8 July 2005

When Hi-Tech Goes Page Three!

So I am at this party to celebrate 10 years of Java, not the island but the computer language that we were told now powers 708 million mobile handsets across the world. Sun Microsystems is facing the same challenge that Intel did when its chips got hidden inside computers branded by others...which resulted in the "Intel Inside" slogan...
Sun, thus, had us covered not with lines of gobbledygook code but in a happening-happening sort of do....so you had anorexic models toting the Java coffee-cup logo on their foreheads, with various outfits that passed for high-tech, and one, lone, male model looking lost as he struck a stud pose while holding a handset and stylo, or unfurling a laptop from his chest, as if it was a lepcha baby from up in the Himalayas.
Some tech CEOs, radio jockeys, and corporate presentations-meets-fashionshow stuff completed the line-up.
Of course, it is tough for the media to do a real story on this stuff, unless you are a Page 3 type just happy to drop the names and describe the hype. As a strategy, it is worth writing about...this is a bit like Sun trying to be more like its bete-noire, Microsoft.
The philosophical question still remains: Can a thermal vest pretend to be a T-shirt?

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