Hewlett-Packard's new back-to-school campaign, dubbed Declare Yourself with HP, isn't your typical laptop sales promotion. It probably could be used instead as a case study of how members of Generation Y tend to gravitate toward products that inflate their egos.
The online campaign, which rolled out this week in partnership with Viacom's MTV Networks, enables users to "declare" their goals with one-line summaries. HP is "hoping that this promotion will help (students) set obtainable goals that will help further personal growth."
Obtainable goals, eh? Let's check out some of the goals my generation has declared: "I will meet the Jonas Brothers," "I will eat more cheese," and "I will be on the red carpet."
Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.
(Credit: Screenshot by Sharon Vaknin/CNET)With its large presence on the Internet, Generation Y has changed the way consumer companies like HP market their products. Even domain names have seen a change: YouTube, MySpace. Apple, too, has caught on to Gen Y's "me, me, me" trait, naming its digital-music player the iPod and rebranding its .Mac service MobileMe.
But back to the HP campaign. After users publish their goal, they can browse through the declarations of others and give them a thumbs-up approval rating.
Sound familiar? The concept of posting one's thoughts and receiving positive feedback isn't anything new. The Facebook feed works in a very similar way, giving users the option to show that they "like" their friends' status updates.
To be fair, let's cut the Gen Ys some slack--there are many declarations on the HP site that relate to volunteering, caring for others, and being a better person. However, it's the declarations like "I will destroy the competition" and "I will become famous before 2012" that leave me feeling pessimistic about the millennials' future.
(Credit:
Beatles: Rock Band)
Beatles lovers will soon be able to feel what it's like to sing and play with the Fab Four in the interactive game The Beatles: Rock Band. But what famous Beatles tunes will be featured on the disc?
Rock Band makers MTV Games and Harmonix revealed 19 more songs Tuesday, bringing the total of known tracks to 44 and leaving the final tune a mystery.
The Beatles: Rock Band lets players sing, strum the guitar or bass, or hit the drums to play with John, Paul, George, and Ringo as they tour the world. Players can join in with the Beatles, starting from their early days in tiny Liverpool clubs to their final performance on the rooftop at their Apple recording studio.
The game's origins stem from a conversation between Dhani Harrison, son of the late George Harrison, and MTV President Van Toffler. Harrison eventually took the idea to the Beatles' Apple Corps and also sold the concept to Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and Yoko Ono.
Though part of the Rock Band franchise, the Beatles game was designed from the ground up with new graphics, menus, and interfaces.
Beatles: Rock Band is set to hit stores on September 9 for Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, and the Nintendo Wii. The software alone sells for $59.99. The Premium bundle sells for $249.99 and comes with all the Rock Band equipment, including Beatles-branded drums, microphone, and mic stand.
CNET News Poll
The 44 songs in the game so far are:
A Hard Day's Night
And Your Bird Can Sing
Back In The U.S.S.R.
Birthday
Boys
Can't Buy Me Love
Come Together
Day Tripper
Dear Prudence
Dig A Pony
Do You Want To Know A Secret
Don't Let Me Down
Drive My Car
Eight Days A Week
Get Back
Getting Better
Good Morning Good Morning
Hello Goodbye
Helter Skelter
Here Comes The Sun
Hey Bulldog
I Am The Walrus
I Feel Fine
I Me Mine
I Saw Her Standing There
I Wanna Be Your Man
I Want to Hold Your Hand
I Want You (She's So Heavy)
I'm Looking Through You
I've Got A Feeling
If I Needed Someone
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Octopus's Garden
Paperback Writer
Revolution
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Something
Taxman
Ticket To Ride
Twist And Shout
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
With a Little Help from My Friends
Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows
Yellow Submarine
If you're an independent musician looking for as many ways to sell and promote your music as possible, and you or a friend has some experience with software development, you'll want to check out the upcoming Rock Band Network, for which Harmonix and MTV Games plan to begin beta testing in late August.
It's more complicated than posting a song to iTunes, but you'll get placement on a more exclusive platform.
(Credit: MTV Games)To program songs for the game, you or your developer friend first needs a membership to Microsoft's XNA Creators' Club, which was launched a couple years ago to let independent developers create casual games to sell through the Xbox Live Marketplace; a membership costs $49.99 for four months or $99.99 for a year.
You'll then be able to get free tools and instructions from the Rock Band Creators Web site to convert your master recordings to the MIDI charts used by the game. Next, you'll have to submit your song for other creators to critique and finally to MTV Games for approval.
Once approved, the song will enter the Rock Band Network. All songs will debut exclusively for 30 days on the Xbox 360, and the Rock Band team will pick stand-out songs to make available to the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles.
Under the network terms, musicians can charge between 50 cents and $3 per song, and they will keep a 30 percent cut of all sales. That may seem small, compared with the 70 percent cut musicians get for selling their songs on iTunes, which requires much less work, but Rock Band is a much more exclusive platform--you're much more likely to stand out here than among the bazillion songs available through Apple's music store.
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From the creators of "Drawn Together" comes "DJ & The Fro," a new daily, animated show on MTV. The 404 speaks to the creators, Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser, about the show and talk about how Michael Jackson's death almost ruined the shows' first few episodes.
(Credit:
MTV Networks)
The show creators call it a rip-off of "Beavis and Butthead" for the viral video generation. DJ and the Fro are two twenty-somethings, who spend most of their day watching viral videos and commenting on them. Sounds eerily similar to what The 404 guys do all day long. Anyway, the guys tell us about how the show came into being and let us know that a "Drawn Together" straight-to-DVD movie is coming out as well!
"DJ & The Fro" reminds us a bit of "Tosh.0" on Comedy Central, which premiered just a few weeks ago. The 404 guys think we should have jumped on to this bandwagon a long time. This is what we do already for the show every day!
Anyway, hope you all enjoy the abbreviated show along with our Michael Jackson commentary. He will be missed. Spend your weekend listening to your favorite MJ jam and reminisce about the fond memories you had while karaoking to "Billie Jean."
EPISODE 371
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Our fantasy of a tiny set of plastic pocket-drums will have to wait till next year.
(Credit: Harmonix/MTV Games)Rock Band has gone portable, kind of: MTV Games, Harmonix and EA have officially shipped Rock Band Unplugged to stores, meaning you'll finally have a new UMD game for your dust-gathering PSP. Although the game won't go on sale until June 9, we thought we'd give you an idea of what to look forward to just in case you find someplace putting this on the shelves a little early.
With 41 tracks on disc and a full World Tour mode, the band creation and unlockable wardrobe/swag are everything you remember from the console versions. But what, you may ask, has been done about all those plastic drums, guitars, and whatnot? Does it come with fancy mini-instruments that interface with the PSP?
How can Rock Band be portable?... Read more
Here it is. It's the latest trailer for Batman: Arkham Asylum. The trailer is set to air Thursday night on MTV, but fortunately for us, Stephen Totilo, from MTV's Multiplayer, decided to post it early for everyone to drool over.
Eidos and developer Rocksteady Studios set expectations very high when the first trailer for "Batman: Arkham Asylum" debuted in November. The setting of Arkham Asylum combined with the dark tone of the story seemed to embody the feel of Batman's universe.
With Emmy Award-winning "Batman: The Animated Series" producer Paul Dini writing the game's story, and the voice-over stars Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill reprising their roles as Batman and the Joker from the series, respectively, all signs continue to indicate that "Batman: Arkham Asylum" is a game that Batman fans have been waiting a long, long time for.
This particular trailer starts off with a great Joker narration (voiced by Mark Hamill). Adding to Joker's dialogue is a focus on Batman's so-called Invisible Predator stealth combat techniques. After viewing the video, check out some of the screenshots of the game below.
(Source: Joystiq via MTV Multiplayer)
We knew the music of the Beatles was coming to the MTV video game Rock Band, but now we have a release date: September 9, 2009. That's when you'll be able to get The Beatles: Rock Band, a new edition of the game for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii consoles. You can start working on your bad "lonely hearts club band" puns now.
The game itself will retail for $59.99 in the U.S.; there will also be a $99.99 version that comes with Beatles-inspired guitar controllers, and a $249.99 "special edition" bundle. I'm guessing that one comes with a walrus.
The date is awfully cute, considering the Beatles' formally self-titled "White Album" contains that song called "Revolution 9," which consists largely of a repetition of the phrase "number nine, number nine, number nine." Conspiracy theorists say that if you play it backward it sounds like "turn me on, dead man" and is hence one of the clues that adds up to reveal that Paul McCartney died and was replaced by a lookalike early in the band's career.
But here's something else for conspiracy theorists of a different variety. September 9, 2009, happens to be a Wednesday in early September, and Apple has historically held iPod-related announcements on Tuesdays in early September. If you want to be mega-speculative, consider that there could be an announcement that week that in addition to Rock Band, the Beatles would finally be coming to iTunes. The band's catalog is currently not legally available for digital download.
There have been legal issues and general animosity for years between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps, the publisher of the Beatles' music. When record label EMI, which owns the rights to the Beatles catalog, inked a deal with Apple to make its catalog available on iTunes without DRM, buzz circulated that the Beatles could be added to the digital-media emporium soon. It's been almost two years, and no Fab Four yet. Late last year, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney said that talks had stalled. There's no real gauge on where things stand now.
But I guess you could just try playing a Steve Jobs keynote backward and see what hidden messages surface.
We've heard about songs getting released on iLike, Imeem, MySpace, and a whole lot else. But Rock Band?
(Credit:
MTV/Harmonix)
That's on the way, according to Microsoft's press conference at the E3 Expo. The New York Times reported that that it could be on the way as rumors swirled that Rock Band 2, the second iteration of the music video game from MTV, would include a track called "Shacklers' Revenge" from legendary hard-rock group Guns N' Roses.
Now it's been confirmed. The long-delayed new Guns N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, is on the way too, and the band has chosen the game, which hits stores this fall, as the venue to release its new single.
The Times points out that games like Rock Band, and Activision Blizzard's rival Guitar Hero, have been a bright spot in an otherwise dismal atmosphere for the music business. They're more profitable for record labels than digital downloads from places like iTunes, because a Rock Band track typically costs more. Sometimes they sell more copies, too. Motley Crue's "Saints of Los Angeles" sold more than three times as many tracks on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace as a Rock Band song than it did in Apple's iTunes Store.
They're also a way for "old" bands to reach younger audiences, the Times noted. An executive for Anthem Records, which releases music for '70s prog-rock group Rush, said young people have started showing up for the band's concerts after hearing their music for the first time on Guitar Hero or Rock Band.
This post has been updated to confirm the song's release.
Beatles music may soon be strumming a new tune via air guitar video games, according to a report in the Financial Times.
Apple Corps and EMI, which respectively represent The Beatles' business interests and ownership of its master recordings, have reportedly been in discussions with video game publishers Activision and MTV Games.
Under a possible deal that could be worth several million dollars, users could put their air guitar to use while listening to The Beatles and playing Activision's Guitar Hero or MTV's Rock Band games, according to the report.
The move to push The Beatles' music onto a new stage via video games could occur within the coming weeks, the Financial Times reported. Such a move would mark a change in embracing technology for The Beatles' music, given that digital-use licenses for Beatles recordings are not yet available.
The Beatles representatives, as well as the game publishers, declined to confirm whether a deal is on the horizon.
(Credit:
MobileWhack)
MTV is continuing its march across Europe to get its logo on various continental-based gadgets. Its latest effort is a co-branded "MTV Edition" of Sony Ericsson's W760i Walkman phone.
It's the second MTV handset released on the European market, following one designed by Paris-based ModeLabs for France. Both are sliders, though the newest version at least tries a different design, as opposed to the rather lame logo on ModeLab's red 3G phone.
The Sony Ericsson version also features a GPS receiver, games, and an "enhanced music experience," according to MobileWhack, as well as a speaker that doubles as a protective case. That could come in handy if you run into some soccer hooligans on the Tube.
