The Wackiest Technology Tales of 2008

coondoggie writes "Despite the daily drumbeat of new and improved hardware or software, the tech industry isn't all bits and bytes. Some interesting things happen along the way too. Like floating data centers, space geekonauts, shape shifting robots and weird bedfellows (like Microsoft and Jerry Seinfeld). What we include here is an example of what we thought were the best, slightly off-center stories of 2008."

Comments

Wow..

[Anrego]

This sounded interesting.. but just really didn't hold my attention. Most of the stuff fell under one of two categories:

1) stuff which is cool, but that I already knew about ..
2) stuff which wasn't really all that interesting

Additionally the little blurb of info the give on each was fairly dry .. .. and they have (at least for my browser) added some annoying anti-"just view the print version" stuff..

AND GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN!

Re:Wow..

[clickety6]

IT and science aren't known for their amazing comic value

What about the Ig Nobel awards?

http://improbable.com/

This year's chemistry prize was split between two teams of doctors. One team discovered that Coke is an effective spermacide. The other team discovered that it is not.

Re:Wow..

[stewbacca]

You missed the obvious 22 clicks of ad revenue. I want my wasted time back, and I stopped on slide 4.

A slide show

[techno-vampire]

I tried to RTFA and found that the article was nothing but a stupid slide show with a vapid paragraph of comment for each. Unless there's a link to the complete text, there really isn't anything worth looking at.

Re:A slide show

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes that website is awful. Everything on the page is grabbing for attention and it's quite hard to use. One of the worst sites I've seen in ages.

Re:A slide show

[bugnuts]

Would've been a much better article if it didn't force use of javascript and didn't force you through some 30 pages of crap. 3 pages of crap would've sufficed.

Interesting how the delivery mechanism is so hated by many techies, but so loved by others. /luddite

Re:A slide show

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes that website is awful. Everything on the page is grabbing for attention and it's quite hard to use. One of the worst sites I've seen in ages.

Annoying ads, like flash ads from places like doubleclick.net?

Noscript - block flash ads
Adblock - block ads from domains, useful for ad sites e.g doubleclick.net.

Firefox + Noscript + Adblock = Less ads.

I actually find other browsers annoying because I then realise how many ads I was missing out on.

Even those with the attention span of a goldfish

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Would get bored with the article.

Even the slides were boring.

Re:How did this get approved for the main page?

[lorenlal]

There was one thing in that slideshow that caught my attention: Sprint losing customers.

Now, that's not a shocker here. I've certainly suffered through some poor phone customer service with them, and some poor coverage problems. They've seemed to embarked on a company wide effort to change that, but I can only hope for their sake that it's not too late.

Of course, AT&T with the iPhone is probably quite a draw.

I will say this for Sprint: The biggest difference I noticed between them was that Verizon phones were ridiculously more expensive if you had to replace one in the middle of a contract.... Other than that, one's a sweet potato, and the other's a yam.*

*To those of us who aren't US Americans,** sweet potatoes are commonly called yams. Yes, I know there's a difference, but our grocers don't seem to.

**See Ms. Teen South Carolina for that reference.