This image was lost some time after publication.

It's hard to recruit the software engineers of tomorrow when your corporate image elicits visions of pocket protectors and blue screens of death, not rooftop foam parties and drunken nights aboard a corporate jet. To stop trendy Web 2.0 startups from stealing its best minds, Microsoft is pretending its the hip company we all know it's not. Its Hey-Genius campaign, awash with hipster kitsch and perpetual MIDI noise generation, invites young geeks to tour "the-not-so-little startup company up here in the great Northwest."

Ignore the endearing Flash animations and the cloud puff creature spouting, "Genius, we love you. So we wrote you this haiku. Refrigerator," while relaxing in a jacuzzi. Once you get pas that, it's just a job site with message boards and other helpful nonsense. Bill and Steve, take a memo: Nothing about Web 2.0 is supposed to be actually useful.