There are so many naff images which purport to be jokes, and rarely anything you can feel proud enough of to put in your backdrop. That was until I found the natty "Born to Run Unix" logo by Steve Kremer pictured here. May I commend his page on http://www.iquest.net/~skremer/ where youll find many other images of his and plugs for his design skills. The page has been mentioned in USA Today and other US newspapers, thanks to Steves solid satirising of Windows 95, and as a Unix weenie, I can only applaud his graphics.
The Scotsman Edinburgh, Scotland
April 1, 1996 (April Fools Day)
WINDOWS 95, MAC JOKE WALLPAPER & SCREENSAVERS.
Yes you little Apple Grumplings, it IS the day of humour and we've found the perfect place
for you to celebrate it. Download warped corporate screensaver logos and find out what
Gates looks like on the newly issued American $100 Bill.
http://www.iquest.net/~skremer/joke.html
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From the April 1996 Issue of Windows Magazine. Page 40, Win
Tips Win95 Tips of the Month. Their online version (bottom of the page) and graphic. |
Bulletin Board
The Houston Chronicle
February 18, 1996
Compujokes -- Personalizing a personal computer is the high-tech pastime of the digital '90s. Backgrounds, custom icons and screensavers turn a plain box into something you can call your own. For fun, both Macintosh and Windows users should check out the Windows 95 & Macintosh Joke Wallpaper and Screensavers page at http://www.iquest.net/~skremer/joke.html. The site features tongue-in-cheek graphics that can be used for everything from onscreen wallpaper to World Wide Web site doodads. Tired of those ubiquitous "Netscape Now!" icons? Put "Budweiser Now!" on your home page instead. Or, check out replacements for the Windows 95 opening screen, including one that says "Bill Gates 96 for President".
Spoofing Bill And 'Murkysoft'
The Seattle Times
January 29, 1996, Monday, Final Edition
SECTION: BUSINESS; MONDAY MEMO; Pg. E1
Poking fun at Microsoft and Billionaire Bill is a popular pastime these days, with an abundance of angles from antitrust investigations to last August's overblown launch of Windows 95.
-- Exhibit A: "A Useless Guide to WindBlows95 by Murkysoft," a parody from the people who got their start with the "The Quayle Quarterly," a magazine making fun of the former vice president. WindBlows, a 95-page paperback parody by Hysteria Publications, purports to be a guide to the fictitious WindBlows, hyping made-up features like an olfactory computer card that emits smells.
-- Exhibit B: A Web site that is a more appropriate spoof, if only for being online. Created by Internet Web page designer Steve Kremer of Indiana, the site includes downloadable graphics and computer-screen backgrounds intended to jab Bill Gates and his products. One shows a Gatesian caricature sitting at an easel, looking at a picture of the Apple Macintosh logo but painting the Windows 95 logo. Others show a "Gates for President" poster and picture Gates' face among the others on Mount Rushmore.
The site indicates just how popular Bill-bashing has become: It has
received 325,000 online "hits" this month and almost a million since September.
The Internet Web address: http://www.iquest.net/~skremer/joke.html
DragNet by Samantha Amjadali
The Melbourne Herald Sun (Australia)
January 9, 1996
HAD enough of Windows 95?
Then try http://www.iquest.net/~skremer/joke.html. This is a spoof tribute page that plays on all they hype that Windows 95 received.
There are several joke background wallpapers to download that say things like Start - spending money and Windows 95 = Macintosh 87. There are some innovative tattoos and suggestions and links to other joke pages including the Unofficial Bill Gates page and the Cult of Macintosh site.
Nothing Eeensy-Weensy About The Web He's Woven
By Steve Hall
The Indianapolis Star
December 9, 1995
Steve Kremer's new business is a joke.
Or started as one, anyway.
On Friday, Kremer left his job as a producer/director at WISH (Channel 8) to begin designing Internet web sites for businesses. (Web sites are like interactive brochures, with text, graphics and sometimes music that can be downloaded by a computer user.) Why does he think the demand exists?
Because since May, up to 145,000 Internet users monthly have sampled his home page, which features parodies of Microsoft, the movie 2001, Apple's Powerbook ads and other humor. On Oct. 5, USA Today singled out his page as a "Net Site of Note."
"My page got 6,000 hits Monday, and 4,000 hits the day before that," says Kremer, who created the computer effect that transformed skinny WISH sportscaster Mark Patrick into bull necked character Dirk LaNeck. "Somewhere along the line it hit me that a lot of people probably want to get on the Internet, but don't know how."
Kremer's entrance ramp onto the cyberspace highway has been decidedly whimsical.
He wrote funny shut-down screens, switching from Microsoft's real "Please stand by while your computer shuts down" to "Please stand by while the balance of your checking account is electronically transferred to Microsoft."
Another features a reference to HAL, the renegade computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey: "Dave, are you trying to shut me down? Dave?"
Because Microsoft's Windows 95 features the theme of "Start it up," Kremer wrote the parodies "Start getting frustrated," and "Start spending money." An image of the new James Bond, Pierce Brosnan, was electronically altered to have Microsoft chief Bill Gates' head: "The name is Gates, Bill Gates," with a license "to dominate the software market."
Because several Apple Powerbooks caught on fire, Kremer's page shows an image of a Powerbook on fire with a play on its slogan, "What do you have on your Powerbook?": "I'm about to grill a couple of burgers on mine."
While such irreverence has made Kremer popular with computer users as far away as Australia, Israel, Holland, Great Britain and South America, he can't sell his parodies because of legal repercussions. But he hopes that fans note the "Kremer Internet Design" at the top of his page.
"The Internet is the wave of the future," says Kremer, who has worked at WISH since 1987. "Having a web site for a business is like putting out one brochure and people around the world seeing it."
The joke page address is:
http://www.iquest.net/~skremer/joke.html
Kremer Internet Design is:
http://www.kremer.com
MSN gives wallpaper the boot
Byline: DAVID FLYNN
The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age (Australia)
October 17, 1995
DOES Bill Gates have a sense of humour? Perhaps not, it seems, following the Microsoft Network's alleged refusal to post some tongue-in-cheek Windows wallpaper.
The image bearing the text "Out to Lunch 95: Where do you want to eat today?" was uploaded to MSN, says its creator, Bruce Koenig, but the system administrators refused to make it available for other Windows 95 users to download.
Bruce's image has found a home on the Internet, in a collection of "joke wallpaper" which takes several shots at Windows 95.
The bitmaps include a modified Windows 95 start-up screen with the words "Microsoft Macintosh 87", and "Where Do You Want To Go Today? Wherever Mr. Gates Wants Us To."
The Web page, set up by Steven Kremer, has received almost 4,000 "hits" per day. Kremer is careful with copyright on the images, his home page noting that "the blue sky, the fluffy white clouds, the sunshine, the memories of your first car and your first kiss are all copyright 1995 and registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation."
Download these bitmaps from
http://www.iquest.
net/~skremer/joke.html.
Caption: Illus: Tongue-in-cheek wallpaper ... one of several "joke wallpapers" on the Internet which upset Microsoft.
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Feel free to download any
graphic on this site to use on your personal computer. But please do not
copy on to disk, redistribute, attach e-mail, or post the graphics or text on any Web
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files.
All of the text and graphics on this Web site are Copyright ©1995-2005 Steven M.
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