The iPad has been the king of tablets. Windows 8 and Amazon tablets, rather than Android, RIM Playbook and HP TouchPad tablets are viable competitors

Who can compete with the iPad?

I saw the post over at wmpoweruser.com asking its readers to come up with the dream Windows Phone ad. I have some ideas but I don't want to show my personal information, and I don't want to reset my phone to show dummy data, so here are my ideas.

1. Theme - to show how adding Facebook account lights up the phone: The shot starts with an extremely happy new owner of a Windows Phone. The next shot should zoom into a shot of the phone with the guy narrating what he is doing. And that is, entering his facebook information. The account setup is saved and he goes into the People Hub and sees facebook status updates and pictures. He then goes on to like a picture and comment on someone's status. And finally, he goes into the "Me" tile and updates his own status.
2. Theme - to show pictures hub: Again, the ad starts with a new owner excited about his phone. He tells his wife (or the wife tells her husband) that he is going to set up his windows live account which he had already linked to flickr. As he is saying this, the ad shows some screens from a PC showing windows live linking to flickr. Next shot shows the windows phone zoomed in, and him opening the Pictures hub showing all the past albums and pictures (swiping left and right should illustrate the fluidity of the OS). He then tells his wife how he didn't even remember uploading some of those pictures and is delighted to see them. Some sort of tagline should follow, saying how "glance and go" trumps app-in-app-out.
3. Theme - to show Music and Videos hub: Shot starts straight with the phone zoomed in, a la iPhone/iPad ads. The user goes into the Music and Videos hub and starts playing local music. Then he goes to Shazam and gets a song which has a link to the Zune Marketplace and that is clicked, to stream the song directly. Then show a YouTube video in the history which shows paused and starts from the previous spot. The glance-and-go tagline ends the ad.

Similarly, ads to show the unified calendar (not sure if showing some Google Calendar snippets will help), Lock screen info, XBOX hub (games, including turn-by-turn vs XBOX or PC), Maps, Office, and a general ad showcasing the apps like Cocktail Flow, Twitter, Yelp, etc. should be made.

Basically, I think the "Really" ads need to be extended, to show what comes next. As in, why are people with Windows Phone spending less time immersed into the phone screens.

Came across an excellent article by Rohit Brijnath about brilliance and domination and how that is never boring.

Let me tell you my take on it. There is a certain part of me as a sports fan that wants to see some team dominate their opponents. There is another part of me though, that wants to create a contendor, and hopefully a rivalry. Two or three people (or teams) who are equally good in skills and talent and who could win on any given day, would be much better for me to follow, than one individual/team completely dominating all the time.

That’s why I did not like (and still don’t) Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls.

That’s why I am not liking the current state of Formula 1.

That’s why I truly did not like Steve Waugh’s Australian cricket team, and I do not like the Ricky Ponting’s current team.

That’s why I would not watch Sampras playing at Wimbledon.

In fact, in all of these cases, I would actually hope that a rank outsider would beat them.

I don’t follow much of football, so I will pass on Arsenal.

Mind you, it is not like I did not like them at all at any given point. I liked Jordan, Tiger and Schumacher as athletes. I loved to watch the Australian team playing awesome cricket, redefinig a lot of philosophies prevalent in cricket at the time. But once they start dominating for a while, they do make it less and less exciting for a lay sports follower like me.

True, the purists would say, like Brijnath says and like it is aruged on a blog, brilliance and domination is actually perfection on display. If you really really love the sport, you won’t mind domination as displayed my Schumacher, as displayed by Jordan and Tiger and the Aussie team.

But I don’t agree. I have seen enough of pure cricket. I have seen enough of pure driving. I have seen enough of buzzer-beater shots by Jordan. It is more exciting to see rivalries.

John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors.

Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker.

Schumacher and Hakkinen.

Senna and Prost. Add Mansell, Lauda to the list.

Lakers and Celtics of the 80’s.

Yankees and Red Sox.

Michigan and Ohio State.

and so on.

Its rivalries that make the game more exciting from spectators' long term point of view.

Yes, it is cool to see a team or a players completely dominate the opponents once in a while. It has to happen otherwise we are encouraging mediocrity. But for the long term, it is good to see a change. Dynasties are good, but complete domination by a team in creating a dynasty is very bad for the sport.

At least that is my point. What’s yours?