PerversionTracker Design Awards 2003 Winners

After a painstaking months-long process of winnowing through thousands of entries, here they are. The best. The shiniest. The only entries accompanied by bribes.

Superior Excellence in Nepotism

iPatches 1.0 by Ladd Van Tol

Billed as a “speakerphone for pirates,” iPatches offers Rendezvous-enabled voice communication between any two Macs. With PirateVoicePro Technology, even the reediest pre-pubescent cabin boys can gargle a throaty “Arrr!!!” across the network. With a mysterious interface that requires both chat participants to locate their counterpart and press the “Yarrr!” button, this is sure to offer delightful fun on any LAN. Regrettably it does not function with an iSight under Jaguarrrrrrrrr. We hear this bug is fixed in Pantharrrrrrrr.

Free for “patchies, extra-salty sea dogs, and peggers,” iPatches is Bootyware for all other users and requires payment of a galleon filled with “pieces of eight, silver doubloons, gold bouillon, and lusty wenches” upon first use.

As winner in a nepotism category, Ladd’s prize is an exclusive photo shoot with the sexy stars of Fancy Chicken Friday.

Download iPatches

Slightly Inferior Excellence in Nepotism

Comictastic, eh? 2.1b5 by Jan Van Tol

Hold onto your toques, northlanders! With special enhancements for our oft-neglected snow-cronies from the intemperate regions, Comictastic, eh? is localized to make even the most skull-cramped hoser feel right at home, eh?

As winner in a nepotism category, Jan’s prize is an elastic goiter retainer and a nice warm bowl of blood-engorged deer ticks.

Download Comictastic, eh?

Best Misuse of Technology

iStache 1.0 by Dustin Mierau

Consumer photo editing applications typically offer an array of enhancement features, with red-eye reduction and color enhancement being common. Regrettably few are able or willing to step up to offer cutting edge photo defacement technologies — this is where iStache comes in. Once the sole province of gay men, police officers and rural Wisconsinites, the inimitable elegance of the mustachio can now be conveniently added to any digital photo without the time investment and obsessive waxing that goes with the real thing. And unlike actual hirsutitude, a digital reproduction cannot harbor lice or potentially toxic algae.

iStache incorporates twelve of the very latest in mustache styles, including a few classics that just refuse to die, ranging from “Squirrely” to “The Hitler.” We only wish that our personal faves — the “Soup Strainer,” the “Caterpillar,” and “Jack Horkheimer’s Super-Duper Nose Hair Conjunction” — were available. A final regret is that iStache’s perpetually intoxicated author did not see fit to include scaling of the image as well as animated ‘stache rotation. Spin that lip pelt into place, and watch the crowd cheer!

As the winner of Best Misuse of Technology, Dustin (woooooo!) will be receiving a $25 Gift Certificate from The Missing Bite and one lightly used pair of the World’s Largest Underpants.

Download iStache

Best Torture of Users

Click Counter 1.0 by Karl von Laudermann

“Click Counter is a simple program whose function is to keep track of the number of times you’ve clicked its button.”

Sounds deliciously useful. But there must be a catch…

“There is currently a bug where the count value is not always accurate. However, as a simple workaround, the count field is editable, so you can always set it to the correct value manually.”

With a Germanic gift for understatement, Karl has interpreted “not always accurate” to mean “when the count is neither zero nor one.” The unfortunate user is required to manually update the count value with each iteration, leading to apoplexy, shooting pains in the left buttock, and clumping dyspepsia. Given these suffocating limitations and the sloth-like languor of the five second processing time, we judge it easier and less painful for any potential users to devise a counting procedure involving knocking out one’s own teeth.

As the winner in the Best Torture of Users category, Karl (oooohhh yeahhh!) will be receiving a $25 Gift Certificate from The Missing Bite and one Triops Kit.

Download Click Counter

Best Use of Real Ultimate Power

LawsuitXPress 1.0 by Dr. Science

“This program is designed to help you apply for RIAA’s new amnesty program. It will search your hard drives for all your MP3s, then prepare an email you can use to send to RIAA and find out which ones are illegal. Then you can apply for amnesty. It’s really that easy!”

While none of the contestants displayed what we would call REAL Ultimate Power, we decided to give the Most Awesomest Ninja Costume Ever to Dr. Science, mostly because of his startling personal resemblance to a tested and discarded corn dog. The kind with mustard.

Dr. Science has warmed the cockles of our testicles with a stunningly apropos RIAA compliance utility. With its uncanny propensity for locating illegal MP3s, LawsuitXPress makes attracting legal action a real snap. Amnesty? Try SCAMnesty! HA HA! Demonstrating Dr. Science’s usual happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, madcap inability to actually write working software, LawsuitXPress only managed to produce an email with the names of two music files, thereby limiting our total liability to $15.7 million (4,161,285,000 Mauritanian Ouguiyas) under the RIAA Gestapo’s current Richtlinien des Betriebes des Poopyheads.

Download LawsuitXPress

Best In Show

MyApp 1.0 by Chad Cunningham

MyApp, a.k.a. “Emacs Configuration File Editor and Web Browser and Guess a Number,” may be beyond our ability to describe. It is humanity’s fairest potential and its foulest exudations. The alpha and the omega. The paprika and the marjoram. Epistemology shivers before the glistening pits of Steve Ballmer. Monkeys run riot through a metal jungle of venemous buttons. Eighty-six megs of emacs configuration editing power are brought to bear upon your kidneys. Don’t fight it.

Boasting the most marketing-savvy website of any of our contestants, Chad also employs the industry standard .pkg.dmg.sit.zip.tar.gz file format for his download, making installation as enjoyable as microwaving your own groin. And did we mention the required restart? Or the 20 second interval between poorly spelled registration dialogs?

While this entry is clearly angling for the Real Ultimate Power category, we will resist awarding such an inadequate prize to Mr. Cunningham with our dying breath. Instead, we award Best in Show. Best in Show, CHAD! What do you think of THAT!?!? WoOOOoooOO! Bet you’re scared of the Giant Inflatable Lawn Turkey aren’t ya, big fella? And you should be.

Download MyApp

Honorable Mentions

Other entries, while chortlesome, did not quite make the cut for prize purposes. We will be reviewing a few select runners-up in the coming week. Stay tuned for more gratuitous flogging. You sickos.

Posted by ladd at September 21, 2003 11:03 PM | TrackBack