The Skinny
Each visit to my parents house results in a frustrating experience in computer literacy training. Today’s story we’ll call “The Tale of the Toolbars.”
To make a short story long, this past visit, Mom asked what we had been working on over at SilkTricky. Though I’m not sure she even understands what we do, I proceeded to ramble on about 3D take-overs, with 180LA, that utilize back-end screen capture technology and page morphing to create the illusion of a common website turning into a 3D world. Taking a hint from her blank stares, I said “How about I just show you?”
Now by measure of any normal computer “How about I just show you” is a two minute recess from your current activities. But pushing the power button on their “machine” enters you into a dark and wearisome netherworld where spyware and fragmented file systems are the overlords and you must pay your pittance in time as you slog your way through the darkness and hopefully come out of there in the same year you entered.
Booting into Windows ‘98 quickly brought two blue screens of death. The third time was a charm and we were off to opening up the browser. Getting from opening-to-opened gave me enough time to take apart their grandfather clock, grease it, and re-assemble. Once open, I quickly discovered the problem. Twenty pop-ups flew open letting me know that the spyware messiah had visited the underworld bearing gifts. One hour and a few spybot and adware scans later, I could actually go to type in the URL. But the URL entry field was nowhere to be found. It had been relegated to nil by six different toolbars. But since they type all their URLs in the search field, then click the top link in google, they never noticed anything missing. We had three toolbars for searching, one for shopping, one with a dictionary, and even a toolbar for managing toolbars. No idea where that spyware could have come from. That brought us to the days lesson: “Mom, don’t ever install toolbars,” I frustratingly said. “Ok sweetheart, but tell your Dad, he knows more about that stuff,” she replied. “Oh does he really?” I sarcastically thought to myself.
And there we were. I finally had the page loaded up in full 3D, ready for her reaction. Which was… “Oh that’s wonderful, have you seen Avatar? You guys over there at SilkTricky should see if you could get some work with those folks making the next one.” And with that succinct, well intentioned response, she shined a light on the insignificance of anything we have ever done. We hope you enjoy our Sony 3D Take-over as much as Mom did. Oh, and If you know James Cameron, she’d like for you to have him call us.
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