Gizmodo Sells Out to Slingbox

After receiving an email from Nick Denton telling us to check out his Gizmodo gadget site which turned out to be all red, we thought the Gawker Media publisher had struck a deal with that charity that paints websites red but no. Gizmodo has turned red because it's part of a sponsorship deal with TV-everywhere company Slingbox to introduce three new products.

Greenepeace Takes on Apple

Greenpeace has created a website that looks very similar to the Apple website expect for the fact this Greenpeace website wishes Macs were greener, The site claims Apple products contain hazardous substances other companies have abandoned. The site explains the hazards of toxic waste and its effect on recycling in a section called iTox + iWaste. There's also t-shirts and a tool to mess with a Steve Jobs speech. Nice work, actually.

UPDATE: It seems Greenpeace didn't have all its facts straight.

Pregnant Teen Drinks Turpentine, Turpentine Ad Offers Help

Add to the ever growing list of contextual fuckery this Pure Gum Spirits Turpentine ad which appeared directly next to a CNN story about a teen who drank turpentine to terminate her pregnancy. The kicker is the ads tagline, "Nature's Solvent." Yup, turpentine sure does make it easier to dissolve that fetus and make it really easy to slide right out into that trash can. Aside from the intellectually-challenged human idiocy that surrounds the use of these freakish remedies, the placement of this ad has to be the most freakish contextual placement fuck up to date. Can we possibly put an end to our own industry idiocy that causes these idiotic mistakes?

Hood Blimp Crashes, Billboards Vandelized, Bank Blings

- O&M London is using a pressure washer to write ads on dirty sidewalks and the sides of buildings so as to avoid being labeled as an eco-unfriendly graf artist.

- Hood blimp crashes.

- Is it just us or is the combination of former Kiss bassist Gene Simmons and the elizabeth Glaser Pediatrics AIDS Foundation just a tad strange?

- Catherine Zeta Jones gets the boot from T-Mobile.

- Continuing its My Circle campaign, Alltel has "announced" five of its billboards have been vandalized with the word "Don't" over the headline, "Call anyone on any network for free."

more »

It's Official. Facebook Opens to General Public

If for some odd reason you ever wanted to network with a bunch of university students or check out endless albums of drunk girls placing their hands on each other's boobs, but lacked the clout of a .edu e-mail address, congratulations, you now can. We all can. To couch the ever-present possibility of trauma stemming from this change, admins posted a thoughtful note assuring chafing co-eds that, despite complete loss of the site's appealing university-only exclusivity, the power is ultimately still in their hands.

As is typical of Facebook's community, students protested the change with a petition and a fairly straightforward student group called "I will quit Facebook if it opens to all Internet users," where all members pledged to leave the networking site the moment it goes public, which happened yesterday. The group boasts over 960 members, none of which have honored the vow. Big surprise. It's hard to leave behind those endless albums of drunk girls....oops...we said that before. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Benetton Website Does Weird Little Segment on Potatoes

The introductory caption to the current potato-talk segment of BenettonTalk tells us "Potatoes: you probably eat them quite often, but what do you really know about them?" and wins prominence on the homepage over other important topics like the Tripoli Six, deforestation and a little rant about airport security.

The illustrations are cute in a creepy sort of way. We also learn that one does not in fact grow more potatoes by putting a potato into the ground. Potatoes come from seeds. There's an impressive networking fact. - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Vera Wang Introduces Fragrance With Princess-O-Meter

To promote its new Princess fragrance, Vera Wang launched VeraWangPrincessBeauty, which features an interactive quiz that tells people what kind of princess they are. An apparently tech-savvy cartoon princess who wears her iPod in her bra walks would-be monarchs through the process.

The criteria is based on all kinds of obstacles the typical princess must navigate daily, such as which event invitation to accept and who to call on speed-dial while sitting in the bathtub. Hmm. To maximize stickiness, princess results can be turned into, yes, a MySpace skin or a printable pledge to be as fantastic a princess as possible. Oh, and also, to always wear Vera Wang Princess.

By the way, we took the test and Adrants is an "IT Princess" who goes to all the hip parties and travels the world. But, of course, you knew that about us already, didn't you? - Contributed by Angela Natividad

Vehicle Color Choices Likened to Painting Female Body Parts

Apparently to tout the color choices of its vehicles, Susannah Breslin tells us Italian car maker Lancia has launched a site that lets you try out the colors....on the bodies of men and women by choosing a color and then a body part to color. The site's in Italian but Unscathed Corpse has translated directions. Have fun.

Tremor Rebrands, Launches Seizure-Inducing Banner Campaign

During Advertising Week and with a seizure inducing online ad banner campaign, online video advertising firm Tremor Network has announced a rebranding and name change to Tremor Media to better describe its shift from online ad network to full blown "online video solutions" company for advertisers and publishers. You can catch the campaign in print on back covers of Adweek, Mediaweek, and Brandweek magazines and those siezure inducing banners online at Adweek, MediaPost, imediaconnections, MarketingVOX, MediaBuyerPlanner and, yes, right here on Adrants.

While our ad department, once again, "forced us" to run this campaign, there seems to be a nice tie in with the whole "tremor" thing. The banners say 'a seismic shift in advertising." Get it? Seismic? Earthquake? Shaking? Spasmodic banners? OK, forget it. That's a stretch. We're just trying to justify accepting their business. It'll all be over in a week.

Milwaukee's Best Beer Cannon Much Better Than OutPost Gerbil

If you're not going to use hot women in bikinis when you create your beer commercial masterpiece, the only other option, really, is to blow stuff up with beer cans. Reminiscent of the famed OutPost.com Gerbil commercial, are several videos on YouTube of a few guys who were paid by Milwaukee's Best to make a beer cannon that projects beer cans into objects in front of a target such as a television, a watermelon, a plant, mayonnaise, beef stew, eggs and other assorted items. Collectively, the videos have been viewed almost a couple million times on YouTube.

If you want to see all the vdeos crammed into one, there's a montage version set the the tune of Robert Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries made popular in the movie Apocalypse Now. All the videos are on the Milwaukee's Best website too.