Want to create a "Happy Birthday" or "Congratulations" banner? Want to skip all the "how do I get a large font to print sideways?" stuff? The command line "banner" command may help. It allows you to create a sideways message that you can open in TextEdit, print out and (with a bit of help from scissors and scotch tape) hang from the rafters.

The banner command defaults to an old style text width of 132 characters, so you'll want to tell it to keep that width down to 72 or 75 if you're going to use TextEdit's default font. (You can always play with the font sizes in TextEdit and the width in the banner command if you want.) Use the -w flag to set the width and put the text you want to bannerize in a string. The bit about "open -f" pipes the results into TextEdit.

banner -w 72 "Happy 75th Birthday" | open -f

Microsoft's "The WOW Starts Now!" Vista promotion campaign has taken just about every computer and technology venue by storm. Everyone from the likes of Best Buy to Bob's Computers has at least some kind of hanging banner, floor signage or postcard handouts featuring the mind-numbing array of Vista flavors, but we're curious as to who actually designed all this promo material. Filippo Corti at the Mac Blog (crummy Google translation to English here) snapped this pic which features what must be a MacBook alongside four of the major versions of Vista. Considering that Vista's EULA forbids virtualizing any versions besides Business and Ultimate, this either amounts to a grossly mis-leading advertisement or a fox sly, pro-Apple designer among sheep.

[Update: Right on cue, some debate as to whether this is actually a MacBook or even a piece of Apple hardware at all has ensued. Some eagle-eyed readers have pointed out that the side ports actually say iBook, and we tend to agree. Still, this looks like a piece of iconic Apple hardware, and Microsoft could have made a more distinctive choice.]

Our good friends at Engadget came across this picture of a 2006 WWDC banner in Moscone Center (that' where WWDC takes place in sunny SF). So, what does this banner tell us? Well, that thing that looks like a G5 tower probably contains an Intel chip (I assume) which might be 64 bit (hence the 64 bit logo). We can also see the subtle leopard print on the OS X disc, which isn't as obnoxious as I thought it might me.

Check out the Engadget post for more pictures and share your thoughts in the comments.