5/7/2003: Microsoft iLoo

Oh, but it can't be! Oh, but it is.

This is the world's first portable chemical lavatory with internet access. It's an MSN UK project and is expected to be unveiled at music festivals there this summer.

(Now, this was a Slashdot story a few days ago, but I'm betting not many of you are following the site any longer.)

Man, all the cool shit starts in the UK...like the pop-out-of-the-ground toilets.

When and if these things ever see the light of day, I can see itl producing web sites devoted to mod'ing stolen parts.

OMG! And you think the lines are too long now!

No story about toilets is complete without the <a href="http://www.theonion.com/onion3536/e_toilet.html">obligatory Onion reference</a>.

The first thing that popped into my head was "Does Apple know about this - is this some sort of rip on iLife?" The second was - "Talk about gross keyboards."

I have just one comment: eat more fiber...

I guess this is the kind of stuff MS comes up with when they have no competitors to steal ideas from. On those unfortunate occasions when I'm forced to use a portable toilet, the LAST thing I want to do is spend MORE time inside of it!

Not to mention that the computer inside will be stolen within 10 minutes of the thing's first use. And do you really want to touch a keyboard that someone else *had in their naked lap* while they were dropping a deuce?

At least it gives Microsoft the ability to help spread biological as well as computer viruses (and other assorted microbes). It's a bug and a feature.

Seeing how these are supposed to be put in 'music festivals', I do not imagine these potties lasting very long.

as usual, MS is copying Apple

The Apple iToilet came first!
http://www.electric-chicken.co.uk/

Please oh please someone tell me that this is an internet hoax ...

What can I say? It's a really, really stupid idea. This is even further compounded by the fact that they added an 'i' to the front of the name just to make it sound cool and hip. Whoever did that should have something bad happen to them.

Ok, the official word from David Cole, an executive with MSN, is that this is a hoax and MSN had no plans for anything like this.

From: David Cole
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 12:49 PM
To: Executive Staff
Subject: MSN iLoo

No doubt many of you have seen the press about the MSN iLoo in the UK. The reports were about MSN UK doing internet terminals in portable toilets. This caught myself and others by surprise, and caused some embarrassment with friends, family, and customers since it's quite confusing on why we'd be doing such a thing.

The real story is that this is a case of British humor getting beyond their shores and taken the wrong way by Americans. There is no MSN iLoo project. It was started as an April fools joke that spread like wildfire around the globe. Apparently quite humorous in the UK and taken in the spirit intended. The fact it was picked up and taken as a non-joke in the rest of the world was unintentional.

Please continue your faith that the MSN team is making wise decisions about where to invest money and resources.

David

Faith? Faith?? PHhhwawahahahahahahahah!!!

Oh, but it's "Butter with a better fly"

Burned by Slashdot again. I think about 90% of their stories are outright false, and the other 10% are misleading.

Slashdot == fucktards. I only visit http://apple.slashdot.org now, and that's only because they occasionally have links to informative articles. Slashdot, on the whole, sucks.

Well, if this is a fake, it's a well-embedded one; I checked news.google.com for stories on it before I posted the entry, and there were quite many of them. Amongst them is Wired, ZDNet, major newspapers.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ed...nG=Search+News

Hmm.. there's even a story about it on microsoft's site.

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/press/co...05/PR03049.asp

Hmm, now that link is interesting juju. I'm researching what I can internally now.

Now, a week later, MS UK is saying that they did it as a hoax.

Even within some of the internal MS mailing lists there was TOO much speculation whether it was a hoax or not. Here's a link I found stating it's a hoax
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/interne....ap/index.html

And now it reverses AGAIN! It wasn't a hoax, but now it's cancelled. MS itself said it was a hoax when it actually wasn't. The whole thing is a PR mess:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...928EDT0358.DTL