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Aug

31

The world’s most interesting internship… ever

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

My name is Connor Lanman and I am not claiming I am the most interesting intern ever; and by no means am I working on routers for my 12 week summer internship at Microsoft. I am, however, working on a fairly unorthodox marketing project…sponsored by Microsoft. More on that in a minute. But you can imagine what I was thinking, “Why the heck would they trust some scrawny college kid to do marketing?” The cool thing is that I get to tell the tale to you in this blog until I finish later in September.

Let the saga begin…

First in order to understand where I’m starting from…

1) I just completed my Freshman year at Stanford University and no, I don’t know what I’m majoring in

2) I’m 19 years old, my birthday was this past June

3) I have no idea what I want to do in life

4) The only big online video experience I had was doing a promotional video for Haagen-Dazs back in ’09 when I finished high school. I wrote a book about bees, made a documentary, and then made a comedy music video with my brothers sponsored by Häagen-Dazs, inspiring dance moves from Silicon Valley to Holland. What? I like bees.

So here I am at Microsoft, now given the assignment to do an experimental video campaign for Windows Live Essentials (download the Windows Live Essentials beta refresh!). The cool thing is that Windows Live is launching Wave 4 soon and I get to be a part of it. Many of you may be familiar with Photo Gallery and Movie Maker and in these videos I get to talk about these tools in creative fun ways. Instead of watching a demo, why not be entertained? That’s basically what I aimed to do!

After doing the video for Häagen-Dazs I was amazed at the power of an online video to communicate a message to the masses, and I was even more intrigued by the power of education through multimedia. I used what I learned from that experience and applied it to this project. To start, you need short, high quality stories that are informative in terms of content and are entertaining to the average YouTuber. How do you do that?

Well, I began by involving my brother Max Lanman who is filmmaker. We sat down and started creating concepts. After narrowing down 15 concepts down to 8 or so, we were ready to script, audition, and pool together a crew. We posted an ad calling for actors a couple days before the scheduled audition and we fielded over 80 responses and auditioned over 60 people in 6 hours. We casted over 20 roles, about 40 extras, and worked with a 10 person crew! It was crazy, but it worked. We then shot the videos in four x 10 hour days. We’re in post-production and excited to show off some hilarious videos and some great easy to use products. I’m still not quite sure how to make the perfect online video. But, I abide by my motto to entertain first, and then inform. In the videos to come, you might be able to get a sense of what I’m talking about.

More to come…

Aug

31

Smart and Simple Events for Windows 7 Professional

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

Small businesses are the genesis of all large companies today. While it’s hard to believe, we’re a good example of this. Microsoft started with two employees – Bill Gates and Paul Allen and grew to more than 90,000 employees today, with 1.1 billion PC users worldwide. Key to this growth, Bill and Paul had a clear vision for how personal computing could transform the world. It’s this entrepreneurial spirit that drives innovation and job growth, making small businesses the critical driver in fueling global economies. We know helping small businesses be successful is in all our best interest.

This year we hosted several events for small businesses – called Smart & Simple Strategies for Small Business – across the U.S. with local chambers of commerce to help small companies make the most of technology to grow their businesses. More than 100 small businesses joined each of the events, which were held in Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, OH, Greensboro, NC and Seattle.

The events provided a great forum to network and attend sessions. The sessions covered a gamut of topics including mobile technology, how to take advantage of social media, and green IT solutions. It also included hosted discussions on how small businesses can take advantage of ‘big’ business strategies.

From a technology perspective, one of the things we talked about was the benefits of Windows 7 Professional and why now is a good time to upgrade if you’re a small business owner. Below are some pretty compelling stats supporting this notion and provide a glimpse into small businesses that have upgraded or have future plans to.

I also included a snapshot of what we heard from some of the small businesses in attendance about Windows 7 Professional and how it has helped their business. We hope this inspires you to consider upgrading to give your business a competitive edge.

Some of the feedback we received from business owners included:

We’re extremely excited to be helping small businesses become more efficient through technology. For more information on how Microsoft Windows 7 Professional can help your small business, please visit the Windows 7 Professional website.

Aug

31

August PC Roundup: Killer Gaming Rigs

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

Last month Ryan and I talked about our favorite summer travel PCs.  This month we’re back to talk about some of the most mercilessly powerful, aggressively styled, outrageously large PCs out there – gaming rigs.

Even in this niche class of PC, there’s something for everyone, whether you want something small, big, inexpensive or totally loaded.  For this video, we shot the Alienware M15x, the Origin EON 18 (which I reviewed just a few days ago), the Asus Republic of Gamers G51J 3D, the Acer Aspire 5738DC-6165, the Toshiba Qosmio X505 (a.k.a “Big Red”, read about why I love it here), and Ryan’s custom Falcon Northwest FragBox. 

Watch the video and let me know which one you liked the best:

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Have a question about this or any other PC?  Post a comment, hit me on Twitter or Ask Ben Anything via email.  Your question might appear in my monthly Ask Ben Anything Q&A column.

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