A World Cup Technology Wall Chart
Given the irresistible opportunity to use the 2010 World Cup as a platform to make some puerile jokes about technology vendors, I for one am unable to resist the temptation. Call it an Obligatory List Article (OLA) if you will, but with last night's inaugural concert and the first game just hours away (and with England's forthcoming "customary drubbing" of team USA on its way tomorrow), what could possibly be more fun?
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Please feel free to suggest any teams or vendors you would like re-labelled in response to this posting.
BRAZIL - Apple Computer – Always looks good, plenty of fancy tricks up its sleeve, street credible style, but has been known to put on weight and slip up.
NIGERIA – Palm Inc - Peaked in the 90s/early 2000s but has experienced decline ever since.
NETHERLANDS – Open Source – Ya, so like everyone should just be equal and have a good time and, like, it's not your football and it's not my football it's just about loving each other OK?
SLOVENIA - O2 – Used to be called something else.
ITALY - IBM – Likes to wear a lot of blue and tell you about how things were in the old days.
SWITZERLAND - W3C & ICANN – The peacemakers perhaps?
SOUTH AFRICA - Google – Tends to be around by default at the moment, but not because they've always done everything right.
GERMANY - Microsoft – Relatively unpopular but seems to get everywhere and succeed regardless.
SPAIN - AMD - Pretenders to the throne who never quite make it on the global stage.
NORTH KOREA - TomTom/Garmin – Using every trick up its sleeve to get through the next couple of weeks and navigate their way around the tournament without bumping into South Korea.
ARGENTINA - Oracle - Big and weighty and doesn't really seem to care what people think about them.
ENGLAND - Dell - Likely to overheat and disappoint, plus also quite sensitive to criticism.
URUGUAY - HP - Used to be top dog but now lives in the shadows of bigger opponents.
NEW ZEALAND - Amazon – Really better known for their prowess in other areas (such as rugby), they seem to want to dip their toe into the hardware market too.
JAPAN - Citrix – Always there even if people aren’t quite sure what they do.
USA - Kaspersky Labs – Perhaps better known outside their own borders.
PORTUGAL - Norton Anti Virus – Effective but prone to frustrate.
End Note: Huge thanks goes to my old friend Chris Lee of Planet Content who leant his invaluable creativity, help and combined knowledge of football and technology to the compilation of this blog.