User Friendly
An example of a User Friendly comic strip
Author(s)	J.D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad"
Website	http://www.userfriendly.org/
Update schedule	Updated daily
Launch date	November 11, 1997[1]
Genre	technology and geek humor

User Friendly is an online daily comic strip about the staff of a small, fictional internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip's humor tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humor. User Friendly is an online comic strip featuring technology-related storylines. ... Image File history File links Userfriendly. ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... Categories: Canadian people stubs | Cartoonists | Web comics | Computer humor ... A website (or Web site) is a collection of web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or subdomain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. ... November 11 is the 315th day of the year (316th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 50 days remaining. ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The webcomic genres are the types of themes a webcomic can take. ... By the mid 20th century humans had achieved a level of thinking mastery sufficient to leave the surface of the planet for the first time and explore space. ... Look up geek in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article is about the comic strip, the sequential art form as published in newspapers and on the Internet. ... An Internet service provider (abbr. ... By the mid 20th century humans had achieved a level of thinking mastery sufficient to leave the surface of the planet for the first time and explore space. ... Look up geek in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

It is drawn and authored by J.D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad". It is considered to be one of the first major webcomics, and has been running since November 17, 1997. Although the drawings were shaky to start with, the jokes have been popular and the artistic style has developed. Its popularity inspired many other webcomics with similar themes, the most popular being Penny Arcade, PvP and Megatokyo. Categories: Canadian people stubs | Cartoonists | Web comics | Computer humor ... This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. ... 17 November is also the name of a Marxist group in Greece, coinciding with the anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic uprising. ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Penny Arcade is a webcomic and blog written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik focusing on computer and video games. ... For PvP in multiplayer computer role-playing games, see player versus player. ... For other uses, see Megatokyo (disambiguation). ...

User Friendly is now published in a variety of newspapers making it one of the first webcomics to make the transition from the net to the mainstream.

In late 1999, User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance swapped a character (A.J. and Torg). Sluggy Freelance is one of the longest running, best-known and most popular webcomics, with a new comic released daily since August 25, 1997, except for 8 days in August 2001 and filler art on many other occasions. ... This is a list of characters from the popular webcomic Sluggy Freelance. ...

In 2000, the Waiting For Bob webcomic ran a series of comics where several of the characters visited Columbia Internet to have them design and host a website advertising their product, "Caf".

There is a running storyline and sometimes several day's worth of comics are drawn in advance, but the Sunday comic is always drawn for immediate release and breaks from the regular storyline. The Sunday strip is based on current events and is in full color, unlike the regular daily strips.

Periodically, there will be "nag-strips" which are special strips drawn for promotional purposes. These strips appear for 30-seconds before jumping to the daily strip. The content of these strips is to ask for donations or introduce advertisers, often presented by the characters or a cameo by Illiad.

Main characters

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Main article: User Friendly characters

Image File history File links Information_icon. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ...

A.J. Garrett

A.J., Illiad's alter ego,^{[citation needed]} is the creative guy for the company, maintaining and designing their websites. As a web designer, he's uncomfortably crammed in that tiny crevasse between the techies and the marketing people. This means he's not disliked by anyone, but they all look at him funny from time to time. A.J. is shy and sensitive. He loves most computer games, nifty art, and has a big brother relationship with the Dust Puppy. A.J. is terrified of grues and attempts to avoid them.^[2] He was released from the company on two separate occasions, but returned shortly thereafter. Web design is the design of web pages, websites and web applications using HTML, CSS, images, and other media. ... Wikibooks has more about this subject: Marketing Marketing is a social and managerial function that attempts to create, expand and maintain a collection of customers. ... This article is about the fictional predator that is loved by those with beards. ...

He and Miranda are now dating. They also have previously dated, but split up over a misunderstanding.

The Chief

The Chief is Columbia Internet's CEO. He is the leader for the techies and salespeople. A Chief Executive Officer (CEO), or Chief Executive, is the highest-ranking corporate officer, administrator, corporate administrator, executive, or executive officer, in charge of total management of a corporation, company, organization or agency. ...

Illiad based the character on a former boss:

^{[citation needed]}

The Chief bears a superficial resemblance to the Pointy-Haired Boss of Dilbert fame. However, Illiad says that The Chief was not inspired by the Dilbert character.^[3] The Pointy-Haired Boss (often abbreviated to just PHB) is Dilberts boss in the Dilbert comic strip. ... This article is about the Dilbert comic strip. ...

Dust Puppy

Born in a server from a combination of dust, lint and quantum events, the Dust Puppy looks similar to a ball of dust and lint, with eyes, feet and an occasional big toothy smile. He was briefly absent from the strip after accidentally being blown with compressed air while sleeping inside a dusty server. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... After just three years of use dust has blocked this laptop heat sink, making the computer unusable Dust is a general name for minute solid particles with diameters less than 500 micrometers (otherwise, see sand or granulates) and, more generally, for finely divided matter. ... Lint is the name of a Wolf that used to Bum other wolfs while Grey ctas filmed them with thier camera Phones. ... Fig. ...

Although the Dust Puppy is very innocent and unworldly, he plays a superb game of Quake. He also created an artificial intelligence named Erwin, with whom he has been known to do occasional song performances (or filks). Zombies attacking the player. ... Filk is a form of music created from within fandom, and performed generally late at night at science fiction conventions. ...

Dust Puppy is liked by most of the other characters with exception of Stef and the Dust Puppy's evil nemesis, the Crud Puppy.

Crud Puppy

Crud Puppy is the evil twin and nemesis of Dust Puppy and sometimes takes the role of "bad guy" in the series. In example by playing the CEO of AOL or controlling a "The Thing" suit. The Crud Puppy first appeared in the strip on February 24, 1998.^[4] Captain Kirk with Spocks evil twin An evil twin is a stock character concept found in fiction (especially soap operas, science fiction and fantasy). ... February 24 is the 55th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...

Erwin

Erwin first appeared in the 1998-01-25 strip. Erwin is a highly advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) created overnight during experimentation in artificial intelligence by the Dust Puppy, who was feeling kind of bored. Erwin is written in COBOL because Dust Puppy "lost a bet". Erwin passes the Turing test with flying colours, and has a dry sense of humour. He is an expert on any subject that is covered on the World Wide Web, such as Elvis sightings and alien conspiracies. Erwin is rather self-centered, and he is fond of mischievous pranks. 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... January 25 is the 25th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Hondas humanoid robot AI redirects here. ... In the scientific method, an experiment (Latin: ex-+-periri, of (or from) trying), is a set of actions and observations, performed in the context of solving a particular problem or question, to support or falsify a hypothesis or research concerning phenomena. ... COBOL is a third-generation programming language, and one of the oldest programming languages still in active use. ... The Turing Test is a proposal for a test of a machines capability to perform human-like conversation. ... Look up humor in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet. ... The Weekly World News frequently claims Elvis Is Alive! Elvis sightings are a recurring phenomenon in which people claim to see American singer and rock star Elvis Presley, who supposedly died on August 16, 1977. ... The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, currently used by the SETI project in the search for extraterrestrial life Extraterrestrial life is life that may exist and originate outside the planet Earth, the only place in the universe currently known to support life. ... A conspiracy theory attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually political, social, or historical events) as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance of powerful or influential people or organizations. ...

Originally, Erwin occupied the classic 'monitor and keyboard' type computer with an x86 computer architecture, but was later given such residences as an iMac, a Palm III, a Coleco Adam on Mir, a Furby, a nuclear weapon guidance system, an SGI O2, a Hewlett-Packard Calculator (with reverse Polish notation, which meant that Erwin talked like Yoda for weeks afterward), a Lego Mindstorms construction, a Tamagotchi, a Segway, an IBM PC 5150, a Timber Wolf-class BattleMech, and an internet equipped toilet as a punishment for insulting Hastur, (with Dust Puppy being the toilet brush). A computer display is an interface between the computer and the operator. ... It has been suggested that IBM PC keyboard be merged into this article or section. ... A BlueGene supercomputer cabinet. ... x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. ... A typical vision of a computer architecture as a series of abstraction layers: hardware, firmware, assembler, kernel, operating system and applications (see also Tanenbaum 79). ... The correct title of this article is . ... Palm, Inc. ... Memory console and keyboard for Coleco Adam computer expansion for the Colecovision The Coleco Adam was a home computer, an attempt in the early 1980s by American toy manufacturer Coleco to follow on the success of its ColecoVision game console. ... Mir (Мир, which can mean both world and peace in Russian) was a Soviet (and later Russian) orbital station. ... A group of different Furbys A Furby is an electronic toy made by Tiger Electronics which went through a brief period of being a must-have toy following its launch in the holiday season of 1998. ... // Nuclear weapons delivery is the technology and systems used to place a nuclear weapon at the position of detonation, on or near its intended target. ... Silicon Graphics, Inc. ... An SGI O2 (1996) SGI O2 Workstation The O2 is an entry-level Unix workstation introduced in 1996 by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to replace their earlier Indy series. ... The Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly known as HP, is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. ... A calculator is a device for performing calculations. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Polish notation. ... Jedi Master Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz) is a character from Star Wars fictional universe, who appears in all of the franchises films except for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. ... Lego Group logo The classic red 2x4 Lego brick. ... Lego Mindstorms is a line of Lego Group robot kits combining programmable bricks with electric motors, sensors, Lego bricks, and Lego Technic pieces (such as gears, axles, beams, and pneumatic parts) to build robots and other automated or interactive systems. ... Tamagotchi Plus, with a Marutchi character on-screen. ... Inventor Dean Kamen demonstrates the p Series Segway HT at the U.S. Department of Commerce on February 14, 2002. ... The IBM PC (Personal Computer), was the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. ... BattleMechs from cover of the book The Legend of the Jade Phoenix by Robert Thurston A BattleMech (Mech), in the science fiction universe of BattleTech, is a bipedal war machine about 30 to 40 feet tall, and massing from 20 to 100 tons (although recent developments in the fiction mention... Hastur (The Unspeakable One, Him Who Is Not to be Named, Assatur, Xastur, or Kaiwan) is a fictional character in the Cthulhu Mythos. ... Various toilet brushes A toilet brush is a domestic implement designed for the cleaning of the lavatory pan usually in conjunction with toilet cleaner or bleach. ...

Greg Flemming

Greg is in charge of Technical Support at the company. In other words, he's the guy that customers whine to when something goes wrong. He blows off steam by playing visceral games and doing Bad Things to the salespeople. He's not a bad sort, but his grip on his sanity hovers somewhere between weak and non-existent, and he once worked for Microsoft Quality Assurance. A Bad Thing, written with capital letters for added emphasis (and with the words similarly emphasised when spoken) is something which has negative consequences for the subject under discussion. ... Microsoft is one of few companies engaging itself in the console wars Where they are up against sony, nintendo, and of course sharps new console which may cause a threat. ...

Mike Floyd

Mike is a System Administrator, and is responsible for the smooth running of the network at the office. He's bright but prone to fits of anxiety. His worst nightmare is being locked in a room with a sweaty Windows 95 programmer^{[citation needed]}, and no weapons in sight. He loves hot ramen, straight out of a styrofoam cup.

Miranda Cornielle

Miranda is a trained systems technologist, an experienced UNIX sysadmin, and very, very female. Her technical abilities unnerve the other techs, but her obvious physical charms compel them to stare at her, except for Pitr, who is convinced she is evil. Although she has yet to reveal any character flaws, it is a commonly held belief in psychological circles that "perfect" people like her are deeply disturbed neurotics with sociopathic tendencies. Maybe that's why she smiles so much. Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX®) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Douglas McIlroy. ... The hand mirror and comb of the Roman Goddess Venus is often used to represent the female sex. ... In religion and ethics, Evil refers to the morally objectionable aspects of the behaviour and reasoning of human beings — those which are deliberately void of conscience, and show a wanton penchant for destruction. ...

She and A.J. are now dating although she was previously frustrated by his inability to express himself and his love for her. This comes after years of missed opportunities and misunderstandings, such as when A.J. poured his feelings into an email and Miranda mistook it for the ILOVEYOU email worm and deleted it unread. [1] The ILOVEYOU worm, also known as VBS/Loveletter and Love Bug worm, is a computer worm written in VBScript. ...

Pitr Dubovich

Pitr is the admin of the Columbia Internet server, and a self proclaimed Linux guru. He suddenly began to speak with a fake Slavic accent as part of his program to "Become an Evil Genius." He has almost succeeded in taking over the planet several times. His sworn enemy is Sid, who seems to outdo him at every turn. Pitr's achievements include: making the world's (second) strongest coffee, merging Coca-Cola and Pepsi into Pitr-Cola and making Columbia Internet millions with a nuclear weapon purchased from Russia. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Linux distributions. ... The wave shape (known as the dynamic ribbon device) present on all Coca-Cola cans throughout the world derives from the contour of the original Coca-Cola bottles. ... The current Pepsi logo Pepsi-Cola (often shortened to Pepsi), is a carbonated cola soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo, and the principal rival of Coca-Cola. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 kilometers (11 mi) above the hypocenter. ...

Sid Dabster

Although a relative newcomer to Columbia Internet, Sid is the oldest of the geeks and very knowledgeable. His advanced age gives him the upper hand against Pitr, whom he has outdone on several occasions; including in a coffee brewing competition and in a of Jeopardy! that was hacked in favor of Sid, by Sid. Unlike Pitr, he has no evil ambitions per se, but he is a friend of Hastur and Cthulhu (based on the H.P. Lovecraft Mythos characters). It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles. ... Hastur (The Unspeakable One, Him Who Is Not to be Named, Assatur, Xastur, or Kaiwan) is a fictional character in the Cthulhu Mythos. ... Cthulhu and Rlyeh Cthulhu (other spellings: Kutulu, Ktulu, Cthulu, Kthulhut, Thu Thu, Tulu[1], and many others) is a fictional entity created by horror author H.P. Lovecraft. ... Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of fantasy, horror and science fiction, noted for combining these three genres within single narratives. ...

Pearl Dabster

Sid's beautiful daughter named after the computer language Perl. Pearl is often getting the better of the boys, the antagonist of Miranda, and occasionally the object of Pitr's affections much to the chagrin of Sid. Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. ...

Smiling Man

The Smiling Man is the company Controller. He is in charge of accounts, finances and expenditures. He smiles all day, for no reason. This in itself is enough to terrify most normal human beings. However, the Dust Puppy, the "Evilphish" and a consultant in a purple suit have managed to get him to stop smiling first. His favourite wallpaper is a large, complex, and utterly meaningless spreadsheet. In accountancy, an account is a label for recording a quantity of almost anything. ... Finance studies and addresses the ways in which individuals, businesses, and organizations raise, allocate, and use monetary resources over time, taking into account the risks entailed in their projects. ... For the concept in software engineering, see user-friendliness. ... A consultant (from the latin consultus meaning legal expert) is a professional who provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise such as accountancy, technology, the law, human resources, marketing, medicine, finance, public affairs, communication, or more esoteric areas of knowledge, for example engineering of different kinds... Screenshot of a spreadsheet made with OpenOffice. ...

Stef Murky

Stef is the Corporate Sales Manager. He runs most of the marketing efforts within the firm, often selling things before they exist. He is a stereotypical marketer, with an enormous ego and a condescending attitude toward the techies; they detest him and frequently retaliate with pranks. He sucks at Quake, often managing to step into a lava pool at the starting screen; in addition, he often does so even in games that do not have lava pools. Although he admires Microsoft and frequently defends their marketing tactics, infuriating the techies, he has a real problem with Microsoft salesmen, probably because they make much more money than he does. His attitude towards women is decidedly chauvinist; he lusts after Miranda who won't have anything to do with him. Stef is definitely gormless as demonstrated on January 14, 2005.^[5] Zombies attacking the player. ... Microsoft is one of few companies engaging itself in the console wars Where they are up against sony, nintendo, and of course sharps new console which may cause a threat. ... January 14 is the 14th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Information on other characters and first appearance links to comics can be found at User Friendly characters. This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ...

User Friendly community and the comment board

Every daily strip has its own comment space for people to comment and discuss the strip in, known as the comment board. A community has evolved around the comment board, which is considered by many User Friendly fans a contributing factor in the popularity of the comic.

Common threads found in the comment board are:

• Illiways, the café at the end of the Ufieverse (a pun on Milliways': The Restaurant at the End of the Universe): This thread is used for café-like, general conversation. Newspapers, coffee and warm fuzzies are available daily.
• Question of the Day (QOTD): Almost 5 continuous years of daily questions.
• "I don't get it" thread (IDGIT): A thread for people who don't get the joke in the comic.
• Translations Thread: Translations into many real and fictional languages and dialects by the readers.
• The UF appeal for help: Reasons why you should donate to UserFriendly. Each day posted using a randomly generated colour string that appears differently in Internet Explorer and Opera (but always black in Firefox)
• Comment Board Trivia: Trivia questions of varying degrees of difficulty
• Crypto Thread: Crypto puzzle that is posted every day until somebody successfully breaks it, when a new crypto is posted instead.

Based on the community built, some contests are held on a periodical basis, such as UFie Idol (a pun on American Idol), where the readers compete sending their recordings (in MP3 format), which are judged on voice quality and "geekness" (i.e. technical ability such as clean recording or mixing). More occasionally, an Illiad for a day contest is held, where people are encouraged to create a new, "original" strip using artwork from previous strips. Given UF's blatant "Xeroxed talking heads" style, the title is rather fitting. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980, ISBN 0345391810) is the second book in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams. ... A cup of coffee Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. ... American Idol, is an American television series. ... MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular digital audio encoding and lossy compression format and algorithm, designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent audio, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. ...

The source code for the board software, ARS (Account Registration System), is available for download.

Link of the day (LOTD)

Every day a link suggested by the community is posted to the main page. The sites selected are usually not well-known and mainly non-commercial. As the User Friendly community has grown larger being selected as the link of the day has a similar effect as being Slashdotted. The Slashdot effect is the term given to the phenomenon of a popular website linking to a smaller site, causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily close due to the increased traffic. ...

Bibliography

Several cartoon compilations have been published:

• User Friendly ISBN 1-56592-673-0 January 25, 1998 - December 25, 1998 (misses out December 20 and probably some others)
• Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell ISBN 1-56592-861-X January 3, 1999 - December 11, 1999
• The Root of All Evil ISBN 0-596-00193-2 January 1, 2000 - December 31, 2000
• Even Grues Get Full ISBN 0-596-00566-0 January 1, 2001 - November 17, 2001
• User Friendly - Die Deutsche Dialekt-Ausgabe (translation to several German dialects) ISBN 3-89721-380-X

A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ...

Recurring Themes

• Tech-support jokes
• The computer game Nethack and the Amulet of Yendor
• On-and-off romance between A.J. and Miranda
• Illiad, the web comic writer, sometimes puts in a cameo appearance, often in the "nag-strips." He is represented as a guy with a paper bag over his head and two-eye holes poked through the bag.
• Rivalry between Sid and Pitr for being the smartest genius.
• Pitr's quest to be an evil genius and take over the world.
• Erwin's transfer between various corporeal machine embodiments for his artificial intelligence.
• The RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, SCO, and other targets of geek ire.
• The disconnect between Stef's marketspeak and the geek lingo of the rest of the cast

NetHack is a single-player roguelike computer game originally released in 1987. ... In several computer games, the Amulet of Yendor (Rodney spelled backwards) is the object the player needs to retrieve from the bottom of the dungeon in order to win. ... The RIAA Logo. ... The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is a non-profit trade association formed to advance the interests of movie studios. ... Microsoft is one of few companies engaging itself in the console wars Where they are up against sony, nintendo, and of course sharps new console which may cause a threat. ... SCO may refer to: Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an international organization. ... Look up geek in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

References

External links

• User Friendly