The 57 Lamest Tech Moments of 2010

Progress–to swipe an ancient General Electric slogan–is the innovation industry’s most important product. Its second-most important product? That’s easy: blunders. As a matter of fact, you could argue that the two are inextricably intertwined. An industry that was more uptight about making mistakes might be more cautious and consequently less inventive.

Thanks once again to Business 2.0′s 101 Dumbest Moments in Business and, clearly, to Esquire's Dubious Achievement Awards for inspiring this. Here we go…

Three weeks earlier Steve Jobs unveils the iPad, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pre-emptively shows off “Slate PCs” running Windows 7 at his CES keynote. He declares them “perfect-perfect-for reading, for surfing the Web, and for taking entertainment on the go,” however fumbles with the HP model he demos. The tablets fail to overcome the long-standing curse that has doomed countless Microsoft products announced while CES keynotes to oblivion.

Buyers of the Nexus One phone who opt for a T-Mobile subsidy now cancel service afterwards a 14-day trial but earlier their two-year contract ends must pay $200 to T-Mobile and $350 to Google. On top of the $179 price they paid for the phone, that leaves them out a total of $729–or $200 more than they would have paid for an unsubsidized Nexus One in the first instance.

Two days afterwards Christmas, young reprobates in Wilsonville, Oregon steal a bunch of electronics, including two Motorola Android phones. One of the delinquents snaps some pictures of himself with one of the phones–to all appearances unaware that it’s running Lookout, an application that silently backs up all images to the cloud. Using the photographic evidence, the Wilsonville police make an arrest in mid-January.

Google launches Buzz, a Twitter-like service whose defining feature is that it’s built into Gmail, thereby turning Gmail users’ contact lists into social networks. It runs into immediate flack from users who don’t want their contacts to be made social or public. The company moves quickly however it takes several passes of fixes earlier the controversy dies down. And even at the time, Buzz never quite seems to catch on.

At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft announces a radically new version of Windows Mobile. It’s impressive, nevertheless its name–”Windows Phone 7 Series“–doesn’t specifically roll off the tongue. After near everybody who writes about the new version mocks its moniker, the company shortens the name to the more harmonious “Windows Phone 7″ months previously the phones ship.

Second identity

Rabble-rousing InfoWorld blogger Randall Kennedy–who frequently cites data from Windows performance technology company Devil Mountain Software–admits that he has a second identity: Craig Barth, CTO of Devil Mountain Software.

The makers of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) gizmo MagicJack lose their lawsuit against Boing Boing, which had published a post criticizing the product’s end-user license agreement and pointing out that its Web site pretends to detect MagicJacks installed on PCs and automatically increments a counter that supposedly shows how many people have come to the site for a free trial. MagicJack, which had charged that the post had exposed it to “hate, ridicule and obloquy,” is ordered by a judge to pay Boing Boing more than $50,000 to cover the blog’s legal costs.

Biergarten in Redwood City

Apple engineer Gray Powell visits a biergarten in Redwood City, California. He enjoys some fine German brews. At the time he departs–and leaves an iPhone behind. An unreleased prototype then-generation iPhone.

An Apple App Store policy against iPhone software that ridicules public figures in outline results in the rejection of a satirical app by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore.

The Kin One

Microsoft announces the Kin One and Kin Two, two phones with built-in social networking features. Reviewers question the decision to release Windows phones based neither on Windows Mobile 6.5 nor Windows Phone 7, squawk about the lack of an app store, and say that the need to commit to a Verizon smartphone plan is inappropriate given the phones’ limited capabilities. Microsoft executives counter that the phones are aimed at highly social twentysomethings and are in a nutshell difficult for the typical jaded tech pundit to appreciate.

In certain circumstances, McAfee security software misidentifies a core Windows XP component as malware and deletes it, causing PCs to reboot over and over and over. The company’s initial response to the crisis strikes some clients as a tad blithe; later updates are more apologetic and less defensive.

How about the Yahoo!/Delicious sunset flap

How about the Yahoo!/Delicious "sunset" flap, and Yahoo's subsequent blaming of news outlets for its lack of communication?