Opera to Put User's Face in Times Square 216
An anonymous reader writes "Opera has announced that they will be putting one lucky user's face up in Times Square during the New Year's Eve celebrations. The ABC SuperSign will display the winner of of Opera's most recent contest that only requires a submission of your picture and the reason why you should be chosen as their New Year's mascot. Nearly one million partygoers will witness the super sized fan tribute with the Opera browser logo on the 585 square foot (that's 54 square meters!) screen."
Screen Resolution (Score:4, Interesting)
By the way, does anyone know the screen resolution of this thing? I checked here [abcsupersign.com] but it didn't say much, and Wiki [wikipedia.org] says it's often very low resolution.
Re:The real question (Score:3, Interesting)
But there's no indication that this stunt is a joke.
Here's the resolution... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a total of 2,300,000 LEDS at 122x48 feet. That equates roughly to a resolution of 2418x951 give or take a few :)
http://religiousfreaks.com/ [religiousfreaks.com]For those of you who think this is innovative... (Score:1, Interesting)
Geez... some people need to get out more!
Re:Marketing Wars (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what you define as "cool", but I'd say that being smaller and faster [howtocreate.co.uk] than other browsers, and still having lots of useful features (that don't get in the way, by the way!) built in without the need to mess around with extensions is pretty darn cool.
Not to mention the new Opera Mini browser which works on just about all mobile phones and is available for free.
And of course the innovation which has helped shape the modern browser. The now standard search field and popup blocking? Opera came up with those. And countless other features we take for granted today.
what are the ftp details? (Score:3, Interesting)
Where is the IP address or the ftp domain?
Username and password for login?
I use Opera because (Score:2, Interesting)
- mouse gestures are included in the standard install
- there are slightly less frequent updates/bugfixes to download for the core program, and since I don't use any plugins (again, mouse gestures are standard), a LOT fewer plugin updates
- I think Firefox does not have "sessions" (a bunch of URLs and their associated histories), that I can load automatically at startup, or at any time thereafter. I use that a lot: when i launch Opera on my main pc, it automatically opens My Yahoo, my 2 main mail accounts, and Slashdot. For when I go shopping for computer parts, I have a session with my favorite shops and review sites...
- I like Opera's download manager better, but that's mainly aesthetics/ergonomics, not functionnality.
- I'm soooo used to typing F2 + "g dodo bird" when I want to google about the dodo.
Then again, I started using Opera almost as soon as it came out on Windows, 7+ years ago, so I'm set in my ways now (and I paid for it
Let me return the question: apart from the quite valid philosophical one of Free Software being A Good Thing (tm), is there any reason to switch to Firefox ? I have it installed on several PCs, but I see no reason to switch over to it.
The one thing I don't like about Opera is that, if a fatal problem ( OS crash, network crash, other App fatal crash - note that Opera almost never crashes - ) occurs when you JUST opened a page (before a single byte of it has been downloaded), Opera loses track of that page, and opens a blank page instead with no URL. All the other, fully- or partially-downloaded pages, automatically reload when you re-start Opera.
Best Reagrds, Olivier
Re:problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
So anyway, my question is this: does anyone know of any examples of such adverts (not just New Years, but stuff like the Super Bowl) that have ended up being good investments, besides beer and the like? In particular, companies related to technology in some way.
Re:and then what? they'll usurp firefox? (Score:5, Interesting)
But closer examination of their strategic intent indicates that they have bigger plans. Big jumbotron on New Year's Eve smells a lot like Monster.com buying commercial airtime during the superbowl. They are looking to kickstart an infective marketing campaign through a very prominent ad on a very prominent medium at a very prominent time.
Where is Opera compared with the other browsers? A niche player that serves as a focused differentiator (Read up on Classical Strategy (Michael Porter's five forces)). How can a niche player increase its market share? Only by becoming a differentiator or low cost leader . . . It's quite apparent that this marketing campaign is testing the waters to see how easy (or hard) it would be for Opera to shift gears.
If we consider the Boston consulting Group Matrix (BCG matrix), we can plot FireFox as a question mark (upper right quadrant) making moves to the upper left quadrant (star). It's logical to assume that Opera may be wondering if it can do the same thing . . . becuase it is likely that Opera currently hovers somewhere betweeb dog and star (between upper right and lower right quadrants).
In other words, Firefox has successfully broken Microsoft's stranglehold on the browser. Because customer's are now more likely to believe alternative browsers do possess adequate levels of Garvin's eight dimension of quality (Performance, Features, Conformance, Reliability, Durability, Serviceability, Aesthetics, and Perceived Quality), it is likely that this creates an opportune time for another browser to test the waters to see if it can go mainstream. It is quite apparent to the casual observer with elementary understanding of classical business strategy that this is a marketing stunt to gain data on the receptiveness of the marketplace.
To think otherwise is to have bought into Opera's marketing agenda, to not uderstand classical strategic theory (I have intentionally ignored resource based systemic, and processual frameworks for strategies because I do not have the data to comment), or to simply be naive.