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Intel's Guerrilla Marketing, Second Life Mashup 88

Posted by kdawson from the live-from-NYC-and-SL dept.
AmadeoDonofrio writes, "Intel has lunched a unique guerrilla marketing campaign for their new dual-core processor. They asked world-renowned virtual builder Versu Richelieu to create a new masterpiece in the Second Life virtual landscape using their dual-core chip. What's really crazy is that they put her in a storefront window on 5th Avenue and 39th Street in New York City for 72 hours while she works. The web site is a mashup of technologies including side-by-side live video feeds from a web cam in the window, and her SL point-of-view. There's a Flickr slide show and her embedded Hipcast audio blog, and soon to come archives of the whole experience in 12-hour segments hosted by YouTube. Is Intel pushing their marketing to extremes by utilizing all these free online services to promote their product? Or is it good publicity for all parties involved?"
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Intel's Guerrilla Marketing, Second Life Mashup More

Intel's Guerrilla Marketing, Second Life Mashup

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  • The only people its good for is the ISPs.
    All that data being sent just so people can stare at some geezer working on a computer.

    Its like driving an SUV where a bike would do.

    Anyway, let me know when the live feed comes in.
    • Geezer? Nah.

      Agree with rest of points, da.
      • Actually, I fucked up even more, the live feed is already there on the first link (though its getting choppy already under the /.ing.

        Mind you, I've been here long enough that I don't even bother RTFA any more.
    • Hey, just because I drive a 13mpg sports car 1.5 miles to work everyday....
    • It seems like this is just a desperate stunt for the geeks at Intel who were wounded in their college years by the taunt that they were 'only engineers' and not 'artists'.

      But in the real world, NYC artists are absurd people with absolutely nothing that justifies their claim to be artists by any historical or cultural definition of the term. It is actually the engineers that are artists because they are taking raw physical materials, mixing them with organized pure intelligence, and forming t

  • I wish (Score:2, Insightful)

    by xylo36 ( 1000020 )
    that "mashup" could have been included a few more times. Then I would truly have a good idea of what technologies are being used.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tackhead ( 54550 )
      > that "mashup" could have been included a few more times. Then I would truly have a good idea of what technologies are being used.

      Tried that with the one involving the Cessna and the apartment building, and people looked at me like I was kinda weird.

  • Gorilla Marketing, or the Chewbacca Defense?

  • Hipcast? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Enoxice ( 993945 ) on Friday October 13, 2006 @03:23PM (#16429581) Journal
    This isn't entirely on topic, but I guess I'm just behind the times on techno-buzzwords.

    What in the hell is a hipcast? Is it a podcast under a different name to avoid apple's wrath?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by jandrese ( 485 )
      It's not a buzzword, it's just a product [hipcast.com].

      Man, all of this stuff in Secondlife is really cool, but I wish they'd improve their technology before we start seeing a lot more of this stuff. SL runs like a dog even on high end computers with fat broadband connections, and Lindon Labs has not shown any particular drive towards optimizing it in the year or so I've been toying with it.
      • Isn't that part of the point for Intel?

        "Look at this! Buy a computer built around our new faster chip and your Second Life experience won't be running so dog slow!"
  • I think I overdosed on Web 2.0 just from reading that summary.
  • Honest question... Can someone explain to me what it's doing that's got all this attention? It seems like a really advanced MUD or MOO to me...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Knara ( 9377 )

      It's a graphical MUSE/MUSH. It is pretty cool. Except apparently it's overrun by furries, which is a big downfall of the system.

      It gets a lot of hype probably because they've got a good marketing department. As slashdot says if you look for a new article too fast, "Nothing to see here."

      • That and it will allow money to flow out of its system as well as in. So if you "Strike it Rich" in the game, you can take those riches and leave.
        • That and it will allow money to flow out of its system as well as in. So if you "Strike it Rich" in the game, you can take those riches and leave.

          China has already proven that the same is true for World of Warcraft...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by miyako ( 632510 )
        There seem to be a lot of furries, more than one would think, on the net, and in the world in general. It seems very strange to me. Maybe it's some latent sort of ingrained attraction thing from back when our ancestors were still covered in fur?
      • I wouldn't say that SL is "overrun" by furries, although they are certainly more common than in real life... But they're not all that common. I probably see robots and other exotic avatars about as much.

        What there definitely are a LOT of in SL is women. Much more than 50% of the avatars are female, although I don't know how many of them are really women. And most of the shopping stores are oriented towards women's fashions. In many ways the game is designed to appeal more to women than men, so I would suspe

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mandos ( 8379 )
      I think you got it exactly with that summary. Like what, Legend of the Red Dragon, but no overarching fantasy plot, just user created content.

      I wonder if when we do discover new inhabitable planets, and a way of getting there, this is the sort of way that the infrastructure will be built.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by hc5duke ( 930493 )
      So... this is like an MMORPG without the gaming part...? MMORP? Time to shake my fist in the air and tell the damn kids (fyi I'm 25) to get off my proverbial lawn, because I just don't see the appeal of this.
      • I'm 43 and initially I was completely baffelled, so I looked at the Second Life web site. It appears to be exactly that, a MMORP, which I guess is like playing Sims Online.

        As for this "event"; it's just some cute marketing hype. Does anyone have a Second Life Tactical Nuclear Cruise Missle? That would really mess up Ms. Versu Richelieu's 72 hours.
      • Yup, them young whippersnappers are starting to confuse and enrage me again... Get off my lawn! (Or at least mow it and I'll give you a quarter and some fresh cookies.) Okay, so I'm only 29, but I'm starting to feel ancient.

        I play a little WoW from time to time (10-15 hours a month, tops), but I just don't see the appeal of any MMOxx without the gaming part.
      • It's a MMORPG... you don't remove the 'game' part. Game means different things to different people, in regards to RPGs. It can mean the competitive thing of overcoming challenings... this mode of play is very nicely represented either on the computer or in board games. It can be a 'shared dream' sort of thing where people get together for a constructed fictional construct... world building, or fictional characters, etc. Or it could be a shared story, like simultaniously watching and writing a movie or TV sh

  • Inevitable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hijacked Public ( 999535 ) on Friday October 13, 2006 @03:29PM (#16429663)
    This is really only 'extreme' because it is being done on the internet via a relatively new service. Anyone who built a free video sharing service without realizing that it might one day be used to deliver advertising hasn't been paying attention.

    For as long as there have been people with stuff to sell they have co-opted anything they could get their hands on to advertise. Roadside signs, barns, telephone poles, bumpers, hats, t-shirts, asses, airplanes flying around dragging banners behind them. Hot air baloons, can coolers, junk mail. Sneaky anthropomorphic dogs. Sheep with numbers painted on their sides. Phone calls to your house. Etc, etc.

    Advertising, even slick inline contextual advertising, has been around for a long long time. While that may not mean it is a good thing, pretending that it is new or that one specific company has 'gone too far' misses the big picture.

  • Second Life isn't multithreaded (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jafuser ( 112236 ) on Friday October 13, 2006 @03:31PM (#16429687)
    This might actually have made some sort of sense if Second Life were capable of utilizing a multi-core system.

    Too bad it isn't.

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by Cloud K ( 125581 )
      I thought that was quite ironic too. Not only is SL only single threaded, it's *extremely slow* on dual core systems. If you go into the secondlife.exe service in the task manager and set the CPU affinity to just 1 core, the framerate rockets (it about triples on mine). Try it in windowed mode.

      Del Dayton

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They asked world-renowned virtual builder Versu Richelieu

      Which "world" is this?

    • She's running Photoshop and other background applications as well.
  • I can hardly wait until the feed goes down for half a day, because someone's initiated another Grey Goo attack on the grid.

  • I think what we all want to know is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by markov_chain ( 202465 ) on Friday October 13, 2006 @03:33PM (#16429721)
    Does anyone have any pictures of this broad? Is the hot?

  • Rise of the Idiots (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Arrgghh, my brain hurts - the summary sounds like an episode of Nathan Barley ...

    http://www.trashbat.co.ck/ [trashbat.co.ck]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Barley [wikipedia.org]
  • SL is a single threaded app, meaning it won't make use of a dual-core processor. So, really there was no benefit to the designer from dual-core, compared with a single core CPU.
    • You get the benefit of haveing all the os threading be done on the other core so even single threaded apps will see a benefit next to a single core system at the same speed.

      • You get the benefit of haveing all the os threading be done on the other core so even single threaded apps will see a benefit next to a single core system at the same speed.

        While this is a popular belief, it's not really applicable. The OS is doing just about nothing while you're playing a game and the 0.1% speedup you might have gotten from this will likely evaporate due to the (minimal) SMP overhead.

        Now, if you were running a dedicated game server and playing said game on the same machine at the same

        • That may change with vista.
          Even with xp you also have to add your anit-spy app, your Anit-virus apps and so on. Game who say that they don't run that stuff when they are gameing are just asking for it.
          • Or they are doing the sane thing and run their Windows box behind a hardware firewall or, even better, NAT router. Really, NAT is great for securing a Windows box - at least as long as you know what you're doing and don't forward the range 1-65536 to your IP...
  • She looks stressed...heh...
  • ...including Slashdot. Makes me wonder if the poster received free Intel hardware.
  • Guerrilla Marketing? Forget that! Let's start with "regular" marketing. Anyone else find that Intel Core 2 Duo TV commercial with the dancing posers annoying and pretentious? Just watching it makes me want to buy something else. Sigh, perhaps it's just me.

    "Barista? I'll have 2 non-fat, half-caf low-foam, cinnamon-apple Core double-shot Duo lattes please. And a muffin."

    • I wouldn't really call them posers, considering that my own dancing is reminiscent of Elaine from Seinfeld
  • Haha, 4:50 NYC time and she's already gone...

    Off to the second life pub

  • So what if Intel is making broad use of free publicity? Companies have been doing this for decades. If YouTube and other companies don't like being use for blatent publicity by third party companies they should adjust their business model and terms of service accordingly.

    Either that, or wait for the advertisement to gain momentum and replace it with their own advertising that calls out the offending company. Imagine having your thought-out advertising plan to promote Intel Core 2 that links into YouTube sud
  • What's really crazy is that they put her in a storefront window on 5th Avenue and 39th Street in New York City for 72 hours while she works.

    That's a lot nicer working environment than some of the dark hell holes that I worked in as a professional game tester for six years.
  • I've notice a disturbing trend, of "games" news that really isn't about games, but about people using a game like VR (in that it's a virtual world) style system to work. This doesn't mean it's a "games article" and as such I wonder what use is it for it to be placed under "games".

    There's no goals in Second Life, and what goals there are can be achieved by legitimently throwing more real money at it so you have more money. There's entertainment value, but everything has entertainment value. So is it reall
    • It's a game in the same vein that the MOOs and MUSHes of old were games. No real goal, no way to "win" per se, but things could be built in-game and socializing was the order of the day. Think "role play" in the truer sense of the word.

      So, is SL a game? Yes. Does it require a heck of a lot more work to have fun than most "modern" games? Yes. Some folks like it, some don't; it shouldn't be "disturbing".
  • Since when is taking advantage of a free resource considered extreme? I thought that was basic human nature.

  • Injured by buzzword shrapnel (Score:5, Funny)

    by kahei ( 466208 ) on Friday October 13, 2006 @04:24PM (#16430417) Homepage
    Guys, guys! I'm talking to you, guys, the Web 2.0 guys over in the corner there huddled round your 5th generation mobile phone. Yes, that means you, with the blond goatee!

    Okay, now I have your attention, I have instructions for you. Yes, you _do_ have to obey. Otherwise I'll take away your black iPods and send your girlfriends back to Japan. Yes, scary huh?

    Now: STOP USING THE TERM 'MASHUP'. If you _must_ use it, use it in its original (musical) sense. On NO account use it again and again and again just to mean 'broadcasting substandard content from a stupid location'.

    Okay, did you all get that? Good. Now go away somewhere and spend your parent's money. Bye! Yeah, I love you too!

    Twits.


    • Relax dude, or you'll spill your grande latte on your macbook pro.

      I can't believe 'mashup' has become a term now under custody battle between those "who used it first" and clueless "twits".

      There should be a rule somewhere that prevents people claiming rights to the etymology or definition of a word until at least five presidential elections have elapsed. 20 years seems about the right cooling off period to argue about such faux-culture nonsense.

    • Isn't Mashup more of a caribbean type slang? Or you wouldn't know that since you've never left the states.
  • So Intel is paying Second Life almost nothing to own property in it, and making megabucks off it. I don't see how that is news. I can see how "Ooo, Guerilla marketing! Second Life!" would get some marketing fag's panties all wet, but I do not like advertising, or fags, so what the hell is that sh!t doing on /.? This blurb is not news - there is nothing new game-wise, and you certainly cannot "play" the Intel site in Second Life. There are no new products announced here, just what has been already announced.
  • So where is this build, in Second Life? Anybody got an address?
    • According to Versu Richelieu's SL profile, "Please contact Rodica Millionsofus regarding access to 72 hour build sim."

      Basically, they're building it in a closed sim to stop the General Public turning up and somehow spoiling their Media Event. (shame, I was going to go buy an XCite just for the occasion!)

      It's in the same category as Sun's PR thingy of earlier in the week - not properly open for all SLers to visit/attend, therefore just using SL as a cute 3d vr platform buzzword on which to do "closed" things
  • ...new masterpiece in the Second Life virtual landscape ... storefront window on 5th Avenue and 39th Street in New York City ... there's a Flickr slide show and her embedded Hipcast audio blog, and soon ... YouTube.

    That's... a place I'm not going to be, and 1..2..3..4 services that it just so happens that I don't use. Hey, if it keeps this marketing crap out of my morning paper, I'm all for it.

    Three cheers for "guerilla marketing"!
  • Someone already took the time to do some Guerrilla trolling. [cataclysmal.org]
  • Unique as in :

    Just like Wells Fargo Bank, Toyota, Coca-Cola, CNEt, Sun Microsystems [com.com] and IBM [conversationblog.com], Intel are using Second Life to advertise their stuff.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by presearch ( 214913 ) *
      Wells Fargo pulled out in less than a month and moved to Active Worlds.
      I suppose that banks don't like excessive downtime in marketing campaigns.
      Linden Lab still hypes them as a customer for some reason.
  • Did anyone else read that Intel badge (top right of the page of TFL) as


    Intel
    Centrino Duo

    Dual-Core.
    No More


    ?

  • My faith in Slashdot is not completely lost when I seeth at the mawkishness of another buzzword riddled article, ready to post reply criticizing the overuse of the term "mashup", and in delight I find that most highly rated replies are in the exact same vein as I was planning to post. SWEET!

    LS

  • "Intel has lunched a unique guerrilla marketing campaign for their new dual-core processor."


    I really wish I could be at that luncheon

  • The SL grid had an unscheduled shutdown at about 6:15AM (Pacific) this morning [secondlife.com], after the grid "Gods" as they call themselves gave only a 10 second warning that it was kicking everyone off. This did not allow time for people to take up their projects back to their inventory, save their scripts, or even finish a conversation.

    As of this writing, it has been down six hours, but apparently the person in this marketing promo was admitted back into the closed grid, while a few thousand residents are all shut out
  • If it is, well, goddammit, I want no fucking part of it. Let them cyber-yiff one another freely over there but PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF BOB THE DIVINE DRILLING EQUIPMENT SALESMAN keep this marketing garbage OUT OF MY EYES!

    kthxubye.
  • Renowned by who?

    Perhaps their world is just 'second life'

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