Vaporizer Posted Thu, 14 Aug 2008

Nothing is more embarrassing than a website announcing that something will happen on a particular date -- e.g., a product will be released, a feature will be turned on -- after the date has come and gone! Even worse, putting things off repeatedly can be a lot of work!

To help such people, I just did a very quick 10 minute hack I'm calling The Vaporizer. It looks like just a date on a webpage. However, if the date originally listed has come and gone, a little bit of Javascript will change the site so that it shows tomorrow's date instead. Vaporware providers of all types can use it to safely (and effortlessly) put things off without worrying about looking overdue!

I have seen the future, and the future is tomorrow.

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Responses to This Post

Seems a bit broken.  August 18 is hardcoded in.  The JS checks to see if the date now or future, and if it is, it should leave it alone.  Only it doesn't.  It's replacing an already-future date with a not-so-future (tomorrow, when the hardcoded date is 4 days away) date.
Posted by Mackenzie at Thu Aug 14 17:37:52 2008
Mackenzie: I think it's just a bad interface, not broken. The August 18th date is just there so that it display something if there's no Javascript. If you want to put in a default date, there is an area in the code to do it.
Posted by Benjamin Mako Hill at Thu Aug 14 17:40:14 2008
This seems a bit disingenuous. If a date slips a couple days, that's one thing, but if a project is announced and dies, it's always on the verge of releasing.

A more suitable method might be to indicate levels of lateness. "We originally targeted the 12th, but it might be a few days late!" and then "This project is a month behind, but fret not!" and finally "This project has stagnated, but we reserve hope that it will rise from the ashes one day".

Of course, Vaporizer has no way of knowing if you released or not. It's almost as if the author thinks this is some kind of joke!
Posted by jldugger at Thu Aug 14 19:50:23 2008
Yes jldugger, it's almost like that.
Posted by Benjamin Mako Hill at Thu Aug 14 22:06:23 2008
Great meta-procrastination!
Posted by annina at Fri Aug 15 12:36:00 2008
Great idea ahahahaha.
I think microsoft will find it useful. ;)
Posted by Graziano at Sun Aug 17 04:14:48 2008
thank you so much.. i been looking for this solution for such a long time and now i found it.. thank you!!
Posted by chat at Thu Oct 30 11:50:20 2008
thank you so much.. i been looking for this solution for such a long time and now i found it.. thank you!!
Posted by chat at Thu Oct 30 11:50:45 2008

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