It's true. The Linux Foundation saw those successful I'm a Mac commercials, and Jerry Seinfeld playing with Bill Gates, and they wanted in. So they're having a video contest that will try and showcase "just what Linux means to those who use it, and hopefully inspires many to try it."

That means you, the Linux user at home, will get to submit a video that rivals what Apple and Microsoft's multi-million dollar ad agencies have had years to hone and perfect with focus groups and trained, funny actors. But that's the beauty of the penguin, right? Grassroots development, supported by a passionate community of users, all topped off by a network of cranky forum dwellers who'll attack anything negative written about their OS within milliseconds of its publication.

The winner of the I'm Linux contest will receive a free (as in beer) trip to Tokyo to participate in the Linux Foundation Japan Linux Symposium in October 2009. The winning video will be screened at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco on April 8, 2009.

Novell actually did this already back at BrainShare in 2007, but we'll see if the community at large can do them one better:

[Linux Foundation via Slashdot]

The offending evidence was metadata found in the images of the PC user featured on the “I’m a PC” web site. The data exposed the fact that the images were produced using Macs running Adobe Creative Suite 3.

Microsoft has since responded to the controversy, saying in a statement that "as is common in almost all campaign workflow, agencies and production houses use a wide variety of software and hardware to create, edit and distribute content, including both Macs and PCs."

They then scrubbed the metadata from the imagery.

We recently asked you guys and gals if advertising could make Microsoft "hip." The answer, it appears, is yes—so long as Redmond is creating said advertising on a Mac. [Digital Daily]

Ad work and post processing are more often than not done on Macs, so this is nothing special. Just a footnote in the campaign that could have been one more notch on Microsoft's side had they been able to claim that these ads were made on Windows. – JC