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Mozilla The Internet Entertainment

Firefox Promo Videos 421

Posted by Zonk from the talking-up-the-fox dept.
sebFlyte writes "Last week Mozilla Europe launched some extremely funny promotional videos for Firefox and ZDNet is reporting that they're spreading across the net like wildfire." From the article: "This is just the beginning -- I only posted it on my personal blog and it's already spreading nicely...We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load."
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Firefox Promo Videos More

Firefox Promo Videos

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  • Can't handle the load? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jobeus ( 639434 ) <jobe-slash@jobeu[ ]et ['s.n' in gap]> on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:53PM (#12510428) Homepage
    "we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load" -> Slashdotted already. :(

  • This is slashdot so... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Minwee ( 522556 ) <dcr@neverwhen.org> on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:54PM (#12510434) Homepage
    I can't be the only one who read that as "Firefox Porno Videos".

    Wasn't porn the whole reason that people wanted a better web browser in the first place?

    • Re:This is slashdot so... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:08PM (#12510636)
      "Wasn't porn the whole reason that people wanted a better web browser in the first place?"

      Yes, actaully.

      Way back in the day, what got me on the web was the fact that Netscape included a USENET reader that could handle inline UUEncoded files. More specifically JPEG. Had I gotten on the Internet any later than I did (91), I wouldn't know anywhere near as much about Unix as I do now. Having to figure out how to make PINE to launch a shell so I could compile tintin and have less limited access to USENET (their default reader had no subscribe feature and only "approved" groups) ended up being the major foundations of a later career.

      Who says porn is bad for you.

      • Re:This is slashdot so... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What, you mean it doesn't make you blind and deaf?!

        On a more serious note, it can render you night blind, because each time you ejaculate you get rid of about 5 mg of zinc (which is found in high quantities in semen), but the latter is essential to bringing vitamin A to the eyes, and its deficiency can cause night blindness.

        Zinc is also found in high quantities in cereals, so if you wank 3 times per day (as one of my friends does, not joking), you may want to increase your intake of zinc. Google is your f

      • Totally offtopic.... (Score:5, Funny)

        by XMyth ( 266414 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:17PM (#12510728) Homepage
        Ahh yes...the things porn leads us to learn about computers....

        - Mastering file/directory filesystems.
        - Encryption
        - Clearing recently used documents
        - Splitting partitions (What's this K: drive, Jimmy?)
        - Writing filename obfusactors (using a password as an encryption seed no-less!)
        - Wiping all trails of browsing for a day, cookies, cache, history, etc..
        - Keyboard shortcuts like Alt+Tab, Alt+Space, N, Win+D, Alt+F4.
        - Tabbed browsing, sweet sweet tabbed browsing.
        - Popup blockers, minimizing your pr0n is useless when HOT YOUNG TEEN VIRGINS banners popup afterwards!
        - Back when those XXX password sites actually WORKED! (AdultChecks/AdultBouncers were easy to come by!)
        - Going on IRC to find those FTP servers and/or DCC bots with 5 to 1 ratios ! 4300 cps baby!

        This is just off the top of my head too...seriously.

        • Re:Totally offtopic.... (Score:5, Funny)

          by IceAgeComing ( 636874 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:48PM (#12511101)
          Keyboard shortcuts like Alt+Tab, Alt+Space, N, Win+D, Alt+F4.

          Funny how they're all for the left hand.

          Coincidence? More discrimination against left-handers? Or...something else?

        • Re:Totally offtopic.... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Laxitive ( 10360 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:49PM (#12511111) Journal
          I'll add one to that: writing your first serious application.

          I annotated my entire collection which I traded on IRC. Since many fserves wanted certain things, and not others (no low-qual pics, no b&w pics, only lesbians, etc.).

          I wrote an app in python that parsed a manifest file that described all the files in a particular directory, and then let you trawl it using arbitrary boolean queries over boolean, integer, and string fields.

          The exact usage of the app went like this:
          reset (reset the set of working files to all files)
          men = 0 (remove any pic with men)
          women >= 2 (remove any pic with less than 2 women)
          hc = true (remove softcore pics)
          dump (dump working set to screen and pipe it through more)

          That's how you searched for HC lesbian pics :) You could also use 'or' to delimit multiple queries on the same line. No 'and's, though, since you could just simulate that by typing out the queries on successive lines.

          Oh man. I was so proud of myself when I got that written. I was 15 years old, just learning python. It was the first time I had programmed something that was of actual use to me.. that helped me in some real, tangible, immediate way. My IRC fserve efficiency went up an order of magnitude after that. Porn is a more powerful motivator than you can ever imagine. Especially for 15 year old boys with a lot of time on their hands. Ah, good times... good times.

          -Laxitive

    • You're thinking of (Score:5, Funny)

      by crush ( 19364 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:11PM (#12510669)
      FirefoXXX
  • When I first glanced at this story I thought it said Firefox porno videos. Hot browser sex! IE and Foxy FF go on safari!

  • Wildfire (Score:5, Funny)

    by hotdiggitydawg ( 881316 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:54PM (#12510437)
    We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load.

    Welcome to slashdot. Now it's spreading like the fire inside the case of your webserver.

  • Got my father switched today (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BronxBomber ( 633404 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:54PM (#12510441)
    Which got me thinking - I wonder if its possible to push more marketing toward the older generation who are too afraid to switch from "tried and true" MSIE/Outlook?

    A lot of the older generation has no idea what ActiveX is, how harmful it can be... it would be swell to see Firefox maybe try to get the attention of more casual, not-so-savvy PC users.

    • Re:Got my father switched today (Score:5, Informative)

      by L0neW0lf ( 594121 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:02PM (#12510549)
      I agree...however, I think Firefox still has some minor hurdles to overcome in this department.

      Not in usability, Firefox certainly has that. However, you cannot install Firefox over another copy of Firefox without having two versions in "Add/Remove Programs" in Windows. You can't get an upgrade patch for Firefox just a whole new version (Though admittedly the download is far smaller than IE). I've also found that if you have Auto-Update on it may take several days to inform you of an update, which concerns me if 0-day exploits with the browser become a problem (I also think "Check For Updates" should be an option off the Help drop-down menu).

      I think Firefox is great, and it's my browser of choice...but I think they could polish it just a little more for the average user.
      • Apparently 1.1 includes a far nicer update handler.

        I want 1.1, because at the moment I have 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 in my add/remove programs list.
      • "...you cannot install Firefox over another copy of Firefox without having two versions in "Add/Remove Programs" in Windows." I hear this is fixed on the latest version; you can now use the autoupdate to update FF, without getting two entries on Add/Remove programs. However, i don't use windows, so i cannot verify that. But you could try it.

    • I wonder if its possible to push more marketing toward the older generation who are too afraid to switch from "tried and true" MSIE/Outlook?

      Good grief! When *I* think of the "older" generation, I think of people who amazed that an entire computer could fit into a single room. How wonderful that we've come far enough that we're worried about the distributed software that the "older" generation is using on their *personal* *computer*!

      (BTW: I use firefox and mutt. I just look old.)

  • Starting small... (Score:4, Funny)

    by CajunElder ( 787443 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:54PM (#12510445)
    "We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load."

    I'm sure a post to Slashdot is going to help.

  • ugh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AIX-Hood ( 682681 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:54PM (#12510449)
    Mentioning "video" without the subsequent "torrent link" is asking for trouble.

  • 404 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:54PM (#12510451)
    404 - Funny not found

  • the ultimate irony (Score:5, Funny)

    by gmr2048 ( 176781 ) * on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:55PM (#12510462) Homepage
    I couldn't get the videos to work in Firefox 1.0.4 (with Flashblock installed). I clicked on the Flashblock "play" button, but then got only audio, no video. I had to open the page in IE to see them. Oh the humanity.

    -gary

    • Re:the ultimate irony (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I had to open the page in IE to see them. Oh the humanity.

      It's a targeted audience.

    • It's funny that the irony didn't occur to me at the time: I have Flash installed only on IE, not on FF. Whenever I actually want to view a Flash thing (which is nearly never), I just boot up IE. I didn't even notice that I was booting IE to view an ad for FF.

      Why don't I just use Flashblock? Well, I used to, but somehow or other a more recent installation of FF didn't get Flash connected in to it, and I was just as happy to be 100% certain that I'd never see any flash unless I specifically went out of my

    • Re:the ultimate irony (Score:5, Informative)

      by stanleypane ( 729903 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:16PM (#12510720)
      There is an executable flag for running Firefox without any third party add-ons activated. Simply add -safe-mode to the end of the executable that starts firefox:

      firefox.exe -safe-mode
      or...
      ./firefox -safe-mode
      or...
      ./firefox-bin -safe-mode

      Depending on your operating system, one of those will work.
  • They should offer eMule and BT links for easier sharing ...
  • That wasn't THAT funny, although I like that guy.

    What would have been better was him screaming like that, and then he goes to the woman in the ad "nasty pop-up..." and then the screen flashes "SHOULD HAVE USED FIREFOX", and point you to getfirefox.com.

    That's the marketing angle I would like for firefox. Not that it's better through addition (which it is), but appeal to people because it's better through subtraction (less bullshit that IE lets through).

  • Cool ads, but I don't think they promote Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)

    by norfolkboy ( 235999 ) * on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:56PM (#12510475)
    The adverts are certainly cool, I enjoyed watching them.

    BUT, although they mention FireFox, they don't give much clue as to what it does, other than "it's something to do with computers".

    I can't see this converting anyone.

    Sure, there is a link to download FF at the end, but users these days really should be discouraged from downloading something just because "the advertiser says so". Aren't we working against that culture?

    I really think the adverts need to make more noise about what firefox is and does.

    • Re:Cool ads, but I don't think they promote Firefo (Score:5, Insightful)

      by norfolkboy ( 235999 ) * on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:58PM (#12510507)
      sorry - that sounded a bit harsh. I think it's great that people are trying to promote FF.

      I just don't feel the "blank and mysterious" adverts of the dot-com-bubble era are the right way to do it.

    • Re:Cool ads, but I don't think they promote Firefo (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't see the hype. They were vaguely amusing at best, certainly not the hilarity people are talking about. I suspect it's just the novelty of seeing a fairly polished video advert for an open-source project that is impressing people. Really, if they were promoting any other product, would people even bother talking about it?
    • Interesting, I didn't even get them knowing what Firefox is. At best, they are lame. As this is only one person's opinion, take it with a grain of salt of course.
    • they don't give much clue as to what it does

      That's not neccesarily a bad thing. It's an old advertising trick to deliberately miss out some information in order to stimulate curiosity.

      Admittedly, this could be leaving out too much.

      I think what this might do it hurry those who do know what firefox is into getting round to trying it. I know I would if it made me eat telephones.

    • Looks like you don't know much about marketing. You don't want to give the viewer much clue as to what something does. If you say up front "It's a web browser", people will think "oh ok i already have one, goodbye". If you make them think "what the hell is firefox?", they will click on the link and read the sales pitch on firefox.org (and quite likely download and try it). Much more effective.
    • Welcome to advertising in the 21st century. No ads these days explain what a product does or why it's better than competing products. Too much research has shown that the rational appeals of a "superior product" are pretty ineffective.

      Most ads these days don't even talk about the product, maybe don't even show the product. Think about a coffee commercial: In the '50s, coffee commercials talked about how their coffee was deeper, darker, and more delicious than their competition. Maybe there was a littl

    • I agree with you totally. In fact, I know what firefox does - use it every day - but I am mystified by these ads. For example, are the people in the ads screaming and having their heads blown off because they just tried firefox and think it is the coolest thing since sliced bread? Or are they using IE and so totally annoyed at it they loose all semblance of sanity? Personally, I haven't a clue.
    • You know, I totally agree. The promised "funny"-ness of the videos also left to be desired. For example, I watched the videos while at work and I didn't laugh once. However, listening to a sound bite from Cadyshack (specifically when the groundskeeper tells Bill Murray to kill all the golfers) made me blow chunks of candy shell and chocolate along with water on my laptop screen in the middle of a serious database discussion.

      Now, more to your point sir, I think these would be more informative:

      Show a spl

  • 404 Not Funny (Score:2, Informative)

    by JPelorat ( 5320 ) *
    Yeah... ok. So I guess a few kiddies might get a kick out of it.

  • Anyone got a torrent up? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gte910h ( 239582 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @12:57PM (#12510490) Homepage
    This is screaming at the top of its lungs for a bittorrent

  • Coral cache ... ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Z-MaxX ( 712880 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:03PM (#12510559) Journal
    You can try the Coral cached version:

    http://funnyfox.org.nyud.net:8090/ [nyud.net]

    Which loads fine for me, but the Flash animations just show "-21474..." or something in the middle of a black empty rectangle. I wonder if the .swf file is trying to request another resource on the funnyfox.org server? Instead of using a relative URL?

  • Not funny? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AaronD12 ( 709859 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:03PM (#12510561)
    Um... am I the only one that thought those were not funny? Good special effects but special effects don't make things funny. Content makes things funny.

    Yawn.

    /Firefox user on PC; Safari on Mac

    • Re:Not funny? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Timesprout ( 579035 )
      No, I thought they were all rubbish. A clear case of someone trying to be far too smart for their own good. The population at large does not know the brand firefox, does not know what it does and more importantly does not really care. A couple unamusing and totally obscure videos are not going to change that.

    • Not funny. (Score:4, Funny)

      by itomato ( 91092 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:37PM (#12510965)
      "Extremely funny". Who checks this crap?

      Extremely lame. It's like they thought, "Hey, let's get CRAZY!!" then they forgot where they were going with it.

      Let's get CRAZY!! WHOO! now we're all CRAZY!! Now what? Oh I know! Let's end here!

      Hey! Know what'll *really* slay 'em? She takes a BITE out of her CELL PHONE, and DOESN'T EVEN REALIZE!! How CRAZY is that?! Whoo!

    • Re:Not funny? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by JesterXXV ( 680142 )
      Agreed. Not only were they not funny, they were terrible advertising. Budweiser tells me their beer tastes good. Kleenex tells me their tissue is soft. What the fuck is Firefox trying to say? Web browsing is exciting?

    • Classic problem with bad advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RomulusNR ( 29439 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @04:51PM (#12513387) Homepage
      These guys clearly either haven't really done much work in advertising... or else they have, and failed miserably.

      What must be the number one problem with a lot of advertisements over the past couple of years, especially for new products, is that the advertisers spend too much time being weird, funky, shocking, and funny, and COMPLETELY FORGET ABOUT THE FRICKIN' PRODUCT.

      At any given moment I can rattle off a commercial I've seen whose content really stuck with me, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you what the hell they were advertising.

      Like that Dodge Ram commercial where the middle aged guy is making the two salespeople turn the truck back and forth.

      Wait a minute, that's not a Dodge Ram commercial at all, it's a Vehix commercial. Well, at least we were close with this one, it's car related somehow.

      Or what about those commercials about the company with the tech support department that is so good it can tell you if something is funny? Wait, that's for TBS. Who doesn't actually provide that service at all.

      And these ones are for that website thats so crazy and shocking that it makes your head explode. Right?

      These ads don't say anything - I mean, nothing at all - about what's good about Firefox. All they say is that it'll make you scream, or decapitate you. A little balance with some message of benefit might help.

  • For or against FireFox? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skoda ( 211470 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:03PM (#12510569) Homepage
    I watched these movies a few days back, and found them amusing, but I didn't understand their message. Are they suggesting that using e.g. IE is so devastating to the user that his head will pop off? Or is using Firefox so horrible that he scream in horror? Or are these good things, to show how remarkably different Firefox is from the competition?

    Cute videos, but I have no idea what they're trying to communicate.
    • I watched these movies a few days back, and found them amusing, but I didn't understand their message. Are they suggesting that using e.g. IE is so devastating to the user that his head will pop off? Or is using Firefox so horrible that he scream in horror? Or are these good things, to show how remarkably different Firefox is from the competition?

      Yeah, I can't think of anything *really* exciting about firefox. Yes, it works, and it does what many of us *expect* from a browser. Blocks pop-ups. Blocks cook

    • Re:For or against FireFox? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dracolytch ( 714699 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @02:47PM (#12511947) Homepage
      The problem is, you're trying to recieve a consise message from an advertisement that does not have one. There is no underlying message, and they are suggesting very little.

      The whole idea of this kind of advertising is to get your attention, and then show you a brand name. It's called brand exposure, and it's surprisingly effective. That's it, nothing more.

      ~D
  • Judging by the replies to this article, 50% of slashdot readers have dyslexia. Or watch too much porn. I'm not sure which.

  • How did they author the videos? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:09PM (#12510656)
    I have watched the video...my question is how they authored it. Was it a Java "thing" similar to what was at http://mirror.fluendo.com/cortado/ [fluendo.com]? Was it a Windows Media embeded file, or RealPlayer? Quicktime? The browser URL does not say much. I have not tried it on Linux so I do not know.

    Overall, I was impressed. Technical slashdotters, please elaborate. Thanx.

  • It's too bad these videos are completely unfunny.
  • The key to Firefox reaching the masses it to appeal to the lowest common denominators: sex and fear. You can sell it via fear, by touting better security (there's not a lot in the mainstream press to prove that to the average Joe, but...).

    With sex, you could set Beyonce aka Foxy Cleopatra to do a commerical. Get it, "Foxy"? Maybe OG Pam "Foxy Brown" Grier?

    Or maybe a sexy anthropomorphic cartoon lady fox? Eh? Maybe? A sexy cartoon lady fox would be better than the "non-anthropomorphic fox soul-kissing the
  • It should be noted that these aren't actually video files, rather shockwave flash objects embedded in HTML.. not exactly something that you torrent. They're not all that large either way.
  • Lets slashdot a video site.

    What could go wrong :-D /me saw that a week or two ago when it was a hit on the blogosphere.
  • Ok... I like the idea of some ads for Firefox, but these are definitely not extremely funny. They're cute and made me smile, but something extremely funny would probably make me laugh outloud or wet myself.

    I'd like to see Firefox ads parody the dotcom Superbowl ads from a few years back. Perhaps something with that damn sock puppet or the E-Trade dancing monkey.

    All that said, any publicity is good publicity, so any ad is better than no ad at all.
    • You're correct in that they're not "extremely" funny. They're more funny in a "they must have been smoking something when they came up with that" sort of way.

  • They're awful (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PickyH3D ( 680158 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:23PM (#12510808)
    Maybe I do not get the humor of a person screaming, or a persons head falling off (I guess I grew out of that when I passed my teenage years??).

    Stupid modern marketing and going for shock value instead of features. The notebook and office ones do not even show Firefox, aside from the link at the end. Oh ya, some rediculously stupid ad for it is going to intrigue me into downloading something.

    Feel/Taste/See the difference? TASTE? These are some of the worst "ads" I have ever seen.

    • Re:They're awful (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Thursday May 12, 2005 @01:51PM (#12511132)
      I would have to agree. They are atrocious. Whoever is helping promote Firefox/Mozilla doesn't know what they are talking about. First, a full-page ad in the New York Times won't be read by that many people. That money could've been used to get some stories or PR to be run in AP and a thousand small local papers in the "technology" section. The NYT ad was a waste of money.

      These ads, on the other hand, are even worse. They don't explain what Firefox is, they don't talk about it's advantages, and are therefore completely irrelevant. (Compare this to the AOL with Spamblocker buffet line ad, which is a lot better, even if the product isn't). Worse, they're not even funny. And then to top it all off, you try "viral marketing" them on a bunch of blogs --- these are people that already know about Firefox.

      I can guarantee that infomercials running in the morning advertising Firefox for $4.95 would be loads more succesful than this crap.

  • They need a fourth one called "The Hacker" with an ending tagline of "Be The Difference" with a button for "Donate Money or Coding Skills [Here]".
  • Personally, I just made a switch from IE to Firefox. I like FF a lot, it reminds me of Safari. I use to have a G4 and I fell in love with the Safari browser. I later sold my G4 and went a long time without a computer. I'm a PC tech, and I need to hate having PC's at home b/c all I do is work on them. Now I have a 75% built windows machine to surf the web and run Doom3. Other than that I don't use my PC.

    My thoughts are though, since Billy has up'd the release of IE 7, I am sure he is going to make
  • I can't be the only one who found those slightly less than funny, can I? Just as a reminder,
    amusing: arousing or provoking laughter; "an amusing film with a steady stream of pranks and pratfalls"; "an amusing fellow"; "a comic hat"; "a comical look of surprise"; "funny stories that made everybody laugh"; "a very funny writer"; "it would have been laughable if it hadn't hurt so much"; "a mirthful experience"; "risible courtroom antics"
  • I just uploaded these to my webhost who graciously allows torrent traffic. (Hurricane Electric [he.net] rocks.)

    You'll find the torrents and more here:

    http://haikunews.org:6969 [haikunews.org]

  • Here's a nice computer-animated Firefox commercial [scad.edu] made by some person(s) from SCAD [scad.edu].

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