After reading Robert Scoble’s post about getting direct responses to certain queries on search engines, I finally felt compelled enough to write the guy and let him know that we (that’s Ask Jeeves) were the ones who really did a lot of that stuff before anyone. Now that MSN, Google and Yahoo are doing more of it, suddenly it gets the spotlight on his oft-read blog? No way. I guess this was really a job for our PR or marketing department, but what the hell. I can represent. Yo.
Scoble, who is an employee of MSN and writes a pretty superb blog, finally showed us a little love and recognized some of the neat stuff we’re up to. I wish he’d written more about other neat stuff we’re up to, but I’ll take it. Funny thing, too, I found out he’s an ex-employee of NEC, a company I used to work for.
While we’re on the subject of Jeeves, someone who claims to be an ex-employee of our company has come out swinging in the fight to save the Butler! This is actually quite funny. When I first read it, I wondered to myself if this was a PR stunt on our part to get some press or something, like that Subservient Chicken thing. Oh, how I loved that damn chicken! You can tell it to do almost anything! Anyway, I think the Save Jeeves thing is actually legit. Some of the comments in there are pretty hilarious, too. For what it’s worth, I’m in complete support of axing the Butler and have been for quite some time.
I do think we should have some kind of public ceremony where we do some severe damage to his likeness. It would be funny. We could set up Jeeves as a hockey goalie and I could just fire slapshots at his head. We could light him on fire and sit around him and make smores or just roast marshmellows. Our own Burning Man. We could do all sorts of things. And you know what? People would watch that shit! People want to see crazy stuff.
Example: don’t ask me why, but one day a friend of mine and I drove around in my car, an old 1965 Ford Galaxie which looked like this but it was blue. Anyway, we drove around with a lifesize, rubber likeness of a dead & bloated Elvis Presley and we took him on a photo shoot. I kid you not. I have dozens upon dozens of pictures of dead Elvis in positively ridiculous places. Oh, the looks we got! Taking him through the tollbooth on the Mass Turnpike was something to remember. I can’t recall laughing much harder than I did on that day. I need to find those pics and post them to Flickr. I’ll do that soon.
So my point: people would love to see Jeeves get his ass kicked when we get around to changing the name.
It’s a good thing that Apple isn’t actually announcing a video IPod. I mean, seriously, does anyone have to have an IPod that plays video? On that small screen? Even if they made it a little larger, I’m not sure. Am I missing something there? I can totally see the whole convergence of TV and the internet. I mean, that is coming faster than you think it is (you’ll see neat stuff soon from a company called Brightcove), but I’m just not getting the video IPod thing. Not that it’s happening anyway.
New Franz Ferdinand is out, along with a new Nada Surf record. I’ve taken spins through both, but the jury is still out – too early. Report soon. MP3 of the week back next week, too.