Eye on Microsoft
About this Blog:
This is Shane O'Neill's blog about Microsoft's corporate strategy and its various software and services — the good, the bad and the ugly.
Windows 7 Themes: Your Desktop Will Now Be Sponsored by Coke
Microsoft is letting advertisers buy placement in Windows 7 desktop images, but users can choose if they want to be involved.
Just when you thought there was no place left on your PC for advertisers to hock their goods, Microsoft is now allowing businesses to sponsor your Windows 7 desktop images.
And you know what, it's kind of cool, at least compared to the maddening intrusiveness of ads on Web sites and in instant messaging programs.
Slideshow: Windows 7 in Pictures: The Coolest New Hardware
A Windows "theme" is a package that includes desktop background images, a screen saver, a window border color and a sound scheme. Some themes include desktop icons and mouse pointers.
One of the desktop images in the Porsche Windows 7 Theme.
The brands in the ad-sponsored Windows 7 Themes for your desktop are mostly hidden. You won't be seeing a giant Coca-Cola logo draped across your desktop, but rather a collection of weird and wacky images from Coke's "Happiness Factory" ad campaign with a Coke bottle placed in the background. The Porsche and Ferrari themes deliver lustrous images of their sports cars. It's pure eye candy for car lovers.
The ad-sponsored themes are part of a pilot program that Microsoft is calling the Windows Theme Experience and can be downloaded by Windows 7 users at Microsoft's Windows Personalization Gallery site.
[ For complete coverage on Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system -- including hands-on reviews, video tutorials and advice on enterprise rollouts -- see CIO.com's Windows 7 Bible. ]
The themes are available to Windows 7 users only if they want them. Microsoft is stressing that the ad-sponsored themes are opt-in, and will not be forced upon users.
The program will run on Windows 7 until Oct. 2010 and currently includes advertisers such as Coca-Cola, Ducati motorcycles, Infiniti, Porsche, Pepsi, Ferrari and Twentieth Century Fox. Microsoft itself is also participating, with themes for Bing and Zune.
I don't like to feel like I'm being tricked into peddling products. But I got over that and downloaded a few Windows 7 Themes. The Bing theme offers stunning photos from exotic locations (though the "Bing" logo in the lower right is a distraction). The Pepsi "Refresh Everything" images simply repeat everything and are lame. The Coca-Cola "Happiness Factory" images are much more fun, and the Porsche car images are a thing of beauty. If I can't buy a Porsche, at least I can gaze at their best wheels on my desktop.
What do you think of branded desktop themes in Windows 7? Offensive or cool? Any brands you'd like to see included?
Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.
Previous Post: Windows 7 Based on Mac Design: A Gaffe for the AgesNext Post: Microsoft's Ozzie on Smartphones: It's Not About the Apps
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
