BlogSmall business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design

You will be surprised, but the obvious

Dim arrChars(10) As Char
Dim strString As String
strString = "ABCDEFGHIK"
arrChars = strString.ToCharArray
strString = arrChars.ToString

Will not yield the same string as there was before. It will, rather, return “Char[]” response. To get your string back from Char Array (at least in VB.NET 2.0) you will need to call CStr on array:

Dim arrChars(10) As Char
Dim strString As String
strString = "ABCDEFGHIK"
arrChars = strString.ToCharArray
strString = Cstr(arrChars)

Funny, isn’t it? And totally counter-intuitive

Spotted this beauty in one of the RSS channels. Speaking of war in online advertising, it comes as a very handy argument.

Advertising: Microsoft vs. Google

Need I say more?

There’s no place like home. Especially, when you have a cozy couch where you can cuddle with your loved one in front of the TV. When your loved one, who’s as far from the whole IT stuff as humanly possible, starts commenting on IT-related commercials, it only gets better.

Last night a Microsoft’s commercial popped up, one of the latest “I’m a PC and I was made into a stereotype” ones. My girlfriend somehow missed the introductory phrase, so she only caught the part where a bunch of people say “I’m a PC and this is my cubicle” pointing to couple of icebergs or “I’m a PC and I sell fish”.

The question she immediately asked me had fallen like a hammer of doom. The question was: “Is this a commercial to stop outsourcing? Have all these people lost their jobs to India and now have to sell fish or work on icebergs to feed their families?”.

Having argued that Microsoft had delivered their brand-shaping marketing message quite clearly I got puzzled. The message was, of course, delivered quite clearly. It was also obvious that my girlfriend isn’t the target market for those commercials – she’s not involved in IT-related decision making. However, it was a nice revelation to see how such people react to the imagery used in the ad. Without the online hype, without knowing all the IT stories and how Microsoft is getting back at Apple using similar-looking guy and all that buzz – how would these commercials be perceived.

Now I know. These are the commercials about IT guys who lost their jobs. I’m a PC and I sell fish. How much… ?