SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - "Manhunt 2," a brutally violent video game that was effectively banned in the United States, has risen from the grave in a modified form and will go on sale for Halloween, its publisher said. ADVERTISEMENT
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Apparently it's not enough that Sun peppers any and all discussions of its hardware and software products with liberal mentions of its Java programming language, now the vendor wants Wall Street to sit up and take more note of its homegrown technology too.

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Old ads for Wispa from YouTube.com.

LONDON: Two weeks ago, a Facebook member in Manchester, England, added her name to an online campaign to bring back a chocolate bar called Wispa, discontinued by its maker, Cadbury, four years ago.

“Ive just signed petition-my life not the same since its gone I really do thik about them all the time —bring them back pleasssssssseeeeeeeee,” she wrote.

Facebook users make up for any shortcomings in spelling, grammar and punctuation with their sheer numbers. After nearly 14,000 people joined “bring back Wispa” groups on the social networking service, the company, part of the Cadbury Schweppes food conglomerate, announced Aug. 17 that it would reintroduce the candy bar in October.

Companies everywhere are monitoring blogs and other online discussions for feedback on their brands, providing them with information about coming products and placing “viral” advertisements on video-sharing sites.

But the campaign for Wispa, and the decision by Cadbury to revive it, shows what can happen when nostalgia about lost brands converges with user-generated content and social networking sites, the online windows into the hopes, fears, friends and ambitions of the young. In this case, consumers have persuaded a big company to see things their way.

“We have noticed the Web interest for some time, and the consumer passion has undeniably swayed our opinion to relaunch Wispa,” Cadbury said. “This is the first time that the power of the Internet played such an intrinsic role in the return of a Cadbury brand.”

The company said it had identified 93 user groups on Facebook calling for a return of Wispa. Fans posted video clips from 1980s advertisements for Wispa, featuring stars of British television shows like “Hi-de-Hi!” and “Yes Minister,” on YouTube, the video-sharing Web site.

Thousands of other consumers joined online petitions. One of these, on a Web site that also plays host to campaigns to draft Al Gore to run for president, to close fur factories in China and to shut down the U.S. Federal Reserve, implored: “Together we can make the world of chocolate a better place!”

The campaign also took on an offline component when, during the Glastonbury music festival in June, a group of Wispa fans stormed the stage while Iggy Pop was performing, displaying a banner reading, “Bring Back Wispa.”

Cadbury Schweppes is dealing with the aftermath of a scare over salmonella contamination of some of its chocolate bars, and struggling with a plan to sell or split off its U.S. soft drink business, Wispa gives the company a feel-good public relations diversion.

But the company insisted that the expressions of affection for Wispa on the Internet were genuine, unlike some other cases in which marketers have tried to whip up excitement on the Web through faked blogs or other “seeded” activity.

Still, was it wise for Cadbury to give in to the consumer campaign? After all, Wispa was pulled off store shelves for what seemed like solid reasons in 2003. Sales were flagging, and the company said at the time that a majority of consumers preferred the taste of a candy bar that was introduced to replace it, called Dairy Milk Bubbly.

“Clearly you want to listen to consumers,” said Karl Heiselman, chief executive of Wolff Olins, a brand consultancy. “But I think we have to be careful about relying on them to do our jobs.”

Consumer goods companies are trying to use the Internet in new ways. Publicis Groupe, an advertising company, recently formed a joint venture with Dassault Systèmes, the computer-aided-design software maker, under which consumers will be invited to use three-dimensional modeling programs to help design products and their packaging over the Internet.

But the rise of such Web 2.0 forces as multimillion-member communities creates some additional challenges for marketers. How can they tell whether the vast scale of online campaigns like the one for Wispa reflects genuine support, or simply a trendy joke that snowballed?

Perhaps for this reason, Cadbury has not said whether Wispa will be restored for the long-term. For now, it has said only that it will produce 23 million bars, making them available for a test period of a few months.

If sales reflect the massive recent demand, then it would be difficult to ignore the wishes of the public, the company said.

Cadbury declined to say how much it would spend on the campaign to reintroduce Wispa, which will be limited to Britain and Ireland. The move will be supported by billboards created by Publicis Groupe, Cadbury said.

British consumers seem especially eager to embrace products with sentimental value, particularly food and candy brands.

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LONDON: 'Please return your seat backs and tray tables to their upright and locked position - and start reading the advertisement that is staring you in the face.”

O.K., you won't actually hear that last part as the flight attendants prepare an aircraft for landing. But as airlines look for new sources of revenue to offset rising fuel costs, more carriers are turning planes into marketing vehicles, installing advertising in hard-to-miss places.

Several American carriers, including US Airways and AirTran, recently started selling ads on napkins or stickers that appear on open tray tables. Over the summer, Ryanair, the European low-fare carrier, has gone further, installing advertising panels on the covers of the overhead luggage compartments and in the backs of closed tray tables.

Ryanair, and the companies behind these advertising systems, say the new spots offer marketers an effective way to reach consumers who have cash to spend and who are increasingly difficult to influence via traditional media like television and newspapers.

InviseoMedia, which has sold the seat-back ads to Ryanair and another European low-fare carrier, Germanwings, says the system provides an average of 40 minutes of “dwell time” during a typical flight. In other words, the only ways for passengers to avoid the ads, which are placed behind tamper-proof plastic shields, is to open the tray or get up and stretch their legs. When they do that, they are confronted with the ads on the overhead bins, which are being sold by a separate company, Fourth Edition.

“It's a good medium, a good audience and they're captive to some extent,” said Dominic Stead, chief executive of Inviseo. “In this day and age, the opportunity to get someone's attention and hold it is invaluable.”

Inviseo started to install its panels in Germanwings planes about two years ago, and companies like Microsoft, DaimlerChrysler, Hewlett-Packard and HRS, a German travel Web site, have advertised on them.

Since the seat-back ad space became available in Ryanair planes this summer, it has attracted only one advertiser: Creative, a maker of digital entertainment devices. But Stead said the Inviseo system could be popular with advertisers that link ads to mobile phone call-in and text-message campaigns, because Ryanair and a number of other airlines plan to enable in-flight cellphone use soon.

The use of overhead bins for ads has been faster to catch on than the seat backs, with ads being place by companies like ING, the Dutch bank; Red Bull, a so-called energy drink; and Meteor Mobile Communications, an Irish cellphone operator. Martin Barry, managing director of Fourth Edition, said the ads could generate annual revenue of €6.5 million, or $8.8 million, if all 41 panels on every one of Ryanair's 137 planes were sold for an entire year. Like Inviseo, Fourth Edition splits an undisclosed portion of the proceeds with the airline.

Both Fourth Edition and Inviseo, which are privately held, say they have an advantage over potential rivals because they have already obtained approval for their systems, as required by safety regulators.

Will other advertisers and airlines climb aboard? Even though marketers are eager to connect with consumers in new ways, they are also wary about annoying them.

“A lot of brands are pretty skeptical about being associated with in-flight advertising,” said Ben Cunningham, a media planner at Vizeum, part of the London advertising company Aegis. “In general, it has been something pretty niche for us to advise our clients to get involved with.”

Other forms of airborne advertising have been around for some time. Carriers have turned the outsides of airplane fuselages into flying billboards. They have sold print ads in their magazines, and some offer video ads in their seat-back entertainment systems. Several carriers have even experimented with ads printed on airsickness bags.

Fourth Edition and Inviseo said they were talking with other airlines. But one budget carrier, easyJet, said it was not interested for now. “Onboard advertising is not something we're looking to at the moment,” said Marianne West, a spokeswoman. “I think we're quite happy to advertise our own brand onboard.”

Eric Pfanner can be reached at adcol@iht.com.

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MOSCOW: The wedding seemed peaceful until the first punch was thrown. Then the camera jumped between various fights, capturing men chasing one another and finally focusing on someone lying unconscious - and then the video faded to black.

Welcome to the world of EnglishRussia.com, the brainchild of a young Web designer that has become one of the most popular blogs on the Internet in less than a year.

The site warrants regular visits for those who want to see the weird, sometimes freakish side of Soviet life because, as the slogan reads, “something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the Earth's surface.”

“It is Russian culture - there are many fights at weddings,” said the founder of the Web site, a 28-year-old Russian who goes by the name Tim. “Probably 50 percent of weddings in villages have fights. It's fun.”

Tim refused to give his full name, saying by telephone that, as a serious Web designer, he did not want his name associated with the site.

On high-traffic days, more than 200,000 people visit EnglishRussia.com. Half come from the United States, with only 5 percent from Russia.

Tim said the idea for the site popped into his head one day.

“Just imagine how many unknown stories and photos are hidden in Chinese Web sites and available only to a Chinese audience,” he wrote in an e-mail. “So we decided to start from the country we know, or, to be exact, Russia and the countries comprising the former Soviet Union.”

The site is in English so that the rest of the world can have a look at the oddities of Russia. It is a smorgasbord of photos and videos from other Russian Web sites, plus those sent in by readers, which both confirm and undermine national stereotypes.

On a recent day, there were photographs of a heavy-metal wedding, Russian students playing Tetris by turning on and off the lights in their hostel, Belarussian police tractors and drunks sleeping on the subway, along with the more mundane - cars buried under snow and trucks with wheels missing.

One video shows two people from the Russian republic of Dagestan who stop their car in the middle of the capital city, Makhachkala, and start to do the lezginka, a traditional dance, before getting back in their car and driving away.

Some people have attacked the site, calling it anti-Russian and a disgrace.

“Someone always claims that it is anti-Russian propaganda,” Tim said. “I assure you we didn't receive any financial support from any foreign state or secret service. It was started just for fun. Even now that it earns money, we don't treat it seriously.”

Tim, who lives in Russia and Israel, refused to say how profitable the site was a year after its creation.

The money, however, has allowed him to hire one employee, who spends most of his day searching for things to post.

The rules for picking a post are simple: The material must simply be “cool,” he said. He does not worry about whether visitors might deem a posting pro-Russian or anti-Russian.

EnglishRussia.com was recently rated the 155th most popular blog in the world by Technorati, a search engine that indexes more than 94 million blogs. Tim said he had turned down one offer to buy the site. He said he wanted to see the blog break into the top 100 on Technorati, an outcome he thinks is likely.

The most popular posting is a fish caught in the Far East that resembles a dinosaur. Pictures of strange people on the subway, like a Stalin impersonator, are not far behind in popularity.

A recent hit is a video of a woman who lives with 130 cats in what appears to be a surprisingly clean Moscow apartment.

The latest entries have moved away from what Tim called “yellow” postings, using the color normally associated with sensationalist newspapers. There are fewer pictures of the freakish and more of the nostalgic - like pictures of a dozen Soviet cigarette packages.

“At the beginning, we were working out the style,” he said. “We noticed some people are very fond of some stories of old Russia. We try to satisfy those people as well.”

The site clearly has struck a chord, although it has not impressed everyone.

“There's nothing original,” said Mikhail Chekanov of Rambler Media, owner of the Russian search engine Rambler.ru. Chekanov said the site just picks up items from other Russian Web sites.

The captions on the site are often deliberately obtuse, playful or simply untrue. Under a picture of what looks like nuclear missiles, the caption reads: “While we all are peacefully sleeping, there are people in Russia who don't sleep. They work.” Under pictures of police officers with their eyes closed on the subway it reads, “Just another example of how you can get tired after the righteous job.”

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SAN FRANCISCO: A Chinese technology company has expressed interest in buying a maker of computer disk drives in the United States, raising concerns among U.S. government officials about the risks to national security in transferring high technology to China.

The overture, which was disclosed by William Watkins, the chief executive of Seagate Technology, one of the two remaining drive makers in the United States, has resurrected issues of economic competitiveness and national security raised three years ago when Lenovo, a Chinese computer maker, bought the personal computer business branch of IBM.

Tensions have been increasing lately between the two countries over ambitions by China in developing its military capabilities and advanced technologies for industrial and consumer uses.

Although disk drives do not fall under a list of export-controlled technologies, the attempted purchase of an American disk drive company would require a security review by the U.S. government, according to several government officials.

In recent years, disk drives have become complex computing systems, complete with hundreds of thousands of lines of software that are used to ensure the integrity of data and to offer data encryption.

That could raise the specter of secret tampering with hardware or software to make it possible to pilfer information via computer networks, intelligence officials have warned.

Seagate has recently begun selling drives with hardware encryption capabilities.

Watkins did not identify the Chinese company. But he said that the possibility of an acquisition had sent alarm bells ringing at some government agencies.

“The U.S. government is freaking out,” Watkins said Thursday.

Reached Friday night, Treasury officials declined to comment on possible Chinese overtures for the American company.

While Watkins said Seagate, which is the largest drive maker in the United States, was not for sale, he also said that if a high enough premium was offered to shareholders it would be difficult to stop.

With a booming economy and $1.33 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves, Chinese companies are in a position to acquire American companies, the same position Japanese and West European companies were several decades ago.

While those earlier acquisitions were often opposed out of fear they would damage American economic competitiveness, the acquisition of U.S. companies by Chinese companies is regarded with more suspicion, particularly in the high-technology sector.

Since the Lenovo sale, the government has become increasingly concerned about technology security, according to members of federal advisory committees.

“Seagate would be extremely sensitive,” said an industry executive who participates in classified government advisory groups. “I do not think anyone in the U.S. wants the Chinese to have access to the controller chips for a disk drive. One never knows what the Chinese could do to instrument the drive.”

The transfer of advanced disk drive manufacturing technology would give the Chinese a major advantage in competing in the information technology sector.

China, however, still lags behind in basic manufacturing skills, like semiconductor design and manufacturing.

“This is clearly a critical component of a computer system and the purchase by the Chinese or other nations merits a full review to determine what our risks are,” said Michael Wessell, a commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group that monitors the national security implications of trade with China for Congress.

IBM sold its disk drive business to the Japanese computer maker Hitachi in 2002, leaving just two American disk drive makers, Seagate and Western Digital, both based in California.

Two other Japanese makers, Fujitsu and Toshiba, and a division of Samsung, a South Korean electronics conglomerate, are also major manufacturers of the storage devices.

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

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WASHINGTON - After six decades in which the venerable greenback never changed its look, the U.S. currency has undergone a slew of makeovers. The most amazing is yet to come. ADVERTISEMENT
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Security forces sent to India state