“ASUS is collaborating with Lil Jon to develop a computer targeting urban youth.”
First off, I have huge issues with the phrase “targeting urban youth”. It’s such a loaded word, “targeting”. Let’s not go down that road. That said, I found it an interesting concept and decided to look into it a little further. What I discovered could turn the tech industry on its head.
ASUS
As computer makers go, ASUS hasn’t got the best brand recognition in the US, but it has grown considerably in the last few years, propelled largely by the EEE netbook that was introduced in late 2007. Prior to that, I myself was a big fan of their motherboards, but it was difficult to get a complete ASUS system. Lately, however, they have made great strides in the North American market.
Lil Jon
In the music industry, many artists become moguls, building a brand on their music and image, but few have done so as effectively as Lil Jon. He came up through the hip hop industry and became well known for the phrases “What?” “Okay!” “Yeeah!” and “Get CRUNK!” He writes, performs, and produces music. He built a small drink empire with his Little Jonathan Winery and CRUNK!!! energy drink. While he doesn’t operate his own clothing line, he did have a featured line of Oakley sunglasses. Most recently, he has begun reaching into the lucrative demographic of white nerds.
Launch Line
ASUS, in collaboration with Lil Jon, will launch the Crunkabyte line of systems in late fall, 2010. The initial release will include 2 desktop systems, 1 laptop, and 1 tablet PC. They will run a custom Linux operating system that was designed with Lil Jon’s image in mind. System sounds are samples of his voice & beats and there are a variety of themes with coordinated icons, wallpaper, and system colors. Not surprisingly, one promotes his energy drink while another features him with a chalice of Little Jonathan wine. (It actually looks pretty cool, but I couldn’t get any of the pictures to download so that I could share them here.) Here’s sample of the system sounds:
Startup and prompts: “WHAT?” followed by a low bass tone
Shutdown: “GET CRUNK!!!”
Confirmation: “Yeeah!”
The systems will all include premium speakers for optimal sound reproduction with emphasis on the low tones. The bottom row of keys on the keyboard (space, alt, ctrl, etc) will have an imitation gold foil on each system as an homage to Lil Jon’s grill.
System Internals
The most impressive and surprising product of this collaboration is a new file system. All computer operating systems employ a file system that controls the structure and layout of the hard drive. (I don’t fully understand all the details of how they work, but I know that they’re one of those things that nobody thinks about unless they’re a total nerd.) Here’s what I do understand:
Historically, data has been stored in hexadecimal, which is a base 16 numbering system. That is to say each bit can have one of 16 values (0123456789ABCDEF). A byte, which is composed of 2 bits, then, is represented in 2 characters. These 2 characters represent 256 potential values. Hex codes, a common way of representing colors in HTML, for instance, are 6-character codes. #000000 is the lowest value and translates to 00 red, 00 green, and 00 blue, resulting in black. Since each color is represented by 2 characters, there are 256 values for that color from 00 to FF. White, created from the maximum values of each color, is #FFFFFF. It helps me to think of these as the color sliders we often see for selecting colors.
Sexadecimal
Lil Jon’s file system is a base-69 numbering system that he created himself and perfected with the aid of the foremost mathematical scholars of Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, and Crunksley. A Base-69 system allows greater storage capacity, but requires a new file system to operate. This is where Canonical (the makers of Ubuntu Linux) were brought on board. Through the collaboration of this superteam, with Lil Jon at the creative helm, a truly elegant solution was devised.
In this new system, sex codes (instead of the traditional hex codes) will be used in every aspect of the system. To keep with the color codes example, for simplicity’s sake, sexadecimal will allow a whopping 4761 potential values on each color slider. The increased color resolution facilitated by this miraculous technology has necessitated the invention of new display technology, and ASUS engineers have been working tirelessly to ensure these screens would be ready in time for launch.
To avoid confusion between hexadecimal and sexadecimal systems, several new terms were created to describe capacity. Hexadecimal storage is measured in bits, bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes. Sexadecimal begins with nibbles, which have 69 possible values. Two nibbles is still referred to as a byte, but that now corresponds to 4761 values, as mentioned before. From there, we step up exponentially to Kilobytes, Hollabytes, and finally Crunkabytes.
The two desktop systems at launch will be the Crunkabyte 1, which offers 1 Crunkabyte of storage. The Crunkabyte 2 doubles this capacity. At launch, the tablet will be available with 69 Hollabytes, but a higher capacity device is expected in the first quarter of 2011.
Public Reaction
While a few critics have emerged, response from the technical and scientific communities, as well as that from consumers in general, has been overwhelmingly positive. Some groups find the line (and the concepts upon which it is built) to be offensive. When asked to explain what exactly offended them, however, they were reduced to a series of gasps and yelps, unable to speak a comprehensible word.
As consumer excitement grows, store managers are planning for an incredibly busy launch day. Best Buy has already announced that they will host a special midnight release on the as-yet-unannounced release date. There is speculation that Lil Jon himself will be appearing at one location to promote the line.