I mentioned the swag in a recent column: http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1021938.html I await the reviews of the Freedom to Innovate 15oz ceramic mugs and Freedom to Innovate bumper stickers. -Declan --- From: Macki <mackiat_private> Subject: MS' Freedom To Innovate Swag: A Comprehensive Review To: declanat_private Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 02:04:42 GMT Declan, A couple of weeks ago you mentioned Microsoft's FreedomToInnovate.com and the availability of T-Shirts. Intrigued, I had to check them out. The shirts say "Microsoft" over the front left breast and on the back is a rather uninspired logo of an American flag with the union portion of the flag replaced with a lame sub-PowerPoint-clipart-grade computer terminal graphic. The text reads "Proud to Support Microsoft's Freedom to Innovate / Sign up at www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnovate" As a fan of both ironic clothing and corporate faux grassroots campaigns, I ordered one right away. The shirts are sold by an outsourced company called "ID Partners, Inc." which sounds like some sort of PR branding firm. It was supposed to come with two matching bumper stickers, but they were missing. In fact it didn't even have a packing slip or invoice, the shirt was just shoved into a FedEx tyvek pouch and sent out. Taking a cue from the mail-order sextoy industry the package was as discreet as humanly possible. The return address only said "ID Partners, Inc." and had a New Jersey mailing address. Think of all the explaining I'd have to do if it showed up here with a Redmond return address, oh my! Lots of other things were strange about the ordering process, like the fact that I requested USPS and it was sent FedEx, that they sent me a confirmation email with a blank tracking number, the weird way that the following people are CC'd on all order confirmations: bkratzat_private, taraat_private Needless to say, they must not sell very many. Bruce Kratz apparently is responsible for this mess. His name is listed as author, next to the copyright notice, in the comments of the stylesheet laden HTML of the confirmation email (no plaintext was provided). Bizarre. Rotten.com sells a lot of T-Shirts, so I'm fairly familiar with cloth material and screen printing quality. These are the cheapest pieces of crap ever. I'm afraid to wash it lest all of the ink flake off. However, the overpowering stench of formaldehyde-like finishing chemicals demand that the shirt be laundered ASAP. It will be interesting to see how much this "pre-shrunk" shirt shrinks, since it is presently labeled size "small" despite being about the size of most large shirts. Of course the shirt only cost $7.25 plus $7.00 shipping and it does come with the added value of promoting Microsoft. Sure enough the shirt is made in Haiti by a company called Gildan Activewear. A quick trip to google confirmed the obvious: this shirt was made in a sweatshop. http://www.google.com/search?q=gildan+activewear+sweatshop I will wear it with pride. --Macki PS: I would like to thank Bill Gates, Bruce Kratz, and anonymous Haitian slaves, for making all this possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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