I like Ads

SO i hate to say it, but clever advertising really gets me going. The latest and best example being THE DA VINCI CODE QUEST BY GOOGLE. This is such genius advertising! I'm quite proud of google actually - i think that this is a better ad for it, than it is for the Howard Movie!

The deal:
In the "quest," web surfers are challenged to solve riddles, curate virtual gallery walls, translate decoded puzzles, ace davinci-themed Triv, and navigate google earth. There are 24 days of the quest, and a new challenge revealled each day. The first 10,000 people to finish the quest on the 24th day are the "finalists" and will each recieve a "codex" from the movie. (yawn.) BUT the codex will help those 10,000 finalists solve the very last puzzle of the quest, and the grand prize winner will receive a first-class trip to London, Paris, Rome, and NYC - and they get to bring 3 friends! And they get a bunch of mp3 players and flat screen TVs and the like.

So basically I'm planning on winning this challenge as i have NEVER BEEN OUT OF THE COUTNRY and desperately want to go to LONDON, PARIS, and ROME, (and S Africa, but I suppose that can wait.) It should be mentioned that a free trip to NYC would be put to good use too.

AND - I love puzzles. I HATE jigsaw puzzles, but i do enjoy riddles and sudoku-type visual logic puzzles, which - with supreme web-surfing/searching abilities - is what the quest is all about. The chess puzzle is probably the hardest one for me, as I have never had the patience to learn the difference between the tower guy and the horsey man person.

SO what i'm saying is: if you have time to read my blog, you should also try out the da vinci quest... and if you STILL have free time, you should join me at my low-stakes poker addiction at pokerroom.com.

jh