The Subservient Programmer

People love to have power over others. So it is no wonder that The Subservient Programmer Web page is very popular!

This is an interactive web page where you initially see a programmer doing his work. Using a text box you can send various commands to him. The Subservient programmer executes all your commands without any complaint. A wide set of commands such as cry, break, dance etc. are supported. The page is good fun and is a good stress buster!

Architecture
The architecture of this cool application is simple enough. A set of keywords is attached to a movie clip. When a visitor types in an action it is matched to one of the keywords. Then the corresponding movie clip is played. The site contains advise on how to create a similar application in Visual Studio Express and provides source code as well. Obviously the hard part is how you shoot the videos! There is also a big set of funny outtakes!
Unfortunately this uses Windows media player as an activex control. Hence it won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t work on anything other than Internet Explorer(6.0+).

Background
In 2005, A Burger King promotional web page The Subservient Chicken won the The cyber won award for the best direct marketing campaign. This page contained a guy in chicken costume(!) obeying all the commands typed in! That is why if you look at the footer of The Subservient Web Page you see the line “Because chickens can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t code.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù It is interesting to note that user experience in The Subservient Programmer is much better than the Subservient Chicken.

Similar Stuff
Subservient Stickman – A stick man obeys you! This is implemented using animated gifs and hence works on anything.
Other sites containing similar stuff are Stewie Live, The Subservient President, Subservient Blair and Sanjeev at NevaShut