It's not easy to push consumer products these days as discretionary spend dries up and advertising channels become ever fragmented. Understandable then when corporations are seduced into more edgier terrain by their creative agencies. And yet where trust and sustainability is at a premium, its hard to figure how BBDO convinced Pepsico to cross the line of stakeholder acceptability with a series of ads riffing on the theme of suicide. The ad campaign was created by BBDO for the German market to promote the 'one calorie' virtue of PepsiMax. The big idea here is that 'one is the loneliest number' and so a solitary PepsiMax calorie depiction is driven to various methods of suicide including shooting, hanging, poisoning, kamikaze pilotage, wrist slashing, overdose, immolation, acid burning and attaching an explosive device to the...

Wireless watchers may have noticed that Buffalo Technology disappeared from the router game some time back, due to a successful suit brought against it by an Australian company. But Buffalo may be getting back in the market, due to a new court decision that stayed the injunction against it selling products based on 802.11a and 802.11g Wi-Fi technology. CSIRO had been successful in arguing that Buffalo had violated its wireless patents when it sued in U.S. District Court, but that decision was challenged in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in September. Buffalo then asked the court to stay the injunction, and the company believes a trial will be held in the same court concerning the validity of...

Real Networks said today that it informed 130 employees, or 7.5 percent of its worldwide workforce, that their positions would be eliminated at the end of year.  In a post on the company's official blog, the company said the layoffs were part of a larger cost cutting plan that "is intended to bring expenses in line with current and prospective economic realities." The company said it still expects to report record revenue for the year but, to stay healthy, it needs to get costs in line with revenue expectations. Bill Hankes, vice president for Real Networks' Corporate Communications, wrote: The people who are losing their jobs will have time to transition their work through the end of the year.  No...

Reports that Seagate is having "random freeze" problems on its new 1.5 TB drives may be more serious than the company has admitted: 1 TB Seagate drives may be affected as well. Seagate on the case Seagate spokesman Mike Hall wrote: Seagate is investigating an issue where a small number of Barracuda 7200.11 (1.5TB SATA) hard drives randomly pause or hang for up to several seconds during certain write operations. This does not result in data loss nor does it impact the reliability of the drive but is an inconvenience to the user that we are working to resolve with an upgradeable firmware. Not great but OK if true. But then I got a note from a senior engineer at...

The curtain has been officially raised on Facebook Connect, a feature that links partner Web sites with the profiles of Facebook members.(Techmeme) Everyday, Facebook looks more and more like a platform instead of just another social networking site. Now, using Facebook Connect, members can share information about the things they're doing outside of Facebook with the friends they're connected to within Facebook. Example: if you write a restaurant review on Citysearch, which is partnered with Facebook, you can post that review to your FB profile. At the same time, FB friends will see your review on Citysearch. I know, I know. Privacy concerns. Yadda yadda yadda. But no one says you HAVE to do this. As members, you have options...

After today's Senate hearings the Detroit Big Three are nowhere nearer getting any federal aid than they were after their last visit. Whatever you may think of the automakers "plan" to change and become viable, there is no plan in the Senate itself that would lead to a bill that would be accepted by both parties and be signed by the current President. And, as I blogged here Tuesday, the price tag is rising. Now it could be as much as $34 billion in this first round of gimme. One economist testified today the ultimate bill to salvage the Big Three could run well over $75 billion. [poll=48] While there may be a Congressional vote next week on some sort...

Rumors are abound that soon you'll be seeing a 4GB iPhone on sale in Walmart stores for $99. Would this price drop devalue the iPhone and transform it into the RAZR?

Microsoft has hired former Yahoo executive Qi Lu to run its online services business. Lu will start on January 5 and report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, according to a CNET report. The company also announced that Brian McAndrews, the former CEO of Aquantive and a Microsoft advertising executive considered to be the leading internal candidate for the online job, would be leaving Microsoft. McAndrews will spend the next few months consulting Ballmer and Lu before departing. Lu, who worked at Yahoo for about a decade, was one of several executives who left the struggling Internet company earlier this year. At the time, he was vice-president of engineering, overseeing the company's search and e-commerce efforts. Prior to Yahoo, he...

Microsoft's search for a leader for its beleaguered Online Systems business is over and at least one of its top execs seemingly is none too happy with the results.

Following ElcomSoft's claim that despite the 256-bit encryption Acrobat 9 passwords are susceptible to more efficient brute forcing than Acrobat 8 passwords -- a claim that Adobe confirmed citing usability trade-offs and urged users to take advantage of its improved passphrase mechanisms -- ElcomSoft's Dmitry Sklyarov and Vladimir Katalov provide more insights on the implications of their discovery, Adobe's reaction, and what should end users and companies do in order to balance security with usability. Go through the Q&A. Q: Could you please elaborate a bit more on what exactly does the vulnerability allows you, or a potential malicious attacker to do? A: Passwords for PDF documents encrypted with AES-256 could be tested much faster than earlier. So, password that...