On Friday, a colleague sent me a link to the
Silicon.com weekly round-up podcast, the recently-introduced audio supplement to the site's long-running
round-up feature.
(You can find the podcast in MP3 format here.)
The show itself is pretty amusing - a look at mainstream technology news with the same sort of flippant wit that pervades the Silicon.com site. They take a few stabs at the Windows Vista UK launch (apparently some stores stayed open overnight to facilitate a mostly-ignored midnight launch), an event that apparently featured the ultra-palatable sounds of British band The Feeling
(I hadn't heard of them until now. A sort of Supertramp-by-way-of-Coldplay mixture so blandly agreeable that it might have actually been written for tv commercials. Their myspace page loads one audio track and two music videos simultaneously upon opening, unleashing a mind-bending onslaught of dull, dull sounds.)
This leads the show's hosts to criticize "dodgy celebrity endorsement for technology products," a trend that includes the arrival of Apple's mac-vs-PC television ads in the UK, featuring British comedians Mitchell and Webb, who are apparently also famous. (Incidentally, those ads inspired this rant)
Finally, the hosts arrive at what they deem the most egregious of these "dodgy celebrity endorsements," and the real reason for my post, an appearance by reality-blurring character and actor Mr. T in a promotional video for Hitachi Data Systems.
They play audio clips from the video during the podcast, but the video is on YouTube, and it appears to be just a few weeks old.
I say "promotional video" because at three-and-a-half minutes, it's a little long for a traditional television spot. And its story is a little dense for a simple commercial. It's probably something else.
A group of IT zombies listens as a consultant insists "virtualization belongs in the network, never in the controller."
Fortunately, the T bursts through the wall, puts a stop to the consultant's jibber jabber, declares himself "the T in IT" and explains to the zombies that intelligence in the network is for suckas. Finally, he virtualizes them in a process that involves shooting lightning from his gold chain.
Pretty magical.
Highlight: "You know, you've got a lot of mouth. And I've got a lot of fist for your mouth."
The folks in the podcast seem to think it's pretty silly, which it is, and that it's some sort of embarrassing failure, which it isn't.
Sure, high-tech marketing jargon is even more jarring when it's being barked by B.A. Baracus. But it's also a hell of a lot more engaging. This was never meant to be a slick, polished production. It's meant to be funny, and it is.
I'm not sure if there's any standard by which the clip's success can be measured, as it was probably meant for internal use. But on YouTube, it has been viewed rougly 11,000 times in two weeks. And I definitely enjoyed myself.
Tags: hitachi data systems, mr. t
