Rich Trenholm
Rich Trenholm writes about digital cameras and other technology, except when he's writing about films, music and comics. He does not drink tea and never has.
Wednesday 1 October 2008, 11:58am
I'll shoot the camera next time: James Bond and the eBay affair
If the product placement crowbarred into Casino Royale wasn't jarring enough, just wait for Quantum of Solace. While the second trailer has this Bond fan salivating, I'm not enjoying the advertising campaign gearing up to plaster Daniel Craig's meat-pie mug across adverts for watches, cars and washing powders. Apparently James Bond's favourite airline is Virgin Atlantic -- remember Richard Branson's smug cameo in Casino Royale?
If you were wondering about 007's favourite camera, it's probably not a Sony -- we sense the new, no-nonsense Bond has no time for proprietary memory-stick nonsense -- and probably not a Nikon Coolpix. Because as The Sun reports, someone in the security services who's less efficient than Commander Bond has flogged their Coolpix on eBay without wiping it first.
Where the report says 'Click on the slideshow below to see some of the items on the memory', don't bother -- it's not pictures from the actual camera, it's a load of stock images representing the things found: a fingerprint to represent lost biometric data, a stack of files to represent secret files, and so on. These files reportedly included detailed files on suspected terrorists -- which is all of us, I think.
The camera arrived in the hands of a deliveryman, who quickly contacted the police, presumably after a quick sale to SMERSH fell through because all its cash had been tied up in sub-prime mortgages. SPECTRE wasn't even interested, because these days stealing secret files and nuclear warheads is a bit of a dead end -- any self-respecting cabal of evil geniuses with no conscience or humanity knows the real money to be made these days is in finance.
Update: Jack White and Alicia Keys' theme song 'Another Way to Die' is putting the fizz into a Coke ad, while Swatch has a range of Bond villain-themed watches, and Sony is making 700 limited edition 007 laptops -- see what they did there -- that cost three grand each, alongside the Mission for a Million range of Bond-themed gadgets aaargh jeebus make it stop!
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