Imagine how different the tech industry might have been had Gary Kildall accepted IBM's offer, back in 1980, to license his computer operating system for…
Microsoft is denying that an alleged vulnerability affecting its Windows Media Player software, identified by a security researcher on Christmas Eve, is a security risk…
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU workers are struggling with thousands of liters of sour milk from burst cartons clogging up a central mail registry after German…
Two best friends (Hudson and Hathaway) become rivals when a clerical error results in their respective weddings being held at the same place ... on the same day.
Buzz:
Though BW is set in Boston, most of the drama is centered around Hathaway and Hudson's bridal blitz on NYC, a city that has treated Ms. Hathaway very well (Hudson, though, not so much). With this sure-fire hit and her singing-and-dancing performance in Rob Marshall's Nine, it's apparent that Hudson has her career back on track, while Hathaway can expect a busy winter promoting this movie, and perhaps enjoying an Oscar nomination for Rachel Getting Married; however, look for Candice Bergen's wedding planner to make like Miranda Priestly and truly run the events.
Haunted by strange dreams and recurring ghostly visions, Casey Beldon (Yustman) turns to a spiritual advisor (Oldman) for help. Together, they learn that Casey had a twin brother who never made it to term, and that her intended sibling is tied to a curse that requires Casey's death in order to manifest itself in our world.
Buzz:
After you watch The Unborn's trailer, perhaps you can ask yourself the following question: Is David Goyer a better screenwriter (The Dark Knight, Dark City) than director (The Invisible, Blade: Trinity)? I don't mean any aggressive disrespect, but I fail to see one shred of ingenuity in this preview, though I say the sight of a possessed Idris Elba makes him a good pick for a potential Nick Fury, should that role, uh, come to term. All that said, I must remember there's a generation or two behind me that's probably never seen The Exorcist, so here's hoping Goyer pushes beyond the usual genre devices and helps Cloverfield's Odette Yustman get her Linda Blair on. The power of Goyer compels me!
A car accident threatens to sever the already fragile bond between Clarice Johnson (Henson) and her husband, Dave (Chestnut) -- especially when they both begin to develop feelings for other people.
Buzz:
Writer T.D. Jakes is no Tyler Perry (yet), though he saw the movie adaptation of his novel Woman Thou Art Loosed become a "surprise" box-office hit back in '04. Can another one of his stories register with audiences? Meanwhile, why doesn't Jakes direct, à la Perry?
So many notable quotes, so little space to recount them -- that's the annual conundrum as we think back on the year and recall comments that stuck with us long after they were uttered. We've assembled some of those notable comments from stories we wrote and stories we read and offer them here in not-quite chronological order because we wanted to let Oracle CEO Larry Ellison have the last word.
So much for holiday spirit "It seems Ellis got fed up with Danny being obsessed with the Wii and refusing to play with him. He was told it was his turn on the Wii next, but he took it a bit too literally and used his secret weapon to sabotage the machine." -- Kerry Emsley, the mother of Danny Emsley and his 4-year-old brother Ellis, who ruined Danny's Wii by, well, weeing on it after his brother refused to share.
"It must surely be counted as a leak." -- Darren Emsley, the boys' father, who spent months trying to find the Wii for Danny, commenting that he hoped the "accident" would be covered by home-owner's insurance.
Lights! Cameras! Action! "In a funny sort of way, I now know why Britney Spears is so screwed up. I'd never been to this kind of a photo shoot before. So I flew down to La Guardia and was driven to Soho Studios, which has this cool post-industrial look, which is very good for this kind of thing. I went into this studio and immediately had a makeup person, a wardrobe person, and a person who was offering me vegetarian smoothies. And I thought, if you lived in a world where people were doing your hair, your face, dressing you and bringing you smoothies, you might really believe that you are somebody more than an average human." -- John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School and the CareGroup, in a January interview with CIO, talking about his appearance in a BlackBerry advertising campaign.
Who cares? "Let a marketing person loose for 10 minutes and they'll come up with a category. You can say UMPC or MID, what the hell's the difference?" -- Phil McKinney, then-CTO at Hewlett-Packard, expressing exasperation at the Consumer Electronics Show regarding various terminology used to describe ultramobile PCs.
Feeling Blu "As you can probably guess, all of us at Sony are feeling blue today. But that's a good feeling." -- Sony CEO Howard Stringer speaking at CES two days after Warner Bros. announced plans to back Blu-ray Disc.
But there's another view of Blu-ray "You know, Blu-ray is a bag of hurt. I don't mean from a consumer point of view -- it's great to watch movies -- but the licensing is so complex. We're waiting until things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace before we burden our customers with the cost of the licensing and the cost of the drives." -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Do no evil "While the rights they've reserved themselves are very broad, it's probably a case of their actual practice being more conservative. We just have to hope they maintain their stance of not being evil." -- Josh King, vice president for business development and general counsel at Avvo.com, a legal advice site, talking about Google's claims that its terms of service gave it a license to user content in various of its products.
Labels "All these labels -- 'geek' and 'nerd' and 'mild Asperger's -- are all getting at the same thing.... The Asperger's brain is interested in things rather than people, and people who are interested in things have given us the computer you're working on right now." -- Temple Grandin, an associate professor at Colorado State University, on the connection between people with a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome and IT professionals.
Shortage? What shortage? "We've got four 300-millimeter fabs, so we can really hose this stuff out," said Sean Maloney, executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer at Intel, explaining in June how the company planned to fix a shortage of its low-cost, low-power Atom processors. By October, the shortage was over.
A bunch of what?! "I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them" -- Linus Torvalds, with characteristic color, explaining why he's fed up with security companies hyping software vulnerabilities.
Hamilton, Madison, Jay turn in their graves "I get the sense that the court is suffering from a poor understanding of how anonymous speech works in the Internet age. I find the court's attempt to compare The Federalist Papers to the likes of penis enlargement e-mails not only wrong-headed but ultimately offensive to the reasons why we have a First Amendment." -- Ray Everett-Church, director of privacy and industry relations at e-mail marketing vendor Responsys and a critic of spammers, questioning a Virginia Supreme Court decision in September.
Ouch! That will leave a mark "When you have an object that extends from the surface of Earth to geosynchronous altitude, every satellite currently in orbit, every piece of debris, and every satellite in the future will crash into the elevator. Every one, with no exception." -- Ivan Bekey, a former NASA scientist currently with Bekey Designs, speaking at a "space elevator" conference.
Burp "It's not good to have lots of undigested products in your range. Symantec and McAfee both have indigestion." -- Websense CEO Gene Hodges on his company's plans to eschew the acquisition fervor that hit the enterprise security software market. As for whether Websense would be acquired, Hodges said that's "in the hands of the gods."
Application squirts "All you do is squirt applications to the cloud." -- Richard Payling, Capgemini vice president of global outsourcing regarding a partnership under which is company and Amazon.com will offer application development and hosting services using Amazon's infrastructure.
Woe unto the engineers "Engineers will no longer have any influence or say whatsoever in the way that their product appears to the outside world," either to end-users or IT administrators. -- Avaya president and CEO Charles Giancarlo at VoiceCon regarding the effect of a product development reorganization at his company.
From the Yahoo-Microsoft saga "Until now I naively believed that self-destructive doomsday machines were fictional devices found only in James Bond movies. I never believed that anyone would actually create and activate one in real life. I guess I never knew about [Jerry] Yang and the Yahoo Board," billionaire investor Carl Icahn, in a June 4 letter to Yahoo Board Chairman Roy Bostock, referring to a severance plan Yahoo adopted shortly after Microsoft made its acquisition bid, and which Icahn termed a poison pill measure to scare Microsoft away.
"To this day I would say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo." -- Jerry Yang on Nov. 5, during a keynote appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, shortly after the Google search ad deal collapsed and days before announcing he would step down as CEO as soon as a replacement is found.
[ For the complete saga of Microsoft's attempted takeover of Yahoo, check out InfoWorld's special report ]
Tell it, Larry! "The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
"We'll make cloud computing announcements. I'm not going to fight this thing. But I don't understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud computing other than change the wording of some of our ads. That's my view." -- Oracle CEO Larry Ellison during a meeting with analysts when he was asked what Oracle is doing about cloud computing.
Stephen Lawson, James Niccolai and Agam Shah in San Francisco; Fred O'Connor and Elizabeth Heichler in Boston; Juan Carlos Perez in Miami; Sumner Lemon in Singapore; and Jason Snell of Macworld contributed to this round up of 2008 quotes.
Imagine how different the tech industry might have been had Gary Kildall accepted IBM's offer, back in 1980, to license his computer operating system for a top-secret project. CP/M would have been the OS that shipped with the original IBM PC, and the world might never have heard the name of Kildall's competitor, who eventually accepted the contract: a Mr. Bill Gates.
For all the amazing advances that the computing industry has brought us over the years, some of its most pivotal moments are memorable for all the wrong reasons. Not every idea can be a winner, and not even Microsoft can avoid every misstep. But as they say, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it -- then again, others just keep screwing up. n the interest of schadenfreude, here is a look back at the last 20 years' worth of blunders, fumbles, also-rans, and downright disasters you may have forgotten about -- or wish you could.
New Year's is a great occasion for taking pause to reassess priorities, needs, and wants. As we enter what looks to be a trying 2009, such a pause is even more critical. IT resources will be limited and business pressures higher. But that doesn't mean you withdraw or go into reactive mode. In tough times, being clear on your priorities is even more important, as everything you do is more critical. So InfoWorld asked its CTO Council member and its cadre of expert contributors for their top New Year's resolutions to give the tech industry a list that we hope will help you make the most of your 2009 priorities.
1. Get out of IT mode. For IT managers, now is a time when the classical management skills and priorities may need to outweigh IT considerations. "Your opinions need to be part of the mix in order for your business to survive and thrive -- so put them out there," advises CTO Council member Gene Rogers, chief technologist for advanced network and space systems at Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems group.
Bob Lewis, InfoWorld Advice Line blogger and author of Keep the Joint Running: A Manifesto for 21st Century Information Technology, seconds Rogers' sentiments: "Eliminate any and all IT projects: There are no IT projects. Every project is about improving how the business operates, or what's the point?" What does that mean? Lewis explains it thusly: "If the project is considered complete when the software has been put into production, it's an IT project and needs to be redefined. If it's considered complete when the users have been trained in how to operate the new software, it's an IT project. It's a business improvement project only if it includes redefinition of how the business is supposed to run, if users are trained in how to perform their new responsibilities using the new software, and if the project isn't finished until the business is successfully operating differently and better."
2. Slay sacred cows. The difficulties projected for 2009 present a rare opportunity to attack situations that are off-limits during good times. CTO Council member Igor Shindel, an independent consultant, suggests that this year is the time to replace Microsoft Office, swap out Microsoft Exchange, or replace Oracle Database as part of an effort to reduce long-term costs. These complex technologies are hard to get rid of because organizations must accept reduced feature sets and will perceive a higher risk in letting them go. But the payoff is worth it, he says, so "this is the year to tackle these projects."
IT will also face a monetary objection to such changes, notes Jon Williams, CTO of NBC Universal's iVillage unit. That objection: The company has invested a lot in these systems, so you can't just toss them. In fact, Williams notes, IT will be under pressure to stick with such complex systems, even if they are the wrong long-term option.
3. Get smarter about IT spend and delivery. This is a perennial resolution, but it easily falls by the wayside as both technologists and business users fall in love with new capabilities from the latest and greatest whatever. "We need to bolster our emphasis on quality," notes CTO Council member Glenn Ricart, managing director of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Center for Advanced Technology. "With the budgetary cutbacks, people are being asked to do more with less, and too often the result is lower quality of delivery. That really hurts the IT organization's credibility and can start a downward spiral. It's better to do the same or slightly less but do it very well, then top management will have confidence that they'll get additional top-notch service if they add to your budget," he says.
InfoWorld Tech's Bottom Line blogger Bill Snyder has advice on two ways to accomplish this resolution. First, squeeze every IT dollar. "Make sure that any business unit or employee requesting a purchase can explain how it will contribute to profitability. Demand specifics, not generalizations," he says. Second, "hire slowly, fire even slower. It's tempting to cut costs by cutting personnel, and sometimes that's necessary. But remember that losing experienced personnel can cost a business in the long run. Institutional memory is precious."
One specific way to save money smartly is to be open to open source, advises InfoWorld Open Sources blogger Zach Urlocker. "In many cases, organizations just default to certain closed source applications or infrastructure decisions because they are not familiar with other options," he notes. Yet, open source approaches can reduce total cost by as much as 90 percent over traditional offerings. There's another benefit for staffers: "Even if the decision is made to go with closed source, staff will appreciate getting exposure to new technologies."
And whatever you do, remember that interpersonal relationships are especially key to succeeding in tough times, advises Advice Line blogger Lewis. "No matter what you're trying to accomplish, the interpersonal relationships have to work before anything useful will happen. If it's ITIL, for example, everyone with a hand in your new processes has to trust everyone else with a hand in the process, or they'll second-guess each other's work to death. This will turn even the most efficient process design into sludge. If it's offshore development, to take a second example, it won't work unless the onshore analysts and offshore developers have confidence in each others' abilities."
4. Be ready for the cloud. You're going to need to cut costs this year -- that's no secret. But you can do so in a way that prepares you for the cloud computing platforms now emerging, argues NBC Universal's Williams. "What if all IT departments cut their datacenter capacity by 20 percent in 2009 and expand back into the cloud in 2010?" he poses.
Getting ready for cloud computing will require a change in mind-set at many IT shops: letting business processes go elsewhere. So, as part of preparing to take advantage of the cloud, InfoWorld Real World SOA blogger David Linthicum recommends you promise yourself the following: "I resolve that I will not fight the movement of business processes outside of the my datacenter, as it makes sense."
5. Make a final decision on which OS to go forward with -- Mac OS X, Windows, or Ubuntu Linux -- then do it.Windows Vista was coldly received when it debuted, and for good reason. But with SP2, Vista is as stable as it will ever be, notes InfoWorld Enterprise Windows blogger J. Peter Bruzzese. So, if you're going to stick with Microsoft's OS, "start upgrading the hardware to prepare for Windows 7 eventually but get Vista going now," he advises, so you can learn the under-the-hood changes and techniques that Vista brings to Windows, and that will be the underpinnings of Windows 7.
If you're not going to stick with Windows, then jump ship in 2009 -- after all, it's now clear that Windows 7 won't be a brand-new OS but simply a better Vista, so what are you waiting for? Plus, the next Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, will also be a continuation of the current OS, so there's no reason to delay your journey down that path. Linux's stability also argues for not waiting.
Plus, Bruzzese notes, spending the money on new hardware and apps will be good for the economy: "Spend the money in 2009 when it can really help."
6. Lead on green. Green techniques -- from energy reduction to reducing the use of toxic materials -- save both the environment and money. So what's good for the planet is good for the business, and that's a string motivator in 2009.
"IT energy costs continue to grow without a corresponding increase in business value. There is a lot of pressure to reduce IT costs in 2009, and it's an easy choice between paying less to a utility and laying off experienced employees," says CTO Council member Marvin Richardson, managing director of Trexin Consulting.
Rein in energy waste. "There are plenty of steps companies can take to reduce power costs," notes Ted Samson, InfoWorld's Sustainable IT blogger. Utilities are sweetening the deal by giving rebates to aid in implementation of energy-saving technologies. "This is a real opportunity for the CTO to provide visible, popular leadership that will be appreciated by his or her company, employees, and customers. Oh, and it's the right thing to do for both ecological and economic reasons," Richardson adds.
Among the steps you can take are virtualizing your datacenter and pushing suppliers for nontoxic manufacturing methods. "Reduce travel by 20 percent and increase the videoconferencing budget by 20 percent," suggests PricewaterhouseCoopers' Ricart. Recycle your old equipment properly, such as through sales or donations to employees and charities and hiring recyclers that won't ship the materials overseas, where they end up being disassembled by hand, poisoning the people there.
At the University of Hawaii, InfoWorld contributing editor Brian Chee shows how it's done: "My first New Year's resolution is to dramatically reduce the energy footprint of my lab by retiring my older, less-efficient servers in favor of blades. Future blades will be cheaper than stand-alone servers, and the power supplies are much more efficient. Overall, I think I can cut my server rack power usage in half, especially since I'm virtualizing everything now."
7. Get serious about architecture. "Focus on enterprise architecture and governance," advises CTO Council member Jeff Gleason, enterprise architect at Aegon USA Investment Management. "During good times, we're usually too busy to worry about things like current state architecture, future-state road maps, and governance of project priorities and IT spend. Yet it's always tough times like now when we wish our enterprise architecture practice were more mature, that we didn't have so much redundancy, that system changes were easier and faster, and that project priorities are more clear. The architecture group is always talking about this stuff, but it's never until we have to cut costs that anyone pays attention."
8. Get serious about business continuity. "Resolve to have a business continuity plan in place and to have at least one full disaster prep drill during 2009," advises InfoWorld Test Center editor Curtis Franklin. "There's no reason not to have a fully developed plan, and no reason to think that your plan will work if you haven't tried it."
9. Get serious about security. "Resolve to have a full information security audit during 2009," Franklin also advises. The audit should include every application, job function, and individual that touches sensitive data, with special attention given to those touching sensitive customer data.
While IT focuses on its security, the industry as a whole needs to fix the security problems of the Internet, adds Security Adviser blogger Roger A. Grimes. "The Internet is quickly growing into the way the world works, and the criminals control much too much of it. It's time to start drawing a line in the sand and say, 'Enough is enough!' And take back our Internet."
Tech is overflowing with creative and hypermotivated people who do a lot of pretty incredible things. But they can be counted on to do some pretty silly things, too -- which is lucky for us, since high-profile pratfalls are part of what makes this industry fun to watch. Certainly 2008 had no shortage of silly goings-on.
Caught up in the Christmas spirit (and spirits), I'll toast 11 of my favorite flights of industry foolishness from the past year, and match each with a fresh brandy and egg nog. So this list is sure to get more insightful and coherent as we go along.
Microsoft advertising: Down the rabbit hole I think Microsoft's marketing and advertising people took a vow last New Year's Eve to spend all of 2008 on acid. First the "Mojave" campaign, in which the company introduced people to the coolest parts of Vista under a different name ("Mojave") and recorded the results (people liked the Mojave demo). Then the publicity trust enlisted Jerry Seinfeld to star in a series of truly strange commercials that had almost nothing to do with computers or anything else. I admit to enjoying them (exactly for their weirdness), but Microsoft clipped short its arrangement with Seinfeld after making only two spots. (Seinfeld earned $10 million for his efforts.)
The company's next big thing was the "I'm a PC" campaign, whose main message seems to be "See, really hip, creative people who do wacky things for a living use PCs, too, not just Apples." Campaign cost: $300 million. All of these ads are defenses against Apple's gains toward winning the hearts and minds of the computer-buying public, though Microsoft still controls a huge share of the consumer OS market, and an even greater share of the business market. Hey Microsoft: Spend 2009 sober; take your massive advertising budget and use it to hire the software design people you need to bring your OS back to the top of the heap.
Rumors of Steve's death... On October 3, some genius started a bogus rumor on the micro-blogging site Twitter that Apple's Steve Jobs had suffered a severe heart attack and had been rushed to a hospital. The "news" spread like wildfire on Twitter and elsewhere, bringing panic to many in the tech industry, and causing Apple stock to take a dive before quickly recovering. All in all, it was a bad day for "citizen journalism."
"New Facebook" angers many, no "Facebook Classic" in sight Social networking site Facebook got many of its members' undies in a twist earlier this year when it revamped the design of its front page. Numerous groups with cheery names like "New Facebook Blows" sprang up almost overnight, and the biggest of these, "Petition Against the 'New Facebook'," attracted more than a million members.
With the new design, users have to click a couple of times to get to their beloved Facebook apps. The old design had all of the apps listed in a prominent vertical menu on the home page. For a while Facebookers could choose the design they preferred, but the service eventually deactivated the old version.
"The new design is different, and we understand that some people will be uncomfortable with the changes," Facebook's Mark Slee announced in the site's official blog. "But over time, we think people will appreciate the advantages of the new design and the new features it offers."
Truth be told, the new Facebook looks cleaner and more usable now than it did before. Clearly Facebook intends to be more about communication between members, and not so much about accessorizing a personal profile page with messy and browser crashing trinkets à la MySpace.
A Wikipedia love story In a classic case of mixing business with displeasure, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales dumped his girlfriend, ex-Fox commentator babe Rachel Marsden, and posted the news on Wikipedia. In retaliation, Marsden put some of Wales's clothing (left at her apartment in New York) up for auction on eBay and said some snarky things about Wales in the process. Anyway, Valleywag -- the tech industry's equivalent of the National Enquirer -- broke the whole story and even unearthed some of the steamy IM conversations between Wales and Marsden.
Here's our favorite line from the Valleywag coverage: "Marsden subsequently told friends that Wales gave her feedback on her website design -- is that what kids are calling it these days? -- for 24 hours straight in a D.C. hotel." It took me about an hour to figure out what actually happened in the tragicomic affair, and I felt about 10 IQ points lighter afterward.
Another year, another "Google killer" One of the most widely anticipated new products of 2008, a search engine called Cuil, developed by four ex-Google people, was hyped (not surprisingly) as a "Google killer." The new search engine debuted, kinda sucked, and then sorta disappeared.
The first mystery was how to pronounce the product's weird name (like "cool," not "quill" or "kewl" or "cue-ill"); the second puzzle was what the name meant (allegedly an old Irish term for both "knowledge" and "hazel"), and the third and biggest stumper was why Cuil's search results had such a weak relevance quotient, to the point of being bizarre. Some first-time users reported that Cuil even had trouble yielding relevant results when searching its own name. That's just nuts.
Microsoft and Yahoo: Will they or won't they? Will Microsoft buy Yahoo? The behemoth of Redmond launched an unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover attempt of the venerable Web portal this year, an effort highlighted by a personal love note from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to the Yahoo board. Then Yahoo, which could really use a date, played hard to get for so long that Microsoft gave up, never to return. Well, not in 2008, anyway.
The failed courtship generated no small measure of frustration among Yahoo investors. Here's billionaire investor Carl Icahn in a letter to the Yahoo board of directors:
"Until now I naively believed that self-destructive doomsday machines were fictional devices found only in James Bond movies. I never believed that anyone would actually create and activate one in real life. I guess I never knew about [Jerry] Yang and the Yahoo Board."
Was Yahoo leader Jerry Yang the man who botched the deal? A lot of people think so. Maybe Yang did, too. He stepped down as Yahoo CEO in November.
Sprint: What if roadies ran the world? It's funny how the advertising industry has conditioned us not to expect to find any connection between the subject matter of ads and the products they promote. My favorite example this year (other than this one from Gatorade) was a Sprint commercial that imagined a world in which roadies (the guys that lift the amps and pull the wires for rock bands) run everything--in the ad, an airline. I giggled at the 30-second spot, but it could just as well have been used to pitch fish sticks or odor eaters. Anyway, here it is.
A few hiccups in political tech this year In tech terms, 2008 was a bad year for the Republicans. While the Obama campaign was rewriting the rules for campaigning and fund-raising on the Web, John McCain and his people made one gaffe after another. The first came when Mr. McCain himself cemented his "out-of-touch old guy" image by admitting that he didn't use a computer and hadn't much need for e-mail either. Not that he wasn't trying: "I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself," McCain told the New York Times.
Meanwhile, the Republican nominee's running mate, Sarah Palin, hewed to the campaign's Luddite theme by conducting official business via her private Yahoo Mail account -- an account that an interloper hacked into. Some of her e-mail messages were published on a Web site called Wikileaks.
Later, in the heat of the campaign, McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin credited his boss with having brought the BlackBerry into being. What McCain really had done was some work in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that arguably helped create market conditions in which the BlackBerry thrived. But why split hairs?
Matters grew even dicier when the GOP decided to sell off the computers and smartphones that the McCain campaign had provided to staffers for use during the campaign. Problem was, the McCain folks forgot to wipe the data from some of the BlackBerry phones it sold, and several went out the door with sensitive information still on them, including the phone numbers of several prominent political figures who had worked with the campaign.
Obama's campaign wasn't perfect either. The nominee's attempt to be the first candidate in history to announce his choice for vice president via text message, uh, failed. The announcement that Joe Biden was the guy went out in the middle of the night on August 24, but not before the news had been leaked to and reported by CNN reporter John King.
Princess Leia reporting from Chicago for CNN CNN claimed a breakthrough on election night by "beaming in" a 3D image of reporter Jessica Yellin to a CNN studio in New York to talk to commentator Wolf Blitzer. You know, like in Star Wars. Yellin spent half of her air time going on about how it worked and how cool it was, explaining that she was actually inside a tent in Chicago's Grant Park where 35 cameras spun around her taking images that were processed by 20 computers.
But it wasn't really a hologram. Rather, Yellin's image was simply overlaid on top of the CNN broadcast feed. When Blitzer stood in the New York studio and said "You're a terrific hologram," he was talking to thin air.
The year in iPhone apps Apple won't sell just any piece-of-crap iPhone app at its App Store. Still, a couple of things in 2008 left me a little confused about the vetting process used to decide which apps make it in and which don't. On the one hand, you can buy Cow Toss, an app for your iPhone that lets you throw cows around the device's screen. But on the other, you can't buy iBoobs, perhaps the best use of the iPhone's accelerometer feature I've seen to date.
Never mind, though. You can still buy an app called Hold On, whose sole purpose is to time how long you can keep your fingertip pressed on a large white button on a red screen.
For a while there, the App Store was selling an application called I Am Rich, which sold for -- get this -- $1,000. The app did basically nothing other than plant a red jewel thing on the iPhone's menu screen, sending to all the world the message (as creator Armin Heinrich puts it) that "I can afford to buy a $1000 iPhone app" or (maybe more likely) "I am profoundly stupid." Yet something like eight people set aside their Neiman Marcus catalogs long enough to purchase the app--a bargain at one-third the price of a limited-edition Jay Strongwater Nutcracker Figurine. Developer Heinrich told the Los Angeles Times that he earned $5,880 for his trouble, while Apple snapped up a tidy $2,520, its standard 30 percent cut of app sales.
Effective employee relations during difficult times In perhaps the e-mail dummheit of the year, the media consulting firm Carat accidentally shared with its employees both the news of impending layoffs, and the cool and calculated ways it intended to communicate them. The e-mail message, which was intended only for senior managers, included a PowerPoint slide show with talking points (obtained by AdAge). From the talking points:
"If you would like to go home today and come back tomorrow to clean out your desk or office, you are free to do so. We would like you to meet with your manager following our meeting to transition your work. We will be communicating to your team today. Your manager will be contacting clients. We ask that you do not contact your clients to discuss this situation."
The e-mail was sent out by Carat's top HR exec in New York. I can only imagine the scene: panic, screaming, high heels running down a well-appointed hallway toward the IT office. The company's IT department tried to pull back the wayward e-mail, but failed.
And on and on...until next year So that's about all the dopey tech moments I could remember from 2008. I'm sure I've neglected a few good ones, so please chime in in the Comments section to relive some more special moments from 2008. At this point 2009 looks like it's going to be a tough year in tech (and everywhere else), but here's hoping that we can have a few laughs along the way, and that it's not all gallows humor. Happy New Year, everybody.
Microsoft is denying that an alleged vulnerability affecting its Windows Media Player software, identified by a security researcher on Christmas Eve, is a security risk for PC users.
On a company blog Monday, Microsoft said the claims posted on SecurityFocus's Bugtraq site on Dec. 24 that a bug in Windows Media Player 9, 10 or 11 on Windows XP or Vista allowed remote code execution are "false." Dec. 24 is known in much of the world as Christmas Eve, the night before the annual Christmas holiday.
Microsoft acknowledged that the code posted on Bugtraq does crash Windows Media Player, Microsoft's software for playing music and video files, but the application can be restarted "right away" and doesn't affect the rest of the system.
Microsoft also in the blog entry criticizes the security researcher, identified as Laurent Gaffié on the Bugtraq post, for not reporting the vulnerability to the company when it was first found so the claim could be dismissed earlier.
"If he had, we would’ve done the exact same investigation we just completed," according to the blog entry. "When we were done, we would have let them know what we found, asked him if he thinks we might have missed something, continued the investigation if there was more information and ultimately closed the case if we didn’t find a vulnerability. This is how we handle all of the cases we investigate with responsible researchers every year."
Microsoft said it began investigating the report of the vulnerability as soon as it was posted late Christmas Eve, and that researchers worked over the holiday period to look into the situation.
Microsoft ultimately discovered that the so-called vulnerability was part of "ongoing code maintenance" and that it's already been addressed in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. Microsoft plans to address the problem in future versions of its software.
Call it the "oh-no second." You know -- the interval between clicking the Send button on a private e-mail and realizing you just cc'd the entire universe.
But it's not just e-mail. Thanks to the ease, speed, and reach of technology, we now have the potential to be bigger doofuses in front of more people than at any other time in history.
For example, nothing says "I am a professional" more than intimate messages from loved ones popping up on screen during a presentation to the board. Then there are the pricey pocket-size gadgets that always seem to wind up in the swimming pool, the washing machine, or worse. Don't forget about social networks that allow you to get up close and personal with the mucous membranes of complete strangers. And if you're wearing a wireless microphone while you read this, turn it off now. You'll thank us later.
Here's a comforting thought: Whatever mortifying things you've done, somebody else has probably done worse. In fact, following are ten examples of real people who have been shamed by technology, along with some ways you can avoid a similar fate -- lest you end up in articles like this one.
Tech Embarrassment 1: Bad husband, no nookie Making snide sexual comments about someone in an e-mail and then accidentally sending it to them is embarrassing. Making snide sexual comments about your wife's colleagues -- and accidentally copying her boss on the message -- is a recipe for unemployment...if not celibacy.
Mike, a book author in New York, learned that the hard way.
"I was writing about a Christmas party thrown by my wife's employer," he says. "She's a professor of nursing, and they had an annual 'Nurses Ball' for faculty and student nurses. I sent one of my frequent 'what we're doing now' e-mails to several friends, and I accidentally included the dean of the nursing school where my wife taught. I jokingly referred to the party as the annual 'balling of the nurses.'"
In his defense, Mike says he was taking medication at the time. As for the dean: "I don't believe she was at all happy with me," he writes, "which may be why my wife no longer teaches there.'"
How to avoid having this happen to you: Before you send your pharmaceutically enhanced e-mail, try on a pair of Google Mail Goggles, which make you solve simple math problems before sending late-night Gmail missives.
Tech Embarrassment 2: Is that a laser pointer, or are you just happy to see me? You can probably think of many things that you don't want to see displayed on a wall of a classroom, but there's one thing in particular that you don't want to see ten times larger than life.
Karen, a technology instructor in Texas, was showing a roomful of teachers how easy it was to get onto the Apple Learning Interchange. She writes:
"My computer desktop was being projected up on a 5-by-5-foot screen. I started typing the Apple Web address in my browser. Unfortunately, I mistyped one little letter -- and suddenly there appeared lots and lots of mad, male porn on the screen. The faster I closed the boxes, the faster new ones appeared. My copresenter was laughing too hard to help me."
After a few seconds (which she says seemed like a few years), Karen managed to turn off the projector. Fortunately, the audience was amused. Maybe they learned a few things.
How to avoid having this happen to you: Bookmark the URLs you need before you get up in front of the crowd. And bone up on your Ron Jeremy jokes, just in case.
Tech Embarrassment 3: The audience is listening Christopher Buttner, founder of PRThatRocks in Northern California, had just finished a two-hour speaking engagement in front of a large university crowd when he dashed off to the loo for a long-awaited respite. With his wireless microphone still on.
"I had to go so badly that when I made it to the urinal, I let out an incredibly loud moan of pleasure, augmented by the sound of streaming water-on-water," he writes. "The wireless lavalier mic I was wearing was still broadcasting live through the PA system in the lecture hall. My lecture, and subsequent moment of relief, was also being recorded."
When he returned to the hall, Buttner received a standing ovation. And, apparently, immortality. "I think my moaning sound sample, and various water-on-water audio clips, are used in a sound library somewhere at a major digital recording institute in Northern California," he says.
How to avoid having this happen to you: If you can't remember to unclip the mic, be sure to strap on a Motorman's Friend.
Tech Embarrassment 4: Your cell phone is not a flotation device We don't know what it is about smart phones, but they seem magnetically attracted to bodies of water -- particularly in the bathroom.
Patti Wood, a motivational speaker in Georgia brave enough to use her full name, writes:
"I was in a hotel room, talking to my sister on the cell phone while I put on makeup to give a speech. I got mascara in my eye, so I reached over the toilet to get some tissue. Sure enough, I blinked, and the cell phone dropped into the toilet. I reached in and grabbed it soaking wet, and managed to dry it off. It is still my cell phone. My sister still teases me about talking on the phone near the toilet."
Not to be outdone, Jill, a chef (and CrackBerry addict) in Chicago, says she was on a flight home and really had to use the facilities. So, she...
"...went to the lav and sat down, and heard a disheartening 'thunk.' It was my BlackBerry hitting the airplane toilet -- never to return to my hands. In my confusion and rushing to make the flight, I had slipped it into my back pocket before getting on the plane, and I forgot to take it out."
Fortunately, she had both insurance and current backups of all her data. Less than a day later, she was up and cracking again.
How to avoid having this happen to you: When you really gotta go, leave the phone behind. And be sure to back up your mobile data daily, just in case.
Tech Embarrassment 5: When you animate e-mail, the terrorists win Generally it's a bad idea to send e-mail with cute little animations embedded. But if you must send e-mail with cute little animations, don't do it the day after a national tragedy.
Neal, an executive with an Internet consulting firm in Georgia, shares a story about working for a small midwestern Web agency in 2001 that had just opened an office in New York:
"We were planning to have an open house in early October. The e-mail invitation was scheduled to go out on September 12 (yes, one day after 9/11). That morning I told the owner's secretary not to send the invitation because nobody was in the mood for a party in New York. I was overruled, and the secretary pressed the Send button. The invitation embedded a small animation: An airplane leaving Milwaukee and flying to New York City -- directly toward the Twin Towers."
Within a minute the phones started ringing. Angry e-mail poured in. Neal says the company disabled the animation, but it was too late. The party never happened, and the New York office closed shortly thereafter.
How to avoid having this happen to you: Did we mention that it's a bad idea to send e-mail with animations inside?
Tech Embarrassment 6: Change your wiki ways Getting caught "sprucing up" your own Wikipedia entry is embarrassing. Getting caught doing it for your girlfriend -- and then breaking up with her via Wikipedia -- can only mean one thing: You're Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, founder of the online encyclopedia.
"You are the sleazebag I always suspected you were, and [I] should have listened more carefully to my gut instincts -- and to my friends. No, in fact, you are much, much worse than I ever expected. You are an absolute creep, and it was a colossal mistake on my part to have gotten involved with you....There is nothing good left to say whatsoever. Goodbye Jimmy, and good riddance."
For the record, Wales denies giving Marsden special treatment. We suspect she doesn't think it was all that special either.
How to avoid having this happen to you: 1. Don't date Jimmy Wales. 2. Don't date Rachel Marsden. 3. And if you must date either of these people, don't leave dirty laundry behind.
Tech Embarrassment 7: Good morning...now please clean out your desk Firing people via e-mail is truly tacky. Writing a sample fired-by-e-mail message for the bosses to review -- and then sending it to the entire company instead -- is something worthy of "The Office."
"I have some difficult news which that affects you and your position with the company. Based on the continued reduction in our client's' spend ...we no longer have a role for you. ...Your last day with the company will be _____________. If you would like to go home today and come back tomorrow to clean out your desk or office, you are free to do so."
According to Roger Matus, author of the Death By Email blog and CEO of InBoxer, that message was to be sent to 10 percent of the employees at New York's Carat agency after approval by senior management. Instead, everybody got it -- along with detailed charts, PowerPoint slides, and strategy memos for the as-yet-unannounced companywide reorg.
Did we mention that the person who sent it was the company's "Chief People Officer"? We're guessing there's at least one person at Carat who was asked to clean out her desk.
How to avoid having this happen to you: Get an enterprisewide e-mail management system from a company like InBoxer or Permessa. And, really, drop the cute job titles -- it isn't 1998 anymore.
Tech Embarrassment 8: Don't show, don't tell When your computer is hooked up to the big projector in the room, you want to give off a professional impression. That doesn't include intimate chat with your lover boy.
Laura, a tattoo artist in Pennsylvania, was in a computer training class when she decided to check her e-mail.
"Halfway through [my] reading a scandalous e-mail from a then-boyfriend, someone said, 'Um...you probably want to get off of that,'" she writes. "I forgot that the computer I was using was the 'sample' screen broadcast in front of the whole a
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For all the amazing advances that the computing industry has brought us over the years, some of its most pivotal moments are memorable for all the wrong reasons. Not every idea can be a winner, and not even Microsoft can avoid every misstep. But as they say, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it -- then again, others just keep screwing up. n the interest of schadenfreude, here is a look back at the last 20 years' worth of blunders, fumbles, also-rans, and downright disasters you may have forgotten about -- or wish you could.