May 5, 2008
It looks like you’re trying to answer a question;
The annals of computer history are littered with failed attempts at making friendlier and arbitrarily innovative interfaces. The gallery below is one such attempt.
Which product had these strange characters as its user interface? Extra-bored people may also want to list the names of these characters, and identify this product’s legacy in today’s world.
Cracked by: akhi , varuns88 , madhur , sidsen , udupendra and Dibyo.
Answer: These are helpers/assistants that used to be on the UI of Microsoft Bob. Each of these guys has a name, and lots of people have IDd that name, so check out the answers for more details.
MS doesn’t want to let Bob die. Rover the dog still appears as the Win XP search assistant, and you’ll see Bob himself as a smiley on MSN.
Clippy continues in this tradition of annoying assistants.
Subscribe
May 5th, 2008 at 11:40 pm, GMT -0700 ( 1210056034 )
microsoft bog :) how jobless were they !!
May 5th, 2008 at 11:40 pm, GMT -0700 ( 1210056058 )
i meant Microsoft BOB.. sorry :)
May 6th, 2008 at 4:29 am, GMT -0700 ( 1210073375 )
The product is Microsoft Bob.
Names of the Bob Guides:(i’m super bored..*yawn*)
Blythe
Chaos
Hopper
Java
Orby
Rover
Ruby
Scuzz
Shelly
Digger
Speaker
Invisible
These guides evolved into the Microsoft Office Assistants.And Rover appears as a search assistant in XP.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:35 am, GMT -0700 ( 1210077306 )
Microsoft Bob, released in 1995 featured a diverse selection of ‘guides’ such as Rover the dog, Chaos the cat, Hopper the grasshopper, Java the coffee-swilling dinosaur, Orby the animated world globe, Ruby the parrot, Scuzz the rat, Speaker, etc
Some of the Bob cartoons are still used in other Microsoft product such as the yellow dog ‘Rover’ is seen in the search tool of Win XP, Bob’s face is used in Windows Live Messenger as a ‘Nerd Smiley’
May 6th, 2008 at 6:26 am, GMT -0700 ( 1210080366 )
Microsoft office, office assistants.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:02 am, GMT -0700 ( 1210082532 )
“6A058″: office assistant clippit
May 6th, 2008 at 7:05 am, GMT -0700 ( 1210082736 )
“340C0″: o did you also want microsoft bob
May 6th, 2008 at 8:39 am, GMT -0700 ( 1210088365 )
Microsoft Bob - Comic Sans MS
May 6th, 2008 at 10:03 am, GMT -0700 ( 1210093438 )
hmm..the MS office assistant? The missing one being the most (in)famous one, Clippy?
May 6th, 2008 at 4:46 pm, GMT -0700 ( 1210117580 )
I couldn\’t find this… but they sure do look like they could be a word processor helpers. Maybe they are the ancestors of Clippy from Microsoft Word. I remember there was a cat made of note paper who preceded Clippy.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:52 pm, GMT -0700 ( 1210128743 )
The legacy is clearly characters like Clippy and Rover (the yellow dog) who appear in MS applications even now.
The earlier product is Microsoft Bob, I think.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:55 pm, GMT -0700 ( 1210128906 )
It is Bob! Since I found the list, here are the characters (from left to right, top to bottom):
Blythe
Chaos
Hopper
Java
Orby
Rover
Ruby
Scuzz
Shelly
Digger
Speaker
Invisible