essay

Until June of 2013 you could go to the xtranormal web site and can sign up for a free account that would let you do a small project.

Alas, in the summer of 2013, XtraNormal is no more.  This makes me sad because I really liked their software.

So, as a lesson of what CAN happen with specific software and/or technology companies, I present you with the wikipedia link to the XtraNormal entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xtranormal

After you read this entry, please take a few moments to consider what would have happened if you had invested a lot of professional effort and/or prestige in learning how to use this software.  As you can tell from wikipedia, there were some very professional products produced with this software (Geico commercial, for example).  Before announcing their shutdown, it was growing in popularity.

So, for this Learning Module, I would like you to create another blog entry where you lay out (briefly) the Xtranormal story and then describe any lessons YOU can take away from the entire saga.  This might include things like: 

• How you might protect your professional reputation in the event of similar failures
• Other examples of "orphan" technologies
• Predictions of other such "likely to fail" things
• Other "Lessons Learned"
• Other?