You know how there's a warning tag on hairdryers that says not to use it while showering? I've always figured that the reason for those stupid warnings is that someone somewhere did use it while showering, and then the relatives of the deceased then sued the hairdryer company who agreed to put warnings on their product to prevent such a mishap in the future and cover their own asses in the case of a future lawsuit. Whenever I see something so blatantly dumb, I give the benefit of the doubt to the company and assume that in today's increasingly litigious society, they're either doing so because they were already burned, or because they're gunshy and afraid to get burned.

So with that background aside... My birthday was last week, and an old friend sent me an e-card. I went to the site to view the card, and was thinking to myself "I'll have to send her an email to let her know I got it...". Then I noticed that at the bottom of the form, it already had an easy way for me to do this. Hrm, that's handy.

But what I was incredibly amused by, and why I'm posting this, was the fine print below the 'respond via email' feature:

I just know that they first developed the feature because users asked for it or they thought it was handy, and then I assume shortly thereafter they got negative feedback from users who thought that the sender of the card had requested it and the receivers thought that was rude, etc etc... It probably caused someone at this company quite a headache. I feel for them, I really do.

On the bright side, I think it's super-cool that the designer of the card in question got such a top billing. And on that note, have you seen the Exchange 2007 Credits page? I forget how many pictures I'm in in there, one of my favorites is a coworker and I in a park in France mimicking a statue - we're sitting on either side of a statue of a man sitting with his legs drawn out and head down to his knees. One of the reasons we did the credits page this way rather than put it in the core product is that we didn't want to get into the whole easter egg mess or muddy up product code with such a thing. I think it's a rather nice solution.