I tried, I tried, I tried

One of the channels we get is the Documentary Channel. It shows documentaries you've never heard of that sound really interesting but end up being poorly and cheaply made and thus not-interesting. Today they showed Aardvark'd, a documentary (duh) about four summer interns at a software development company who are tasked with designing, developing, and releasing a product in 12 weeks. It made me really glad that I'm not pursuing software development as a career.

The guys (obviously they're all going to be guys) come up with a product which is a web-based help application, wherein an "expert" is allowed to take over another user's computer remotely. If that sounds a lot like VNC, it's because it is; the guys ended up creating a web interface that gets both parties to install TightVNC and use that. Somehow they expect users to pay for a service that tells them to install free software. It seems like the "expert" user would know about VNC technology and could tell the other user to install a VNC client ... but that would make too much sense.

Subject matter aside, the documentary itself was pretty terrible. It was so poorly shot that I got motion sickness from watching it (I took a Bonine five hours ago, but that worked only briefly). It included three re-enactments of wacky things happening to the guys -- There's a giant cockroach in the bathroom! Their landlord tells them no parties! -- which made the doc seem like an episode of "Rescue 911" with especially poor actors.

The entire thing was such a waste of time (like software development itself? Hmm ... ) that it bores me to write about it now. If I'm to impart any sort of wisdom about the experience of watching this documentary, it's that I get motion sick watching jittery camerawork.