Sony Baloney

AdFreak tips us off to another fake blog, All I Want For Xmas is a PSP, which is actually a marketing site registered to Zipatoni, a self-described "consumer activation agency" whose aim is to "move consumers into action and get them to interact with brands."

The introduction to the fake blog reads, "i (charlie) have a psp. my friend jeremy does not. but he wants one this year for xmas. so we started clowning with sum not-so-subtle hints to j's parents that a psp would be teh perfect gift. we created this site to spread the luv to those like j who want a psp!"

Zipatoni's deceit was sniffed out quickly, though, so now instead of moving consumers into action, the blog instead is moving people to leave hundreds of nasty comments like these:

"Wow. Could you guys be any more blatant? Printing out a Sony PSP ad? Are you really counting on people to be that gullible. What an insult."
"Well done, Sony. You once again show the gaming populace you haven't actually got a clue."
"Oh, wow, a blog with YouTube rappity-rap-rap videos! Finally a corporation that speaks my language."
"Hey, Charlie, I'm taking a dump on a PSP I found right now. Do you want it?"
"Wow. So this is what my fellow business school graduates are doing on the internet. It makes me tired reading those sad attempts. I know Sony probably suggested it. But you can still simply say 'no' the next time someone suggests something inane."
"This is retarded. I'm insulted that this reflects how intelligent Sony's marketing department thinks I am. Good job turning consumers off your product."
"Boy are they wasting bandwidth! I always wondered what it was like throwing hundreds of dollars down a toilet constantly. Now I know!"
"Hey bro keep insulting the Sony fanbase by acting like illiterate gutter trash."
"Seriously, who signed off on this crap... take him out back and shoot him, this is the worst advertising I've ever seen. And good job registering this site in your company name, fool."
"Lip-synched 'metal,' and ultra-white 'rap' with allusions to pimps, intentional typos... I hope someone gets fired for this. And I'd imagine Zip is in danger of losing all its business. Who would trust them after something this poorly thought out?"

Even funnier, occasionally Zipatoni (acting as one of the fake bloggers) responds in this way:

"we be just tryin to represent u guys... regular playas just tryin to get their gaem on, but now u gotta do all be dis then... u guys are noubs, pwnd!!"
"You all is haters tymes 4. Dis is lee-git. Don't know why youse thinks this is a schill. Are site was registered through an external provider. We don't work for sony. And for all you dissin' my skillz I'm down for a one on one rap off or settling it street stylez if you feel me playa. Teh."

"Interacting with the brand", indeed...

I'm Really Fucked Now

(Image: iStockphoto)

If you've ever wondered how many different ways people have accidentally used to foul up their computers, Ontrack Data Recovery has come up with a list of this year's Top 10 Data Disasters. Mind you, these are only the ten worst out of who-knows-how-many more screw ups-- taken verbatim from Ontrack's web site-- all of which were eventually recovered. (Link via Nothing Toxic)

10) Employees of a global telecommunications company dropped a laptop computer while working from a helicopter in Monaco. Ontrack successfully retrieved vital files on the laptop and sent them through an FTP server for a meeting in Hong Kong the very next day.

9) On a flight from London to Warsaw, a passenger packed his laptop and toiletries in the same bag. Unfortunately, his shampoo leaked and flooded everything in the bag, including the laptop, causing the hard drive to fail. In order to recover all of the data, Ontrack engineers had to do some washing of their own – cleaning the hard drive and other components in order to get the drive functioning.

8) British comedian Dom Joly, presenter and co-creator of Trigger Happy TV, dropped his laptop, damaging a hard drive that held five thousand photos, six thousand songs, half a book he was writing and all of his old newspaper columns. Having read the tragic story in a newspaper column written by Mr. Joly, Ontrack contacted him and was able to recover everything.

6) A customer left an old banana on the top of his external hard drive which proceeded to seep its contents into the drive, ruining the circuitry. The drive would no longer run, but Ontrack was able to clean the drive and repair the circuit board so the drive would spin long enough to recover his data. The banana, however, could not be recovered.

5) It happens every year, but people continue to leave computers and hard drives in the path of moving vehicles. This year alone, Ontrack recovered from a laptop that was run over by a "people mover" at the airport, and several external hard drives stuffed in a backpack that was backed over by a truck.

4) A man reformatted his hard drive not once, not twice, but ten times before he realized there was some valuable information he needed recovered. Luckily for him, it only took Ontrack one try to recover the information.

1) Although the circumstances of the original data loss were unremarkable, the problem was intensified when the customer shipped his drive to Ontrack in a pair of dirty socks. The old socks didn’t provide the necessary protection during shipping and the resulting damage made the recovery more challenging than normal. Next time, he’ll stick with bubble wrap, but in the meantime, Ontrack successfully recovered his data too.

I can't quite figure out why anyone would use dirty socks to pack anything other than Darcy Tucker's dentures, but the banana I can sorta understand. I mean, you can't put bananas in the refrigerator, so where else are you gonna put them?