Boy Meets Girl, Girl Seeks Bob

An e-mailer asks Workbench for relationship advice:

... it's me and my boyfriends anniversary coming up and he always seems to somehow mention it and say how he wants it and I thought it would be a great thing to give him, no matter how weird it sounds. But I think it would be something he would enjoy, or like at least. I've looked around in all shops that could have a chance of selling older software but there aren't many where I live, I've looked around on eBay too but have had no luck, do you know where I could get it?

I don't know who's luckier -- the guy whose girlfriend would hunt down a copy of Microsoft Bob for their anniversary, or the woman whose boyfriend has such great taste in social interface software.

I'm one of the only people who has gone on record with my love for Microsoft Bob, the mid-'90s product that has unjustly come to be known as one of the greatest disasters in software history.

The only place I can find him is eBay, where a few go on sale each month and usually can be nabbed for under $25.

Over the last eight years, I've used eBay to find the original software, the Bob Plus Pack, Great Greetings for Bob and the only two computer books written for the software: At Home With Bob and Microsoft Bob. A third book, Microsoft Bob for Dummies, was cancelled by Wiley prior to publication, robbing technical literature of a book that would have been an enduring classic.

I also acquired some great swag on eBay -- a Bob coffee mug, key chain, long-distance card, T-shirt, pin, and baseball cap -- and nearly talked a former Microsoft freelancer into selling me the documentation for companies developing Bob add-on products (he feared, perhaps correctly, that it would constitute industrial espionage).

The swag auctions higher than the software, because I am not the only imbecile willing to blow as much as $50 on Bobabilia.

Publishing · Microsoft Bob · 2005/05/09 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

Take a Bite of the Apple

Michael Moore is swimming in money after Fahrenheit 9/11, according to a Slate analysis that describes how the filmmaker and Disney rode the controversy over the movie all the way to the bank:

Under normal circumstances, documentaries rarely, if ever, make profits (especially if distributors charge the usual 33 percent fee). So, when Miramax made the deal for Fahrenheit 9/11, it allowed Moore a generous profit participation -- which turned out to be 27 percent of the film's net receipts. Disney, in honoring this deal, paid Moore a stunning $21 million. Moore never disclosed the amount of his profit participation. When asked about it, the proletarian Moore joked to reporters on a conference call, "I don't read the contracts."

I loved Roger & Me and TV Nation, but over the years Moore's penchant for dramatic embellishment and sloppy facts made it hard for me to enjoy Fahrenheit. He produces great diatribes, but documentary filmmakers are one of the last remaining groups who believe in the quaint notion that facts matter. If we lose them to spin, all we'll have left are reference librarians, the Society of Professional Journalists, and Bob Somersby.

I'm not surprised that Moore exaggerated Disney's actions in refusing to distribute the film, nor that Disney found a way to profit handsomely from a project it was ostensibly refusing to release. Their relationship is a lot like Tom Cruise publicly grouting the esophagus of Katie Holmes right before both release summer blockbusters.

The same cynical game appears to be at work with the new Steve Jobs biography iCon: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business. The book's print run was doubled after Apple, at the presumed behest of Jobs, banned the publisher's books from Apple stores.

I haven't spoken about this with anyone at Wiley, a company that also publishes one of my books, but I have trouble believing that a marketing genius like Jobs took this action without knowing it would send book orders through the roof. The guy runs a company with so much hype you'd never know it sells fewer desktop computers than also-rans like Acer and Lenovo. Apple's marketing is difficult to resist. I own five computers and a laptop, and I'm still convinced I need a Mac mini.

Memo to self: Find a way in next book to anger Steve Jobs.

Publishing · Politics · Movies · Journalism · 2005/05/06 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

Give Me an E!

The Texas House has approved legislation to ban sexually suggestive routines by school cheerleaders:

"Girls can get out and do all of these overly sexually performances and we applaud them and that's not right," said Democratic Rep. Al Edwards of Houston, who filed the legislation.

Edwards argued that lascivious exhibitions are a distraction for high school students that result in pregnancies, high school dropouts, contraction of AIDS and herpes and "cutting off their youthful life at an early age."

If Edwards hopes to turn the thoughts of teens away from sex, he'll have to restrict a lot more than an NC-17 rendition of "Rock Steady." He seems to have forgotten what it was like after the adolescent change of life known as Peter Brady, which turns the entire world into a lascivious exhibition.

When I was a teen, a legislator trying to protect me from knocking up a dropout would have banned all of the following:

• The time Laura Dumais fell into my arms and my left wrist inadvertently reached second base
• Drawing the She-Hulk naked
• A breeze of at least three knots
• Role-playing a female NPC with a charisma score of 15 or better in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
• The scene in The Sword and the Sorceror where Kathleen Beller had to be lathered in oil to prepare for her wedding
• Phoebe Cates

Good times.

Politics · 2005/05/05 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

R.S.V.P. at Any Time

This Saturday at MIT, a Time Traveler Convention will be held for anyone who hears about the event in the future and can find a way to attend:

We need you to help publicize the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in major outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

If MIT no longer exists at the time the invitation is received, time travelers are given the latitude and longitude of the event: 42:21:36.025 degrees N, 71:05:16.332 degrees W.

2005/05/04 · 5 COMMENTS · Link

Giveaway: Radio UserLand Kick Start

We adopted a kitten from the humane society nine months ago who thinks he's a dog, and there's nothing he likes more than the taste of a computer book. A stack of them make an excellent scratching post, as I learned when he shredded a dozen copies of How to Use the Internet Eighth Edition.

This situation adds urgency to my need to give away more of my books, before they become either out-of-date or drenched with saliva.

I'm giving away four author's copies of Radio UserLand Kick Start, each in new condition and completely untouched by my catdog.

If you'd like to win one, post a comment on this Workbench entry or write about it on your weblog, linking to its permalink so I don't overlook it. I'll pay the postage to anywhere that I can send it for under $10.

Kick Start covers everything you need to get started with Radio UserLand, an Internet content management and programming tool that makes it simple to publish your own weblog, develop web services, and collect information from thousands of Internet sites. Several sample chapters can be read online.

During my last book giveaway, I awarded an extra copy to the person with the most inventive reason for wanting one. If I can scare up a fifth copy, I'll do that again here.

Publishing · Radio Userland · 2005/05/03 · 26 COMMENTS · Link

Symphony in Eight Bits

A funny video is making the rounds of a school choir performing Nintendo themes:

This next song needs a little bit of introduction. Keeping with the experimental nature of Redefined we decided that we would now do what some might consider an art piece. It's a little older than some of the music we've already sung today, and it's all original work from Japan. So I hope that you can all listen with open minds, and if you'll give me one second I need to boot it up.

The choir does a really nice Tetris, complete with falling blocks in L, S, and T shapes, and the Legend of Zelda swordfight scene is practically Shakespearean.

Some digging reveals that Redefined is an 18-member ensemble at the University of Wisconsin that kicks major a cappella ass.

They're auctioning off the last few copies of the CD that includes the "Redefined Nintendo" video on EBay.

Music · 2005/05/03 · Comment · Link

I'd Buy That for a Dollar

A stamp machine at the post office gave me dollar coins back as change -- five Sacagaweas and two Susan B. Anthonys. I gave some to my kids, who had to be convinced they were legal tender, and freaked out a clerk at an Arby's by using one.

"Are you sure you really want to spend this?" he asked, marveling at the golden coin honoring a woman so obscure there's no record of her appearance. A coin can't be doing very well when people think you spent one by accident.

Last week the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to crowd out Sacagawea with new dollar coins for each president, beginning in 2007 with the first four: Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, and Madison. I'm setting a task in Microsoft Outlook to corner the market in 2010 on Millard Fillmore, widely recognized as our least accomplished leader.

The earliest a Hillary Clinton dollar will be available is 2017.

Politics · 2005/05/02 · 12 COMMENTS · Link

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