Back in the day, Ken Segall
helped create Apple's Think Different campaign and
helped name the iMac. More recently he worked on JC Penney's
Yours Truly, commercial, before JCP ousted Ron Johnson as its CEO. He writes a sharp, entertaining blog called
Ken Segall's Observatory, where he offers opinions on advertising and design geekery.
His take on Ron Johnson's failure is interesting, as is
this post on what it takes for an advertisement to stand out in a crowd. He calls attention to surprisingly decent ads from
Microsoft and
Dell, critiques terrible ads (from
Microsoft and
JC Penney and even
Apple, and comments on
whether skeuomorphism has its advantages. He's also
fond of
discussing product names. Give this one a skip if advertising gives you hives, but for those of you who're interested in things like this Segall's blog is especially choice stuff.
posted by Rory Marinich
on May 3, 2013 -
26 comments
Michael Dell, with the help of a $2 billion dollar investment from Microsoft, is
taking Dell private. Dell was once a $100 billion company, but has fallen behind HP and Lenovo in marketshare in the post-PC era. This is the largest leveraged buyout since 2007.
[more inside]
posted by entropicamericana
on Feb 5, 2013 -
70 comments
"A Harvard MBA Pays Down $101K Of Debt." Two years after he graduated from Harvard with an MBA, Joe Mihalic, now manager of strategic alliances and business development at Dell, vowed to do “everything in my power–short of lying, cheating, and stealing–to pay down" his student loan debt, (then totaling 90K,) "in the next ten months.” After applying for a weekend delivery job, he also decided to chronicle the steps he was taking on a blog: "
No More Harvard Debt." First page of posts is
here. Penultimate post explains his process:
"Mission Accomplished." [more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 16, 2012 -
194 comments
A fine way to remove unwanted hair is to wrench it violently from your scalp. To facilitate this, try reading
Dell Hell (Part 2), in which a sad soul descends into madness at the virtual hands of Dell's customer service. It's a companion piece to a 2005 series of
Dell Hell deranged scribblings.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese
on Nov 9, 2010 -
100 comments
Window to Dell Decline: The "
Dell Model" became synonymous with efficiency, outsourcing and tight inventories, and was taught at the Harvard Business School and other top-notch management schools as a paragon of business smarts and outthinking the competition. For the last
seven years, the company has been plagued by serious problems, including misreading the desires of its customers, poor customer service, suspect product quality and improper accounting. Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit
And Reported In The NYTimes show Dell employees went out of their way to conceal serious hardware problems. "They were fixing bad computers with bad computers and were misleading customers at the same time..."
posted by Blake
on Jun 29, 2010 -
268 comments
Silicon Sweatshops is a five-part investigation of the supply chains that produce many of the world’s most popular technology products, from Apple iPhones, to Nokia cell phones, Dell keyboards and more. The series examines the scope of the problem, including its effects on workers from the Philippines, Taiwan and China. It also looks at a novel factory program that may be a blueprint for solving this perennial industry problem.
posted by Joe Beese
on Nov 19, 2009 -
9 comments
Dell have recently opened a new sub-site called "
Della" aimed at women in the most offensive way possible. Bereft of any technical information about their hardware, or indeed any information at all, the site instead includes "Tech Tips" about keeping track of your weight...
[more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen
on May 16, 2009 -
114 comments
Google turning to the dark side? From the article:
In short, Google and Dell have teamed up to install some software on Dell computers that borders on being spyware. I say spyware because it’s hard to figure out what it is and is even harder to remove. It also breaks all kinds of OpenDNS functionality. At the end, I’ll tell you what we’re doing about it.
posted by psmealey
on May 23, 2007 -
104 comments
Dude, You're Under Arrest Ben "Dell Dude" Curtis, was arrested in New York last night on charges of criminal possession of marijuana. Thanks to The Smoking Gun we now have something to make us laugh on a Monday.
posted by mkelley
on Feb 10, 2003 -
34 comments
Steven. Steven. Steven. I can't get enough of this incredibly-cute-but-I-don't-normally-go-for-such-obvious-twinkiness pitchperson for Dell Computers. Apparently, neither can anyone else, as Steven (or more properly,
actor Ben Curtis) has been Dell's most successful advertising, uh, tool ever. Why do we love him? His Bill'n'Ted vocabulary? His toothy grin? Whatever the reason, at least now I no longer have to glue myself to the television to
watch his latest commercial overandoverandoverand Dude, I'll get a Dell if you deliver it to me personally. So to speak. Is it wrong to love a fictional character so much? Is there a support group? Any other MeFites have a strange attraction going on here? I can't be the only one, can I?
posted by WolfDaddy
on Jul 9, 2002 -
66 comments
