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Alternate marketing slogans for Windows 7
Normally, I wouldn't do this. A source deep within Microsoft -- who just happened to owe me a favor -- passed along a list of new Windows marketing slogans which, for one reason or another, just didn't make the cut. After careful consideration and soul searching, I've decided to release them to the public.
Frankly, I think a few of them deserved more contemplation.
- Really, it's better this time. We swear.
- Because owning a Mac is just one step away from drinking lattes at a Green Party tweetup.
- Come on! It's not that complicated.
- We shower, and we don't wear Birkenstocks.
- We're still on liver number one.
- 7 is a lucky number, right?
- Still the choice among pimply teenaged gamers.
- More stable and easier to use than your last girlfriend.
- WIndows 7: because the Mayans say none of us will live to see the next version anyway.
- Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down.
Comments
36
Subscribe to commentsRocketboyAug 30th 2009 12:42PM
Wow, multiple fails in one...
Comedy fail.
Retort fail.
Figuring how to use the comment system on the blog you write for fail.
Realizing that almost EVER TIME you editorialize in a blog post, your readers tell you to stuff it fail.
Trying not to sound childish while blaming the other guy for being childish fail.
Let's see what schoolyard taunts you send me...
Someone who claims to be "Grant has served as Lead Blogger for Download Squad", your posts have been rather, well, lame.
Let's see what your latest articles have been, shall we?
Fugly Friday.. Wow. Point us to a website that's ugly. That's a tough job. The sort of thing you could spend a weekend banging out a few months of content, so you don't have to do anything for a while.
History of the hard drive, not bad, but again, the sort of article that you can write at anytime and post up when it looks like you're slacking.
An article about the plans for a gov't run data center which mis-represented the Representative's position, and approached the level of childish mocking due to it.
Removing the fugly friday posts, let's check out the frequency of the "Lead" blogger.
Aug 29th 2009
Jul 27th 2009 (The HD article)
Jul 24th 2009 (The datacenter debacle)
Jul 20th 2009 (This based on a news report that EVERYONE knew about and blogged about)
Jul 20th 2009
Jul 8th 2009
So, on a blog that has multiple posts a day during the work wee, you've done, 6 posts between July 8th and Aug 29th.
Grant RobertsonAug 30th 2009 9:08PM
Rocketboy, nearly every time we write a *post* some reader tells us to "stuff it". Here are just a few of the generic ways we've been told to stuff it before.
When we cover Linux or Apple, we're anti-Microsoft.
When we cover Microsoft, we're just shilling for the corporatist overlords who are trying to keep Richard Stallman, GNU and FOSS from succeeding.
When we cover web apps, we're not *Download* squad.
When we editorialize, we're not being a tech news blog.
When we're a tech news blog, we're just parroting press releases.
When we're critical of something, we're being unfair.
Most of these fall under a generic type of gripe that I like to call "The armchair editorial calendar". "You should cover X, not Y." "You spend too much time covering Y, why are you ignoring X?" Feedback is great, but if we knee-jerked and changed focus every time a reader yelled, "Bloggin', UR doin it Wrong!", we'd all have whiplash.
As for my lack of prolificacy, I think you -- and likely many other readers -- misunderstand my role a bit. Blogging is part of it. So is editing, planning, training bloggers, coordinating coverage of special events, holidays and releases, enforcing our style guide, recruiting, and a host of other minutiae that people rarely think about when they think "blogger". Sometimes I've written quite a bit in a month, other times I haven't. I'm definitely more silent lately than I should be. Not to offer excuses but, I do this job in addition to a more than full-time job as a consultant developer. With the rough economy and resulting staff reductions, I'm definitely being pressured for more time and attention at my day job. I think that's likely the case for a lot of people.
I really don't understand why you've decided right now, right here, in the middle of this particular comment thread is the time to go back, re-read my last two months of blog posts, subtract an entire series from the total, and offer your opinion on the quality and relevance of each one. Why jump in an already messy thread to kick me when I'm down?
RocketboyAug 30th 2009 10:37PM
"Rocketboy, nearly every time we write a *post* some reader tells us to "stuff it"."
Of course there's fanboys of all sorts.
The original complaint was just a fanboy of comedy that works.
"I really don't understand why you've decided right now, right here, in the middle of this particular comment thread is the time to go back, re-read my last two months of blog posts, subtract an entire series from the total, and offer your opinion on the quality and relevance of each one. "
Again, the victim. And it took oh, one click to see what you've posted in the past. And one page was 2 months worth of stuff for you. As the majority of them were of a 'phone it in' type of post, and I recall the one you posted about the data center as another "Grant's yammering at the mouth again" posts, it wasn't too hard, or too much of my time to talk about the quality/relevance of the few that I did.
So, maybe you're good at the editing thing. You might be a wiz with the style guide. Maybe that's what you should stick with.
Comedy, and responding to criticism, not so much.
saycheeseAug 30th 2009 10:47AM
Grant.. you are a disgrace to downloadsquad, and deserve to be reprimanded for your tasteless blog post. Your rebuttal to Kevin also comes across very immature. If you want to vent your bile against Microsoft or Windows, take it to your personal blog instead of hijacking DLS.
Nitwit. And you being obese doesn't have anything to do with it.
JiAug 30th 2009 1:11PM
Time to stop living in year 2k.
rndmnmeAug 30th 2009 1:21PM
Wow. At first I thought it was just not funny and pointless. Then I read the comments to find out it wasn't funny, pointless and Grant's a bit of a dick.
Ironically - hallmark Apple user traits.
It's been awhile since I've seen a 'professional' blogger jump to the low road quicker than the commentators.
Compared to other AOL blogs this one seems to do quite poorly. Perhaps it's time to replace some people on the masthead because this blog could be so much better given the genre. Grant seems to be eager to give AOL an excuse to do just that.
KevinAug 30th 2009 4:05PM
I agree rndmnme. I've also noticed the lack of comments on a lot of blog postings on DSquad, even though I do like this site for the most part and have visited it often for the past couple of years. For a while I felt bad and commented from time to time to "get things going", but now I realize I was just wasting my time since AOL chooses to keep around witless children like Grant around as their site's "lead" representative.
Speaking of, I also agree with what Rocketboy said. I'm surprised Grant is considered a "lead" anything on this site, considering the low quantity AND quality of his contributions. I would have figured a blogger like Jay Hathaway or Lee Mathews would have a title like that, if I ever paid attention to those things in the past.
My initial reply, Grant, was strictly material to your poorly written, witless blog post, which a lot of other people agree with me on as you can see. Your response to me was a knee-jerk, completely unwarranted, poor attempt at a personal attack that would make a junior high school kid proud.
And now you're trying to backtrack saying it was some sort of parody or satire of what you thought my post was all about. HOW you came to that conclusion, I don't know. Read my post again. I said, essentially and in very few words, that comedy should be kept to the professionals.
The internet is rich with comedy that is actually good. Entire posts that are strictly attempts at being funny, on a TECH site, are embarrassing to the writer, to the reader and to the site overall. I think I'm not the only one that shares this feeling. And I believe I'm not the only one who think Grant was way out of line, immature and irrational.
Simple put....grow up, Grant. You're representing a large company, whether your simplicity realizes that or not.
Grant RobertsonAug 30th 2009 8:11PM
Kevin, I haven't attempted to backtrack. I stand by what I wrote fully and completely. Backtracking would have been to apologize for my comment, even after you decided to up the ante and take your ad hominem from sort of personal, to blatant stereotyping of the "obese". I didn't do that, and I'm not going to.
I'm also not going to redact your comments, mine, or the comments of anyone else. Short of threats promising physical violence, or blatant statements of racism and homophobia, I've rarely if *ever* deleted any comment aside from spam in my two and a half years as lead for Download Squad. I just don't work that way. *We* just don't work that way.
Love me or hate me, find me funny, or find me totally useless. Call me fat, ugly, unprofessional, undeserving, unqualified, humorless. You aren't the first, nor will you be the last. Just please, stop trying to pretend you're the hero in this situation, or that your original comment was anything other than taking a shot at the blogger.
And, before you waste any more time firing emails off into space trying to figure out to whom you should complain, let me save you further trouble. I report to the Sr. Programming Manager for Download Squad, TUAW and the Latin blogs, Victor Agreda Jr. He's listed on the "About" page, as are the details on how to contact him. I just ask that you be a bit more civil than you've been with me.
RocketboyAug 30th 2009 8:48PM
"Just please, stop trying to pretend you're the hero in this situation"
Really?
You actually started out trying to be a hero, and now you sound like you're trying to get us to feel bad about you.
You seem to like ProTips, here's one you can use yourself.
ProTip: People WILL comment on your blog posts. You can either spend your days arguing with the commentators, or you can read what they wrote, and take it as feedback that you could possibly learn from.
So far, the Grant's an unfunny douche side of things seems to have more support then they Team Grant side.
Take that for what you will (which I know you will take it as nobody's nice to me because I'm popular, funny, good looking, and write for a blog).
KevinAug 30th 2009 8:52PM
Sorry Grant but, as anyone can plainly see, you're no judge of civility. You're an embarrassment to online journalism.
jackbauerAug 30th 2009 6:26PM
you gotta love the internets
RocketboyAug 30th 2009 7:17PM
It is serious business.
RandallrocksAug 30th 2009 7:01PM
...I just got Rick Roll'd AND I lost The Game. ihu too DLSquad
BiomechAug 30th 2009 9:33PM
Wow.
I can't believe all those comments were made by a writer for this blog.
That's just inexcusable. Insulting a reader who made a very correct comment about the un-funny nature of this post was one thing, but continuing in trying to win this rather one-sided argument (hint: the readers are right) is just digging a larger hole.
There was a much better way of handling the critisicm for this article: either don't make any childish comments or try and reply in a proffessional manner. It would project a much better image of yourself to us.
I'll be heading back to Engadget and Autoblog now...
KevinAug 30th 2009 10:05PM
@Biomech
Yeah, that's what's really astonishing. At first I seriously thought someone was either impersonating the writer or the writer their account hacked into in order to make the writer look bad. The fact that it was ACTUALLY the writer reacting like that was pretty surprising.
Now I think the reason is evidently clear why Engadget and Gizmodo are where they are and the fact that Download Squad has been mired in relative obscurity. Considering Grant Robertson has been DSquad's "lead" for a good chunk of time..you have to wonder what that says about the quality of his leadership.
I guess a 'journalist' that lashes out against a critical reader by calling his mother smelly is the kind of leader Weblogs Inc./AOL/Switched was looking for.
JiAug 30th 2009 11:45PM
It is true that it was an unprofessional response, when all that was being attacked was the content, but he turned that into a lot more with a defensive response, basically attacking himself.