For Halloween, you can tweet an electric shock to one of the Si team

by m4tthumphrey • 13 years ago

90 47 13 years ago

mcenedella• 13 years ago

This is marketing spam and doesn't belong on HN.

alexcroox6• 13 years ago

I didn't submit this link but I'm from this agency. Fair enough if you think it is, but we thought you might be interested in the tech at the bottom and the way we hacked some toy shock lighters to produce this!

kops• 13 years ago

Even if we leave the tech aside, this is a good example of PR hacking, which I think is pretty relevant to a lot of people here. Congratulations to you and your team for spotting an opportunity and exploiting it.

edit : typo

m4tthumphrey• 13 years ago

I posted this for the tech involved and I personally think it is very well done. Of course they did it for exposure and look, it's working; 5th on front page. Well done Alex, Tom and co!!

imdsm• 13 years ago

I actually quite like the idea and am glad it popped up on HN. Sad that the website is hammered so I can't properly take a look. Sent a tweet anyway. Bzzt!

whyleyc• 13 years ago

No it's not - it's a fun side-project using tech we discuss regularly here on HN with interesting links too.

Climb down from your horse :)

JonnieCache• 13 years ago

If we started thinking like that we'd have to delete half the links on here.

algorias• 13 years ago

Well, that is an idea worth a moment's thought at the very least...

muratmutlu• 13 years ago

People are voting it up for a reason, it's great

Congrats to SI

bagosm• 13 years ago

Funny and sadomasochistic, whats not to love? Maybe you should pretend a heart attack or something like that so you can scare the shocker back

selectnull3• 13 years ago

Congratulations to the team on marketing idea and technical implementation. It's really cool and fun.

On the other side, I don't like the kind of message you're trying to get across which is in a nutshell: "these are our monkey engineers, have fun with them". It's a little bit too self-deprecating and demeaning. I get that it's made in fun, but it buzzed me the wrong way.

alexcroox6• 13 years ago

Aw man we are pretty much all devs here, didn't mean it to come across like that :(

selectnull3• 13 years ago

Hey, I like the idea from marketing and tech side, kudos on that :)

But I said what I said because I work in the agency and in my opinion we have created an atmosphere that is not working towards our advantage.

* Designers are expected to present their work in advance and the best team will win

* Developers are often considered as coders only and their input is not valued, even after they have solved an impossible taks

This kind of self-deprecating humor does not help and I'm pretty sure you would not see managers and sales people putting themselves in this situation, because it will not help in their jobs.

mike-cardwell2• 13 years ago

Your sites front page is absolutely superb.

smickie• 13 years ago

It's just a bit of fun.

simonswords82• 13 years ago

I don't think the message is at all demeaning. It's a bit tongue in cheek/British sense of humour, definitely not a put down.

alexcroox6• 13 years ago

Thank you, not sure where all this projecting is coming from

wmeredith• 13 years ago

This was my reaction as well. It seems like pandering in a degrading way. Right now in Las Vegas, there are street vendors that will let you kick them in the balls for $20. It stirs a weird mix of pity, respect and annoyance: Why are you like this? That's pretty clever/funny. What about me, makes you assume that I would want to do that?

CodeMage• 13 years ago

I read the first sentence and thought "Milgram experiment". For the rest of my time on the page, I had to fight the urge to just press the back button. As the parent said, congrats on tech, but this just made me shudder.

jonlucc• 13 years ago

I think this speaks to our interest in clicking things on websites and seeing things happen in the real world. There have been several sites like this, but the most memorable for me was the one that allowed you to create a song to be played in a company office.

meriksson• 13 years ago

I have often wished for this exact feature when using software of poor quality. E.g. years ago when I still used Microsoft Windows, I often had the thought that it would be appropriate if I could press a button to buzz the developers responsible for a particular part of the system. Very happy to see that a similar idea has been implemented, and I hope it catches on. =)

adrianb• 13 years ago

I believe there is a Microsoft April Fools video with this exact theme.

davewhat• 13 years ago

Windows WSYP Project -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-c0YSsF_O0

Such a good video... even this many years later.

fennecfoxen• 13 years ago

cf. also http://bash.org/?4281

salgernon• 13 years ago

Interestingly, we used to joke about having a "yea!" button when we came across a particularly well designed feature or small UI touch (particularly on older Macintosh software.)

I guess its a glass is half ( empty | full | full of something noxious ) thing.

(Now that I'm older and more cynical, I tend towards the latter.)

stigi2• 13 years ago

Seriously? Giving people electric shocks for fun? I don't even wanna try that...

DanBC2• 13 years ago

There are toys and games that give people mild electric shocks. Did you never grab an electric fence when you were a kid?

stigi2• 13 years ago

I did, but it was all but comfortable.

mortov• 13 years ago

Sure about that ? The Milgram Experiment would suggest otherwise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment).

sp332• 13 years ago

Nothing about that was "for fun".

Theodores• 13 years ago

Seems like nobody has read up on Halloween for a while. The Wikipedia page is a good place to start. I don't think there is an event on the calendar that is so far lost-the-plot as Halloween. Nobody knows the slightest thing about the origins of it and this stunt is just a million miles away.

maxerickson• 13 years ago

What particular interpretation and stopping point in history do you think is probably the correct one?

From what I see people have a party, which harkens back to the whole harvest festival thing.

mike-cardwell2• 13 years ago

So what? What is your point?

blueblob2• 13 years ago

According to the out of office thing, at 8:10 AM EDT these guys have lunch, and a 4 hour and 50 minute one at that. I wonder when they have breakfast.

jalada• 13 years ago

It's always lunchtime somewhere.

(In this case, it's noon in England)

alexcroox6• 13 years ago

Haha it's definitely lunch here. But our lunch is being spent spinning up more servers and load balancers! Traffic has been a little crazy...

blueblob2• 13 years ago

Have you guys had a problem with people scripting tweets? I know there are some command line twitter clients like TTYter.

webdisrupt• 13 years ago

These are the ideas that make you truly appreciate what you do and could achieve with our skills! Great work guys and A+ for creativity! :)

frozenport• 13 years ago

Is today April Fools or Halloween?

voyou• 13 years ago

Sigh. A 2005 parody of new-media bro idiocy, come to life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06AS8SiY3rw#t=54

recursive• 13 years ago

I think your server is misconfigured. I'm seeing php code.

For Halloween, you can tweet an electric shock to one of the Si team

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