Two Slashes

I posted two weeks ago about some of the biggest failures I could think of involving technology.  While the responses to the poll I issued with the post were generally more than I was expecting, it wasn’t until Wednesday that I realized I had forgotten one of my ongoing projects.

It’s become habit for me to catalog all of the various mistakes and mess-ups I encounter in a visual manner, with the occasional flaw submitted by others for the sake of some variety.  This includes things both on- and off-line, as there’s no easy way to escape the clutches of human error and poor workmanship.  I think the old This Is Broken (the one I stole the name of my Picasa album from) and the Error’d section of TDWTF and the countless hours I’ve spent perusing both are partially to blame for my habit obsession, but I can’t be entirely sure.

Wednesday, when I had an issue with my (admittedly cheap) watch which caused it to somehow forget the rules to the Gregorian calendar (while still keeping accurate time, no less; yes, I took that picture at nearly 2a), it reminded me of some of my favorite entries in my album.  Considering I had already shared some other favorite failures, I figure that one more list won’t hurt.

• Far and away, my personal favorite is the picture I took in the produce department at a Meijer near my college campus.  There’s just something about going through a stack of nice-looking oranges and turning up the one that got past quality control that makes you not want to eat oranges again.  Or at least oranges from that store.
• Another mishap I take particular interest in is this product listing on Amazon, which appears to be a particularly gruesome mashup between at least three different products (price, product image, and title).  Either that, or floppy drives had changed their appearance considerably at the time I took this.  It’s a shame I never got around to actually ordering, as I would have loved to see what came in the box.  That original price tag certainly wouldn’t have been worth it, though.  (And speaking of sales on Amazon…)
• Speaking of mixed-up images, here’s a screenshot from Google’s Picasa web frontend while I was uploading photos and testing the (then-)new face-detection and tagging functionality.  Dear lord Google, that doesn’t quite seem to be a face to me!  And his head isn’t up his #*(, so there’s no other reason I can think of to tag the train platform between his legs.  I’m confused!
• I may alter some of my images to take into account things like order numbers or potentially revealing personal information (and this is a prime example), butI couldn’t make this up if I tried.  It seems that DHL has found the secret to speedy deliveries:  top-secret package locations.  Be it wormholes, subspace, or some other as-of-yet “undiscovered” transportation method, leave it to DHL to be the ones who milk it for all its worth.  As I recall, I got this package in record time, too.
• Being a big company like Microsoft, there are often little pet projects that get developed to test new strategies, ideas, or demonstrate components of their existing products.  Of course, these demos work better when they don’t make elementary school spelling mistakes (look at the document headers and you’ll spot it quickly), as the writer of one of their demonstration documents for Office Online has done.  And given that this image is still available from one of their press releases, I wonder just how much embarrassment they need before they can correct something like that.  I know I won’t be using Office Online until they have working spell-check, at least.
• Like the previous example, this one is also an issue of language.  However, I don’t think anyone reading this post will fail to notice what two staff writers and two editors from Reuters did, especially as I’ve outlined it for you in the image.  If I had the money, I would be mailing all four of those people fresh copies of Strunk & White in boxes complete with mechanisms that beat them over the head with the style guide when they first open it.

There you have it.  I’m sure you’ll find some favorites of your own, and I encourage you to keep track of some of the interesting mistakes you encounter in your own life.  If you have anything broken of your own to share in the comments, I’m also all for it.

I figured I’d try a different approach for once and see where that got me.

Given the sheer number of products and services we hear about on a daily basis, it’s easy enough to forget the ones that couldn’t quite reach out and make themselves a universally-known (in some cases, literally) entity.  But that doesn’t mean they are any less deserving of our attention.  For your enjoyment, here are some of what I believe to be the most amusing failures I can recall throughout the history of technology.

• (Swatch) Internet Time – If there’s one thing we definitely have enough of here on Earth, it’s time zones and ways to tell time.  Time zones, 12- and 24-hour time, daylight savings time…  Alright, listing that is boring, and having to take all of that into account while talking with people on the other side of the world is like taking a needle to your eye.  Swatch, being the omniscient corporate entity they obviously were, decided that all of this could be resolved with the introduction of an arbitrary standard called Internet Time.  Internet Time divided the day into 1000 equal parts of about a minute and a half apiece and was designed to be consistent across the globe to eliminate the need for time zones.  However, when you take into the account the fact that this was introduced just as the Internet was becoming mainstream, the issue with scheduling things in “blips” with people who have no idea what you’re talking about makes you look like a fool to the majority of the world, there’s no standard for writing the day (just the time), and the fact that ‘@’was (and still is) most often recognized as part of an e-mail address, it’s not hard to see why Internet Time never made it to the big time.  (Sorry, pun intended.)
• Cuil – I wrote about Cuil once already, and I got quite a bit of feedback both here and on Twitter about it.  But for those who aren’t in the know, or haven’t seen my previous post about it, Cuil was touted at one point as the Google-killer, the end-all-be-all to searching.  Backed by some venture capital and a few of the genius minds who helped shape Google, Cuil was supposed to redefine what a search engine was.  Instead, it ended up showing just how pointless it was to try and humiliate Google right out of the starting gate.
• Microsoft’s Seinfeld Ad Campaign – Microsoft insists that the ads were intentionally about nothing (after saying that they were supposed to be a longer marketing campaign), but if that were the case, why were they produced in the first place?  I’m sure Jerry Seinfeld has plenty enough to do without helping Bill Gates try on shoes.  The only reason I can think of for this travesty even ever being unveiled was because Bill had some random “Things To Do Before I Leave Microsoft” list which was topped by making a pointless ad campaign with Jerry Seinfeld.  Well, Bill, now that you’ve got your wish, “What pointless thing would you like to do today?”
• Online Currency – Just as with Swatch’s idea of converting everyone to a unified time platform, several companies thought the way of the future was to develop “online currency” that could be used as an alternative to the real thing.  Get some credits for visiting a website?  No problem.  Viewing an ad?  Why not?  Want to buy something or send some money to that far-off relative?  Why not send them some e-money rather than worry about things like exchange rates, especially since retailers accept this mock currency as a legitimate form of payment.  It sounds like it might have been a good idea, had they put some thought into why they sounded just like they were illegally printing their own money and then corrected it.  I think I’ll stick with Paypal, as at least they keep my currency in US dollars.
• Lively – It’s curious enough that I should have something from Google on this list, but Google never expected to be knocked onto their backside when they launched their answer to Second Life with little fanfare and little reason for anyone using Second Life (especially those investing in the game) to make the jump.  Lively shuts its doors at the end of the year (so it’s not dead yet), but being the top performer in one area doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be the greatest elsewhere.
• The Phantom – An apt name for this ghost of a console, The Phantom is perhaps the precursor to the downloadable content now available from Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft.  In short, The Phantom was designed to be a console that acquired games over the web, eliminating the need for pressed disks, cartridges, and whatever other physical delivery method you can think of.  Unfortunately, the product never reached fruition, and the only part of their work to make it to market was their excuse for a keyboard.
• Windows ME – Alright, so it’s probably unfair to have two items by the same company on this list, but I really think that Microsoft managed to outdo themselves by even bothering to ship Windows ME.  Having spent several years living having to deal with this monstrosity, I can tell you that Microsoft should have thought ahead and given everyone prescriptions for headache medication with every license.  Between ME and Vista, I’m beginning to believe that Microsoft’s business model is to release a stable, usable operating system as a quick follow-up to versions that create plenty of uproar.  (See ME v. XP, Vista v. Windows 7.)
• Disposable (“Rental”) DVDs – What does fruit have in common with a DVD?  If you said that they both can rot, you’re not far off.  Who would have thought that people didn’t like the idea of paying for movies that expired like produce?  (I’d like to add that this idea seems to come up quite often; while The Register reports that the idea was spawned earlier this year, I distinctly recall Disney running a pilot program a few years ago.)

Do you have any other failures you’d like to bring into the limelight?  Is there something I’m forgetting, or do you think one of these is more worthy than the others?  Or, alternatively, is there something you believe to be one of the greatest developments since sliced bread?  Leave a shout in the comments and vote for your favorite.

(Also, I do believe I owe some thanks to The_Ugster for a suggestion or two.)

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