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Michael Dell: puppet master

A new genre of animation is starting to arrive on the Web: the videos that accompany keynote speeches at high-tech trade shows. [Missing Links]

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
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Stephen Shankland
A new genre of animation is starting to arrive on the Web: the videos that accompany keynote speeches at high-tech trade shows.

These videos generally balance parody and humor on the one hand with excruciating IT jargon and shameless self-promotion on the other. For better or worse, most of these are lost to history.

Maybe that's starting to turn around. Dell has posted online the video it showed before Chairman Michael Dell's Dec. 7 keynote speech at Oracle OpenWorld. The video shows Dell, in puppet form, leading Tech Force which also includes fellow puppets Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Red Hat Chief Executive Matthew Szulik, EMC CEO Joe Tucci, Intel Chairman Andy Grove and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison ("Let's get in there and kick some proprietary apps!").

These six do battle against a Borg-like vendor of "big iron" servers, the current recipient of Dell's corporate scorn. Maverick Productions created the video.

Sun Microsystems also posted a video that it aired at the show--the latest episode of its "Inside Jack" series. Now if only we could see some of the masterpieces: Microsoft's parodies of VH1's "Behind the Music" and "The Matrix."