Saturday, October 20, 2007

A kiss

a kiss is what it takes, a touch as soft as the feathers,
fragerance of her hair all wet and the heaven around!!!! A moment worth
dying for .... a moment worth another life....... a moment worth a
million memories




The pain of losing something .. sometimes it becomes so blinding...
u pretend as if nothing is wrong, but it tears you away... you try to
be normal but u dont behave normal... u broken into pieces... and u see
urself as a mess... a black and white sketch ... made of broken
lines!!!!!

cheers Aurobindo!!
Enjoy!!

Design & Effects Sessions

Design and Effects Sessions

Learn best practices for design in your choice of several hands-on sessions – Coverage includes interaction design; using Flash with Ajax; avoiding cross-browser issues; adding custom fonts with sIFR; Canvas; merging Ajax with accessibility; Silverlight and more. You’ll also hear a first-hand account of common pitfalls to avoid when developing enterprise Ajax applications; and find out what design patterns will ensure a ruined user experience.
# Anti-patterns: Designing for a Poor User Experience
Design Patterns and Animation with jQuery
# Flash vs. Ajax: Strengths and Weaknesses and How to Best Utilize it in Projects
# Learning to Love Forms
# Light up the Web with Microsoft Silverlight
# OpenLaszlo 4.0 - Java ME, Ajax and beyond
# Ruining the User Experience
# Stylesheet-Based Behaviors: Motivation, Challenges and Implementation



•Anti-patterns: Designing for a Poor User Experience with Bill Scott, Ajax Evangelist, Yahoo!

Sometimes it is most instructive to look at design patterns in reverse - as a set of anti-patterns. In this new talk, Bill explores the common mistakes that designers & developers make when attempting to craft a rich web experience. Bill uses counter-examples from consumer facing web sites (both inside & outside of Yahoo!) as well as from enterprise web applications to illustrate the right way to design. You will learn:

* • The underlying principles that frame good design
• Common patterns that illustrate poor choices in design
• A set of anti-patterns that can help web authors refactor to a good solution
• A vocabulary for approaching design and how to use Ajax & Flash to design rich web experiences and more.

•Design Patterns and Animation with jQuery with Paul Bakaus, System Engineer, New Identity Agency

Do you remember the old “Web 1.0” way of user interactions? Now, with smart animations that work cross-browser and are safe in large applications, we can support all user interactions. Along with the Web 2.0 wave with all cool Ajax effects possible, it’s absolutely essential to focus on user interaction with your web interface.

In this session, you will learn about natural design and animation patterns in web applications – Learn what to keep in mind when trying to animate in large scale applications, and get a demonstration of jQuery UI’s prebuild effects, jQuery’s user interface solution for building rich web applications.

In this session, you will learn:

* How to animate using JavaScript/jQuery;
* What design patterns are and where you should use them;
* How to separate markup from content;
* How to deal with performance issues.

•Flash vs. Ajax: Strengths and Weaknesses and How to Best Utilize it in Projects with Geoff Stearns, Flash Engineer, YouTube

Flash can help you extend Ajax applications beyond the limitations of what browsers can handle – but its often misused. In this talk, YouTube Flash engineer Geoff Stearns demonstrates effective use of Flash when building hybrid Flash/Ajax Web apps, and discusses best practices when using Flash in a modern Web application. Geoff will also cover techniques that can improve the usability of your Flash and Ajax projects. During this session, you will learn:

* • Optimal use cases for Flash;
• Common examples of overuse or abuse of Flash;
• How to integrate Flash seamlessly with an Ajax application;
• Strategies for making your Flash and Ajax apps and websites more usable with browser back button tools, deep linking, and search engine optimization.

•Learning to Love Forms with Aaron Gustafson, Founder, Easy! Designs LLC


Forms are the central component of most websites and all web applications, yet few people take the time to build them correctly. Getting it right could mean the difference between people finding your site or application useful and them leaving disappointed with the experience. In this session, design expert Aaron Gustafson explores forms from top to bottom, examining how they work and how their components can be incorporated with other elements to maximize accessibility, improve semantics, and allow for more flexible styling. You will learn:

* • Basic form building blocks;
• Markup for common form components;
• Error, warning, and formatting messages;
• Form styling and its implications;
• Browser oddities with certain form controls;
• Best practices for form manipulation with JavaScript and Ajax.

•Light up the Web with Microsoft Silverlight with Peter Laudati, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft

Users continue to expect more of the Web. Many sites now feature active animations and media elements, without breaking the browser navigation metaphor or requiring the user to endure long and often complex installations. Microsoft provides a broad spectrum of tools to help developers build applications that target the Web and the desktop. However, a new blended segment is emerging that includes characteristics of both – providing rich experiences and incorporating media elements seamlessly inside the browser. Microsoft Silverlight (the technology formerly known as WPF/E) is a brand new solution that equips developers to create visually stunning, interactive applications that run on multiple browsers and operating systems and are painlessly deployed to the end users.

In this session, you’ll learn all about Silverlight from a developer’s perspective, including how to build rich, interactive applications using Visual Studio, as well as Microsoft’s powerful new designer tool, Expression Blend. You’ll also see how to create dynamic experiences with the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), how to manipulate the overall application or experience with code, and how to retrieve data and media from a Web service and incorporate it all into a Silverlight application.

In this session, you will learn:

* • How to build rich, interactive applications with Visual Studio and Expression Blend;
• How to create dynamic experiences with XAML;
• Application and experience manipulation with code;
• How to incorporate Web service data and media into Silverlight applications.

•OpenLaszlo 4.0 - Java ME, Ajax and beyond with Max Carlson, co-founder, Laszlo Systems & OpenLazlo.org

OpenLaszlo 4.0 released earlier this year with support for both Ajax and Flash as runtime platforms. Developers can now choose the best runtime technology without being tied to any single proprietary technology. Join Max Carlson, co-founder of Laszlo Systems and OpenLaszlo.org, as he reviews OpenLaszlo 4.0 and details the new Java ME and DHTML support. You’ll learn:

* • The risks and rewards of moving to DHMTL and Ajax as a runtime;
• What’s on the plate for future releases;
• And much more.

•Ruining the User Experience with Aaron Gustafson, Founder, Easy! Designs LLC


With the exploding popularity of DOM Scripting, Ajax and JavaScript in general, it's important to know what to do -- and what not to do -- when dealing with these technologies. This session walks you through several real-world examples, pointing out common mistakes that hinder usability, accessibility, and search while teaching you ways to avoid them altogether, either programmatically or simply by altering the way you think about JavaScript-based interactivity.

In this session, you will learn:

* • How to meet your users' needs and expectations in a progressively-enhanced way;
• Common mistakes in interaction design;
• Progressive enhancement as a concept;
• How to deliver a layered interface;
• Progressive enhancement with CSS;
• Progressive enhancement with JavaScript.

•Stylesheet-Based Behaviors: Motivation, Challenges and Implementation with Dan Yoder, CEO & CTO ZeraWeb and Vixby.com, Cruiser JavaScript Library author

This session reviews the concept and history of behaviors in Web applications and introduces the benefits of a stylesheet-based approach. Expert Dan Yoder focuses using this approach to support the separation of structure, content, and appearance in Web applications, and details a real-life implementation of stylesheet-based behaviors. You will hear about:

* • The challenges and design decisions involved in implementing stylesheet behaviors;
• How to use advanced features of the DOM API and the Prototype library;
• Lessons learned for testing cross-browser rendering;
• How design decisions can help manage the increasing complexity of the implementation;
• Tradeoffs in using stylesheet-based behaviors;
• Examples of behavioral styles in real-world applications and more.


cheers Aurobindo

courtesy@ TechTarget

Frameworks

Frameworks Sessions: Client-Side | Server-Side | Emerging Frameworks

With all the options out there, how do you know which framework is the right one for your project? How can you keep up with new releases and updates? Are you confident you know which features you need to look for? The Ajax Experience features more than 20 sessions covering client-side frameworks, server-side frameworks and emerging frameworks including jMaki, jQuery, Dojo, DWR, Prototype, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Scriptaculous, qooxdoo and more.

# Advanced jQuery
# Advanced Prototype
# Ajax on Struts: Coding an Ajax Application with Struts 2
# Beyond XHR: Taking Ajax Offline with Google Gears
# Building Rich JavaScript Database Apps with Jester
# Design Patterns and Animation with jQuery
# Doubling Down on the Open Web
# Dynamic JavaServer Faces
# EXT: Extend the Web
# Fast, Beautiful, Easy: Building Ajax Applications with the Google Web Toolkit
# Hands-on DWR
# Intro to Jester
# Intro to jQuery
# Intro to Prototype
# Jester: Hands-on Tutorial
# jMaki: Creating Ajax Application Made Easy
# OpenAjax Alliance - OpenAjax Hub 1.0 (And more!)
# qooxdoo
# Reaching the Entire World: Accessibility and Internationalization with Dojo
# Script.aculo.us
# Struts on Ajax: Retrofitting Struts with Ajax Taglibs

Client--Side Frameworks


•Advanced jQuery
If you’re already a jQuery user (Or, after attending the Intro to jQuery talk), come to this session and take knowledge to the next level. In this presentation, jQuery founder John Resig takes a look at complex development scenarios that can be simplified with jQuery.

In this session you will learn how to:

* • Use jQuery and various plugins to create an advanced wizard;
* • Implement complex form and navigation into your applications;
* • Add advanced Ajax interactions and more.

• Advanced Prototype
This talk continues the presentation begun in “Introduction to Prototype,” demonstrating more advanced features of the Prototype library.

In this session, you will learn:

* • How to write libraries in the Prototype style;
• How to combine Prototype with other libraries;
• Rails’ support for Prototype;
• How to unit Testing Prototype-based applications.

• Design Patterns and Animation with jQuery
Do you remember the old “Web 1.0” way of user interactions? Now, with smart animations that work cross-browser and are safe in large applications, we can support all user interactions. Along with the Web 2.0 wave with all cool Ajax effects possible, it’s absolutely essential to focus on user interaction with your web interface.

In this session you will learn about natural design and animation patterns in web applications – Learn what to keep in mind when trying to animate in large scale applications, and get a sneak preview of Interface 2, jQuery’s effect solution, which lets you separate markup from content by using external stylesheets for animation.

In this session, you will learn:


* How to animate using jQuery/Interface;
* What design patterns are and where you should use them;
* How to separate markup from content;
* How to deal with performance issues.

•Doubling Down on the Open We
Nearly a full year in the making, Dojo 1.0 is again enabling new classes of application to migrate to the web from the desktop, and increasingly, from other closed browser-hosted technologies. Pushing on the edges of what's possible has always been an explicit goal of Dojo and this talk examines the relationship between proprietary technologies, the browsers, and the client and server-side tools (particularly those supported by Dojo) which are on the minds of web application developers today. What do we need from Open Web technologies in the near future to continue to deliver better experiences? Does having a "market" for browsers help or hurt, particularly with IE7's weak showing? And where do we go from here?

•Intro to jQuery
jQuery is a concise open source JavaScript Library used for Document Object Model (DOM) traversal, event handling, Ajax requests, and animations. Whether you’re new to JavaScript entirely or experienced with JavaScript but looking to shorten and simplify your code, jQuery is a framework you need to be familiar with. In this introduction you’ll gain fundamental knowledge on how to use jQuery to write smaller code, faster.

During this session, framework founder John Resig provides a real-time demo and hands-on walk-through on writing an animated Accordion widget and Ajax to-do list from scratch.

You will learn:

* • A basic overview of jQuery;
• How to develop a number of common-case widgets;
• Using jQuery to handle DOM, Event, Animations, and Ajax interactions.

• Intro to Prototype
Prototype is one of the leading JavaScript libraries around, and serves as foundation to many popular JavaScript frameworks. Any Web developer wanting to dramatically reduce the time they spend on scripting while enhancing their scripts' readability and portability will benefit from this session.

Learn to simplify Ajax development with Prototype through a series of real-world examples. Along the way, learn to code in Prototype's modern JavaScript style, taking advantage of Prototype's extensions to JavaScript's object model.

In this session, you will learn how to:


* • Use Ajax.Request to manage XMLHTTPRequest;
• Automatically update pages with Ajax.Updater;
• Poll with PeriodicalExecuter;
• Manage forms with Form.serialize;
• Respond to inputs with Event.observe;
• Simplify DOM updates with Insertion;
• Use JSON for parameter passing;
• Define classes with Class.create and Object.extend;
• Use Ruby-inspired extensions to the JavaScript object model, such as Array.each.

• Reaching the Entire World: Accessibility and Internationalization with Dojo
New interaction paradigms and complex user interface controls of Ajax have raised concerns about access and usability for users of all backgrounds and abilities. Client-side JavaScript code may assume certain language or cultural conventions, alienating vast audiences. Graphical and mouse-based user interaction is often assumed, preventing use by keyboard or assistive technology users.

Making applications accessible to all users isn't just the right thing to do, it addresses business needs and, in some cases, government requirements. Now that Ajax applications are mainstream and replacing traditional 'fat' clients, the responsibility is even more significant. With the emergence of increasingly complex Ajax patterns, client-side logic, and rich web-based user interfaces, it is insufficient to address accessibility and internationalization using traditional methods like ALT attributes and server-side templating. New Ajax technologies, such as those based on the W3C ARIA spec, must be realized.

In this session, Adam and Becky review the issues and provide best practices for building accessible and globalized Ajax applications today, including the new W3C Accessible Rich Internet Application (ARIA) specification. This and other strategies used to provide full accessibility and globalization in the Dojo Toolkit will be shown.

In this session you will learn how to:


* • Techniques to make web applications more inclusive;
• To identify issues disabled users have with Web-based applications and understand how Ajax complicates matters;
• How the W3C Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specification addresses some of these concerns;
• How to avoid coding practices which might alienate users speaking different languages or belonging to different cultures;
• How the Dojo toolkit treats accessibility and internationalization as a basic requirement.

• Script.aculo.us

script.aculo.us is arguably the most popular effects and widgets library for Ajax. Learn how to make Ajax more usable and beautiful with script.aculo.us.

This session will explore how you can povide advanced user interactions in a portable way.

In this session you will learn how to:


* • Add drag and drop to web applications;
• Make web content drag-sortable;
• Add slider to web applications;
• Create standard effects;
• Create custom effects;
• Simplify user interaction with auto-completion.

Server-Side Frameworks

• Ajax on Struts: Coding an Ajax Application with Struts 2
Ajax libraries like Yahoo User Interface (YUI) and Dojo provide great support for writing user interfaces, but a UI still needs to interact with a business logic and data access layer. Rich applications need a rich business layer.

In this session, , we look at writing a new Struts 2 application from square one, using the YUI Library on the front end, and Struts 2 on the backend. YUI provides the glitz and the glamour, and Struts 2 provides the dreary business logic, input validation, and text formatting.

In this session you will learn:


* • Basics of the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) Library;
* • Business services Struts can provide to an Ajax UI;
* • How to integrate an Ajax UI framework with a Struts 2 business framework.

•Beyond XHR: Taking Ajax Offline with Google Gears

As Ajax applications become an integral part of mainstream users' lives, the demand to access them offline will only increase. Google Gears was created to make that possible. In this session, Chris describes Google Gears, discussing how it works and how it's used. This session also includes a demo of a Google Gears application, and a tour of its source code.

In this session you will learn:


* • How to enhance your Ajax applications to function offline;
• The key issues with offline development;
• Data synchronization issues surrounding offline development;
• Application design issues surrounding offline development.

• Dynamic JavaServer Faces

JavaServer Faces (JSF) is a standardized specification for building User Interfaces (UI) for server-side applications. In this session, you’ll hear how to leverage the JSF architecture to work with Ajax. Roger Kitain, co-spec lead for JSF and staff engineer with Sun, will dive into code from a page author and component developer's perspective, and take a detailed look at the Dynamic Faces Ajax framework. You’ll also hear a summary of other Ajax/JSF frameworks that are available today.

In this session, you will learn:


* • How to add Ajax to JSF applications – with or without JavaScript;
• Features that make JSF a great foundation for web applications;
• Why and how JSF’s unique features support the development of dynamic applications with Ajax.

• Fast, Beautiful, Easy: Building Ajax Applications with the Google Web Toolkit
As Ajax becomes an increasingly mainstream development platform, the ecosystem of Ajax-related tools will grow and thrive. Google Web Toolkit (GWT), an open source framework for creating Ajax apps, is a powerful member of this new ecosystem. GWT cross-compiles Java source into JavaScript, allowing Java developers to use their existing Java skills and tools to easily create Ajax applications with virtually no learning curve. In this session, Chris offers after a short introduction to GWT, then dives quickly into its key topics.

In this session, you will learn:

* • How to create high-performance Ajax apps with GWT;
• How GWT handles remote procedure calls and integration with existing web applications;
• How to leverage your Java skills and tools to develop high-quality Ajax applications.

• Hands-on DWR
Because of DWR's ability to fit into almost any Java web application, and to provide a very dynamic user experience, DWR is one of the most used Java / Ajax frameworks. This presentation digs into many advanced DWR features, including Reverse Ajax and the JavaScript proxy APIs.

DWR creator Joe Walker kicks off this presentation by demonstrating advanced page manipulation and server-based control of browsers, and showing you how to update any web application to react to server changes. Joe also outlines how DWR integrates with other Ajax libraries like TIBCO GI, Script.aculo.us, and the OpenAjax Hub.

In this session, you’ll learn:


* • What DWR can do;
• How DWR fits into a wide range of applications;
• How straightforward it is to create advanced effects with minimal coding.

• jMaki: Creating Ajax Application Made Easy
Users want Ajax functionality, but integrating it with existing application and wiring everything together can be a pain. jMaki is a lightweight client-server framework for creating JavaScript-centric Ajax applications that use CSS layouts, the widget model and client services (such as publish/subscribe events) to tie widgets together; and JavaScript action handlers, and a generic proxy to interact with external RESTful web services. Users can employ jMaki to quickly create full-blown Ajax applications; or simply integrate snippets of Ajax functionality into existing applications. This session covers the widget model and how to use jMaki to build an application.

In this session, you will learn how to:

* • Enable communication between widgets;
• Connect to RESTful web services;
• Customize the look of the application using CSS themes.

• Struts on Ajax: Retrofitting Struts with Ajax Taglibs
Struts is Java's most popular web framework. Ajax is the web's hottest user interface. What happens when we put Struts on Ajax?

Many frameworks, including Struts 2, are wrapping Ajax calls in conventional tags or components. Leveraging Ajax in an existing application can help developers enhance a user interface without a major rewrite.

In this session, Ted stirs some Ajax wizardry into a conventional Struts application, without all the sweat and bother of writing JavaScript. Struts 1 and Struts 2 both support Ajax taglibs that look and feel just like ordinary JSP tags. If it's just a little bit of Ajax that you want, these tags will get you around the learning curve in record time.

In this session you will learn:


* • How to use the Java Web Parts taglib with Struts 1;
• How to use the Ajax YUI plugin with Struts 2;
• How to integrate Ajax features with Struts 1 or Struts 2;
• Basics of the Java Web Parts taglib;
* • Basics of the Struts 2 YUI plugin.

Emerging Frameworks

•Ext: Extend the Web

Ext is that rare breed of open source library: Complete with documentation, premium support and extremely active community forums. In this session, you will learn about Ext’s ability to build on Prototype/Script.aculo.us, jQuery or YUI. Ext provides amazingly simple and elegant JavaScript, Ajax and UI Components, as well as full API documentation, and support.

In this session, you will learn how to:

* • Wield Ext for use in real world application;
• Use Ext to rapidly accelerate your development process;
• Extend Ext components to suit any need.

•Introduction to Jester

Jester is a JavaScript implementation of REST, modeled after ActiveResource. You can use it to read, create, and save your application's data in your browser-side code. Pete and Jester creator Eric Mill will explain why Jester is a potentially disruptive technology, and give a live demonstration. Since the last Ajax Experience, Jester has gained the ability to request data from external domains.

•Jester: Hands-on Tutorial
Following the "Intro to Jester" session, Pete and Eric will host a live code hacking workshop. Bust out the Red Bull and corn chips, because every willing participant will leave with a simple but functional Jester application. Our goal is to change how you approach designing web applications.

• OpenAjax Alliance - OpenAjax Hub 1.0 (And more!)

Three major trends are pushing application developers towards integrating multiple Ajax technologies within the same application.

1) Ajax toolkit specialization (e.g., one toolkit might have the best calendar widget whereas another has the best data grid widget).
2) The emergence of SOA and web services promotes the proliferation of special-purpose client-side components that access particular back-end services.
3) The mashup trend where end users will build their own composite application by assembling pre-packaged Ajax components.

The OpenAjax Alliance addresses these trends by defining the key Ajax standards to allow multiple Ajax technologies to interoperate and integrate.

In this session, IBM Web architect and OpenAjax Alliance manager Jon Ferraiolo will describe the overall mission of OpenAjax Alliance and showcase OpenAjax Hub 1.0, the first major technical standard to come out of OpenAjax Alliance.

In this session, you will learn:


* • Why the OpenAjax Conformance is key to achieving long-term Ajax interoperability and cost-effectiveness;
• Why the OpenAjax Hub in particular enables successful integration of multiple Ajax technologies within a single Web application;
• Which toolkits, frameworks and mashup applications have committed to OpenAjax Hub 1.0;
• The role that OpenAjax Alliance plays in setting standards within the Ajax industry in order to help fulfill the promise of Ajax;
• Why mashups almost always require integration of multiple Ajax toolkits within the same application, and why they are a key part of the future of Web 2.0 applications;
• How OpenAjax Alliance’s other initiatives (e.g., Communications Hub, OpenAjax Registry, IDE Working Group, etc.) will help developers achieve Ajax interoperability and cost-effectiveness.

• qooxdoo
qooxdoo is a comprehensive and innovative Open Source JavaScript framework. In this session, you’ll learn how to leverage qooxdoo to develop professional JavaScript applications, using its state-of-the-art GUI toolkit that allows for easy development of impressive cross-browser web applications. Project lead Andreas Ecker and team member Derrell Lipman will also demonstrate and discuss qooxdoo's elegant Ajax and remote procedure call communication layers.

In this session, you will learn how to:

* • Use qooxdoo's wide array of widgets and its tool chain to easily develop truly innovative web applications;
• Create applications with zero-footprint and no memory leaks;
• Have your application run transparently to the user;
• Build applications without any knowledge of CSS or even HTML, using typical commands from other major toolkits for native applications.

These frameworks are all contributed by some poupular developers or architect:

•Advanced jQuery with John Resig, Founder, jQuery
• Advanced Prototype with Stuart Halloway, CEO, Relevance, Inc.
• Design Patterns and Animation with jQuery with Paul Bakaus, System Engineer, New Identity Agency
•Doubling Down on the Open Web with Alex Russell, Project Lead, Dojo Toolkit and Director of R&D, SitePen, Inc.
•Intro to jQuery with John Resig, Founder, jQuery
• Intro to Prototype, with Stuart Halloway, CEO, Relevance, Inc.
• Reaching the Entire World: Accessibility and Internationalization with Dojo, with Adam Peller, Senior Software Engineer, Emerging Technologies Group, IBM and Becky Gibson, Web Accessibility Architect, Emerging Technologies Group, IBM
• Script.aculo.us, with Stuart Halloway, CEO, Relevance, Inc.
• Ajax on Struts: Coding an Ajax Application with Struts 2 with Ted Husted, Apache Struts group; Author, Struts in Action
•Beyond XHR: Taking Ajax Offline with Google Gears with Chris Schalk, Tech Lead, Developer API Evangelism group, Google
• Dynamic JavaServer Faces with Roger Kitain, co-spec lead, JavaServer Faces, Staff engineer, Sun Microsystems
• Fast, Beautiful, Easy: Building Ajax Applications with the Google Web Toolkit with Chris Schalk, Tech Lead, Developer API Evangelism group, Google
• Hands-on DWR with Joe Walker, creator, DWR (Direct Web Remoting)
• jMaki: Creating Ajax Application Made Easy with Carla Mott, jMaki co-lead, Sun Microsystems
• Struts on Ajax: Retrofitting Struts with Ajax Taglibs with Ted Husted, Apache Struts group; Author, Struts in Action
•Ext: Extend the Web with Rich Waters, Lead Developer, Builders Resource Group
•Introduction to Jester with Pete Forde, Unspace Interactive
•Jester: Hands-on Tutorial with Pete Forde, Unspace Interactive
• OpenAjax Alliance - OpenAjax Hub 1.0 (And more!) with Jon Ferraiolo, Web Architect, IBM Emerging Technologies and manager of operations at OpenAjax Alliance
• qooxdoo, with Andreas Ecker, Project Lead of qooxdoo and Derrell Lipman, qooxdoo Team Member



chheers Aurobindo

courtesy @ Techtarget.server-side

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Technology's 10 Most Mortifying Moments

We've all had excruciatingly embarrassing moments. We say something loud and inappropriate at a party and the room abruptly falls silent and stares. Or we misbutton our shirt and it takes half a day to figure out why everybody's giving us funny looks. That sort of thing.

For most of us, these mortifying moments pass quickly. But when they occur in the relentlessly interconnected world of technology, they spread through the Internet like a bad cold that won't go away.

Here are our nominations (in no particular order) for the 10 most mortifying moments in technology history. These aren't bad business decisions or introductions of lousy products (for those, see Don't Believe the Hype: The 21 Biggest Technology Flops).

Rather, they're incidents in which deep, red-faced embarrassment by specific individuals and companies was -- or should have been -- the order of the day. These are the moments when the technology world stops and stares.

After you've read our nominations, please help us pick tech's most mortifying moment by voting in our reader poll -- and let us know what embarrassing technology moments we missed in our comments area.

Let the Nominations Begin
Let's start our list with mortifying Microsoft moments. Oh, where to begin? There was the time Bill Gates obfuscated so severely at the DOJ vs. Microsoft antitrust trial that he made the judge laugh, and the time Gates, while demonstrating Windows Media Center, couldn't get a remote control to work while Conan O'Brien provided running commentary.

Or how about the photo of a very young Bill draped moony-eyed over a monitor? (Catch the embarrassing moments of two other well-known Silicon Valley figures on the same page.)

For our money, though, here are the three best Microsoft mortifiers:


Bill Gates Gets a BSOD

Windows 95 provided a much spiffier interface than its predecessor, Windows 3.1, but it was neither very feature-rich nor very stable. Microsoft promised that Windows 98 would be much more solid.

However, we should have gotten a clue about what the future of this operating system held when Gates' presentation at Comdex Spring in 1998 went seriously awry, ending in a very public BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).

Bill gates gets a BSOD.

Monkey Boy Runs Amok

Bill Gates might be the visionary behind Microsoft, but CEO Steve Ballmer has long been the suit behind the vision. So what got into this billionaire that made him dance around like, well, a monkey boy when coming on stage at a 2001 employee gathering?

Was he trying show he's more fun than Steve Jobs? Was it job stress? Had he joined a cult? We may never know.


Vista Has Trouble With Peach Speech Recognition

speech recognition gone awry

Bill Gates once predicted that speech recognition would someday equal the use of keyboards as a leading input technique. It seems, however, that we have a ways to go.

The technology has rarely been put in a worse light than in a nightmarish 2006 presentation of Windows Vista's speech-recognition capabilities, in which nearly every word spoken by a Microsoft executive came out wrong on-screen.

Although Gates and Co. seem to have had more than their share of embarrassing missteps, we'll stop picking on Microsoft now. To be perfectly fair, many other companies have had disastrous demos as well -- including the ultrahip Apple and its leader Steve Jobs. And demos are just the beginning -- there are plenty of other highly awkward moments in technology, as the rest of our list shows.


IBM Exec Inflates Resume

Jeff Papows' tenure as head of IBM's Lotus Development division was successful from a business standpoint, but in 1999 it emerged that he had falsified his resume and made some less-than-truthful claims to co-workers through the years. Instead of being a Marine captain and a heroic jet fighter pilot, he was a lieutenant air-traffic controller. Rather than a Ph.D. from a prestigious university, he had a degree from a correspondence school. And it turns out he wasn't really an orphan after all.

With an upper lip apparently made of steel, Papows refused to be publicly embarrassed, claiming that the errors were the result of water cooler talk that took on a life of its own. Nor was IBM particularly mortified, allowing Papows to stay on the job until he resigned in 2000 to lead an Internet start-up.


iPhone Bills Kill Trees

If the iPhone had been introduced a few thousand years ago, it would have been carried into the capital city on a palanquin and those en route would have prostrated themselves until it passed.

Fortunately for those who rebel against that sort of pomp, there were also a few embarrassing moments for Apple, such as when the company eliminated its 4GB model and cut the price of the 8GB model by $200 just two months after the devices had launched. Even ardent fanboys and girls used language that was so surprisingly sharp that Apple agreed to give early adopters a $100 store credit.

But the most embarrassing iPhone moment came at the expense of the device's U.S. cellular carrier, AT&T Inc. The company's extraordinarily detailed billing process resulted in some users receiving bills this August that ran dozens or even hundreds of pages long, as captured in blogger Justine Ezarik's video of her unwrapping a 300-page phone bill. (It came in a box.)

300-page iPhone bill

Without actually admitting embarrassment, AT&T said it would start sending out more svelte bills to iPhone users.


Kid Cracks Porn Filter

It goes without saying that it's a good thing to protect our children from pornography and other unsavory elements available on the Internet. So who could blame the Australian government for a project that would provide a so-called porn filter to parents?

The problem was that the software, released in August of this year, cost $84 million -- and that a 16-year-old Melbourne boy, Tom Wood by name, cracked the filter in about 30 minutes. Young Tom's assessment: "It's a horrible waste of money."

A federal official responded by saying that the government knew all along that some kid would come along and crack the scheme and that "the vendor is investigating the matter as a priority."


Sony Hacks Its Customers' PCs

Cynics will tell you that the recording industry is paranoid and slow to enter the digital age. The industry insists it is merely trying to ensure its artists are fairly compensated.

But Sony BMG came down squarely on the side of paranoia in 2005 when, in the name of copy protection, it placed invasive rootkit software on an estimated 15 million music CDs by more than 100 artists. When a CD owner put one of these CDs in a PC drive, the software was automatically installed on the computer without the user's knowledge. Perhaps this system provided copy protection, but it also opened the user's computer to various types of spyware, malware and other nuisances.

A number of users and states sued the bejabbers out of Sony, which paid out big bucks to settle the matter. Apparently Sony wasn't too embarrassed, though -- it recently pulled the same stunt again, this time placing rootkits on USB drives it was selling.


Tech Reporter Reveals Too Much

Many of us have had nightmares about being out in public without our clothes on. So you can only feel for somebody when that really happens, as it did in a virtual sort of way to TechTV reporter Cat Schwartz in 2003.

The gist of the story is that Schwartz had a photographer take provocative pictures of her. The pictures were taken while she was topless, but she cropped the images to be more modest and posted them online.

Cat Schwartz

The problem was that she didn't realize how Photoshop, or possibly the camera itself, included the original image as a viewable preview of the cropped image. Not surprisingly, this mistake spread around the Web rapidly, giving Cat Schwartz an additional 15 minutes of fame, or at least of mortification.


NSA Offspring Cripples the Internet

Let's take a trip down memory lane, back to 1988. This was a time when widespread security threats were starting to become known, but we hadn't yet reached our current hypervigilant state. That's also when a Cornell student, Robert Morris, Jr., released what many believe was the first major worm to be spread via the Internet. He claimed it was a relatively innocent exercise.

The so-called Morris worm brought down a big chunk of the Internet. Of course, in those days the Internet was a relatively small network, largely limited to academics and the military establishment, so the worm didn't do nearly as much damage as it would today. Still, it caused, by some estimates, $15 million in damage. Morris apologized for releasing the worm, was convicted and received probation.

Now the truly embarrassing part: Morris' father, Robert Sr., was a well-known, highly regarded security expert who worked for the National Security Agency. However, while Dad was undoubtedly mortified at the time, he surely must be proud of his progeny, who is now a professor at MIT.


Just About Everybody Shines Up Their Wikipedia Write-ups

What do Microsoft, the Vatican, the FBI, Al Jazeera, Exxon Mobil and Amnesty International have in common? They -- and many other organizations with household names -- have been busted for altering Wikipedia entries that don't flatter them.

To read more please read this article

Burrito or Sex: What the World Googles

Internet users in Egypt, India and Turkey are the world's most frequent searchers for Web sites using the keyword "sex" on Google search engines, according to statistics provided by Google.

Germany, Mexico and Austria were world's top three searchers of the word "Hitler" while "Nazi" scored the most hits in Chile, Australia and the United Kingdom, data from 2004 to the present retrievable on the "Google Trends" Web site showed.

Chile also came in first place searching for the word "gay", followed by Mexico and Colombia.

The top searchers for other keywords were as follows (in order from first to third place):

"Jihad" - Morocco, Indonesia, Pakistan

"Terrorism" - Pakistan, Philippines, Australia

"Hangover" - Ireland, United Kingdom, United States

"Burrito" - United States, Argentina, Canada

"Iraq" - United States, Australia, Canada

"Taliban" - Pakistan, Australia, Canada

"Tom Cruise" - Canada, United States, Australia

"Britney Spears" - Mexico, Venezuela, Canada

"Homosexual" - Philippines, Chile, Venezuela

"Love" - Philippines, Australia, United States

"Botox" - Australia, United States, United Kingdom

"Viagra" - Italy, United Kingdom, Germany

"David Beckham" - Venezuela, United Kingdom, Mexico

"Kate Moss" - Ireland, United Kingdom, Sweden

"Dolly Buster" - Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia

"Car bomb" - Australia, United States, Canada

"Marijuana" - Canada, United States, Australia

"IAEA" - Austria, Pakistan, Iran

@courtesy www.cioinsight.com