Ash Report

It’s been a boring summer without the English Premier League on Astro. Okay… we don’t actually have summer in Malaysia, it’s sama all year long here. But honestly, how can we have over a hundred satellite channels and sometimes, none of them is watchable? Beijing Olympics filled up the void last week, but before that TV is not so exciting.

So, when EPL started its 2008/09 season this week, yours truly is happy at last. And so far, it seemed that the new season is promising. Scolari, whom I admired, managed to start Chelsea with aplomb. ManUtd fumbled in the opening game against Newcastle. Torress recued his team yet again and newboy, Hull City, managed to whip old-wheezer Fulham. Ahh…. football bliss.

Beside the game and the goals, one thing that managed to capture my interest is AirAsia. I believe that they had managed another coup by being the shirt sponsor for the EPL game officials i.e the men in black. Many times, when the ball went out and the camera zoomed on the line official, you can’t help but noticing the toned-down red AirAsia.com logo at the back of the shirt (or in the case of the referee as pictured above, at the sleeve) contrasting against the black shirt.

I’m sure it cost them less than being a ManUtd official airline (yet the team came to Malaysia on MAS) or to advertise on ground stands. Yet, these shirts will be worn on all matches and shown at all teams. Cameras also will zoom on these officials when the game paused - so eyes of the viewers are focused. Great bang for bucks they say.

I’ve yet to see any bragging articles from AirAsia in the media but I believe, once again they have shown shrewdness, thinking outside the box, in their brand promotion. Well done and this is something that all Malaysian companies (especially ahemm… the big brother airline) should take note and learn.

It appears that the software that managed to put a PC on every desk will soon be retired. Very hard to imagine the ubiquitous Windows no longer running our lives. Yet this is what a new report has suggested.

Apparently this is Microsoft’s strategy for survival in the future. Prompted by the steamrolling usage of OS-independent Internet and failure of Windows Vista, internal documents of Microsoft have described a project codenamed Midori that seemed to be a marked departure from Windows OS.

Midori is centred on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a single PC. It is seen as Microsoft’s answer to rivals’ use of “virtualisation” as a way to solve many of the problems of modern-day computing.

It is also supposed to be a cut-down version of the humongous size of Vista. Yeah right… I’ll believe it when I see it. And judging from Microsoft’s recent track record, the clean final version will probably arrive sometime like 2015.

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