicely pointed out by Neil Gaiman himself). To save time hitting back repeatedly, I just opened a bunch of the thumbnails in tabs.
Audio started playing, “Congratulations! You’ve been selected for…” Then a second round started in, “Congratulations! You’ve been sel…” A third round of the same ad had started, all of them overlapping, by the time I closed the window.
It’s 2007. People multitask. All modern web browsers have tabs available, not just the alternative ones. The time when you could assume you had the user’s undivided attention is long gone.
Note that I can’t tell you what the ad was for. I don’t know which tabs were playing it, so I didn’t even see the visual portion. It accomplished absolutely nothing that an advertisement is supposed to do—unless you want ads to drive people away from your site.
Oh, yeah, before I forget: Stardust!
