Posts filed under 'Community Announcements'
ISoS today announced a major rebranding effort. Gone is the two capital letters, one small, one capital that have become the symbol of hillarity. In there place are the incredibly simple yet rediculously elegant four lower case letters, isos.
“To be honest, it just got annoying”, Blog contribulator Michael said. “I can’t type at the best of times, and Shift I, then S, let go of shift o, shift S was too much for my meager typing talents. From now on, isos will always be in lower cases, and anyone attmepting to use even a single capital letter will be flamed, laughed at or, if that fails, sued.”
Such extreme Brand fanatacism and protection is not uncommon in the world, with Nike recently settling out of court with 20 school teachers in and around Quebec whose ticks when marking school work bore a frightening resemblance to the Nike swoosh. The teachers promised to “…make two distinct lines in all future work, and never blend the lines in a swoosh like manner”. The teachers further agreed to promote Nike in their Classroom for an undisclosed length of time via posters.
But for a lightweight blog with minimal readership and even lighter social impact, such dedication and protection of a Brand is unusual, to say the least. When quized over the name change and fanatical Brand protection, Michael continued on his long winded rant.
“Look, we may not write serious stuff, we may not make any money Blogging, and we may not be sure if people are laughing with us or at us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take our Brand seriously now, does it?
“And we do take it seriously. Super serious. Wouldn’t crack a smile ata comedy festival serious. Extremism, look at me the wrong and I’ll hit you serious. Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me? I can’t see anyone else here, so you must be talking to me Taxi Driver back when De Niro was cool serious.
“And I mean really, how many ™ do we hold? At least two I can think of, and we couldn’t get one for the Trapezoidal Linking Matriflux™, which we defend like rabid dogs, and leave isos a sitting duck to be pinched by any spammer with two computers and an ISP, could we? I mean, it just wouldn’t be cricket.”
The simlarity of the isos name to the range of iXyz products available, such as the iPod, has also not gone unnoticed, with Apple insiders reportedly furious at isos. This resulted in a tirade of nonsensical wailings from Mr Motherwell.
“Oh come on, puuuuuuleeeeeaaaaaase, don’t get me started on the whole wanky “i” before every name stuff. That is soooo 2003. Besides, we aren’t iSos. No way, no how, not ever. We didn’t even consider it until I just brought it up with myself. Sure, I have an iPod, but I have had it since like forever, long before they sold out and went all mainstream and Intel loving. Besides, iSos wouldn’t solve the underlying problem that caused the Brand change in the first place; my inherently bad typing. Would it now?”
“So get off my back, alright? ISoS is now isos, end of story, move on, nothing to see here.”
October 22nd, 2005
Mary-Jane “White-hat” Jones-Jenkins and Bob “Black-Hat” Jones Announce Birth of Their Son: Jimmy “Greyhat” Jones-Jenkins-Jones.
After many years of dating, the birth of little Jimmy Jones-Jenkins-Jones, or Grey QuadJ as his parents call him, is the first birth of an SEO grey hat so far.
“With one black hat and one white hat parent, he really had no choice”, QuadJ’s Mother, Mary-Jane said.
But it almost didn’t happen. The classic cyber-tale of bad boy from the wrong C-class of the Internet meets good girl on a white list almost went terribly wrong, with many trying in vain to tear them apart.
“It was a long drawn out love affair”, Mary revealed to ISoS. “At first, I couldn’t get past the fact his hat was so black. Luckily, his heart isn’t.”
“Awwwww”, was the sickening reply of Bob upon hearing this. “Isn’t she the cutest? I may have a black hat, and I may own 50 Porn sites, but I have a big heart and plenty of love to give. I come home to Mary-Jane every night, and she is the cutest damn woman a spammer like me ever lucked out with. And thankfully, I get cheap Viagra online delivered free!”
Bob also openned up to ISoS about how they met online. “It was through a dating site, I am not ashamed to admit. I was running the numbers and noticed that profiles moved regularly, and I thought to myself, ‘If these sad caes can get a date, and stay offline for an average of 2.62 months, a sad, pathetic, lonely single guy living in my mum’s basement like me has a chance’.
“So I put up a profile, it was well funny, as it had like all these quotes from Star Trek Voyager like ‘Will you be Janeaway to my Chakotay? Must prefer Piccard to Kirk. No Klingons’ and the chicks dug it. I got literally reponses. Anyway, one response stuck out like dog’s balls: Mary-Jane’s. I was THRILLED when her email included a keyword rich link, and my first date in 8 years was all systems go.”
Mary-Jane was equally excited. “At first, I was nervous, then excited, then nervous again, before coming full circle and being excited. I was worried about the SEO part, as I wasn’t sure Bob would even know what it was. Luckily, the first night we really hit it off, and when Bob said “Ask Jeeves is way beter than Google”, my heart melted, and I almost broke down and wept.”
It wasn’t all plain sailing though, as Mary-Jane struggled with the guilt of secretly dating a spammer.
“I was scared”, Mary-Jane said, “of what my friends would say. Would I lose my white hat? Would sleeping with the enemy cost me everything? My friends even arranged an MSN messenger Group Chat Intervention. I broke it off with Bob that day.
“But it didn’t last. In the end, love conquers all, and I just didn’t care. As Alexander Pope said: “O type it not, my hand — the name appears
Already typed — wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Mary-Jane weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her keyboard obeys.”
“I was a fool for Bob the instant I met him, and Whitehatistan and all the White hat interventions couldn’t convince me otherwise. ”
It was happy days from then, and with the birth of their first son, both have mellowed, and the fights and anger at home have subsided, as both leave behind deep seated views about Search, and move onto more important things.
“In the end”, Mary-Jane said, “it is just a hat. I respect Bob for all the hard work he does creating auto filler pages, time, and time again as they are banned…”
“And I respect Mary-Jane for all the work she does making a better Net and dealing with Clients. I could never do that. We really just agree to disagree, and argue about more important things…”
“Like which Star Trek is better”, Mary-Jane reponds, adding “And how to live long and prosper.” To which Bob and Mary-Jane end up ROFLing.
October 18th, 2005
It has come to the attention of the ISoS editors that, in our previous post, Yahoo Announce Doctor Of Their Own (and ISoS use humour to disguse a serious message), a hidden message attempting to educate people about Prostate Cancer was slipped in.
Whilst this post met or exceeded the extraordinarily high standard of on-topic, relevant hillarity and satire that you have come to expect from ISoS, the message was an unfortunate occurance that ISoS deeply regret.
ISoS wishes to appologise abolutely, whole heartedly and without reservation for this attempt to both make a serious point and to educate our readership. It was uncalled for, unjustified and, quite frankly, outlandish.
We accept that, for a blog that usually produces works of pure fiction and conducts made up research, real statistics and a message was over stepping the mark by a wide margin, and was simply too much for many viewers.
We accept we aren’t a serious Blog like all those Google Blogs and Search Engine Watch. We really do. We further accept that we should not attempt to be, and we will no longer attempt to compete with “serious” blogs, on any level.
We fully understand and concur with the furore that this editorial decision to accept an article with real statistics and a message has caused. To make ammends, we hearby, in public, promise never to do it again, except in such circumstances that the real stats are funny or come in an inherently humorous radar graph format.
In future, ISoS promise to maintain an editorial standard that dictates all entries contain no educational messages, hidden or otherwise, and any statistics, figures or facts quoted will be 100% made up, and purely the fictional product of either Michael or Scottie’s mind.
Our focus remains, as always, to provide you with the laugh you have demanded, and we are dedicated to forging ahead and creating the sort of outstanding tools Bored Marketers demand, such as our recently released and highly amusing Search tool.
We further promise to never again use Google for ill, like searching for legitimate information that informs, but only to find humourous pictures, graphs, equations or people to make fun of.
Of this you have our word.
Our most humble and sincere appologies,
The Whole Frickin’ ISoS Team
October 14th, 2005
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