FELIX

The time was 4am on the 23rd of February. A relatively large coursework deadline loomed over the heads of Department of Computing students Gabriel Lorin and Raoul Gabriel Urma, but this was not what they were pulling an all nighter for. Having purchased server equipment and spent since noon the previous day configuring it, the two launched happybirthdaystevejobs.com.

The website rapidly popularised last week and having since been featured on CNN’s website, is self described as “an effort to show [Jobs] support and gratitude”. The submission of wishes was closed on the 25th at 9:30am.

The duo looked towards Amazon’s EC2 cloud servers, famed for their extremely solid infrastructure, to host the site. Amazon has resisted Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks from the Anonymous online group regarding WikiLeaks earlier this year. Felix interviewed Raoul and Gabriel on day one of the website going live, after approximately ten hours. When asked about why they chose not to capitalise on the venture, they commented that they “just want to show support” and that “ads wouldn’t look good on the page and it’s not what [they] wanted.”

They added that they ran statistical monitoring tools, from which they were able to report that the website gathered 12,000 unique (different IP addresses) visitors in the first twelve hours and had over 9,000 birthday messages in the first day. Within the first minute of the site going live, 40 birthday messages were posted, and the site was popularised through E-mails, blogs and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Reminiscing on their efforts, they commented: “it’s so rewarding when you do something as big as this and it takes off. Everything comes together’’.

The effort was “definitely worth it because of some of the amazing wishes people made to Steve Jobs”

Gabriel Lorin and Raoul Gabriel Urma, Creators

“The website is very database intense, and the idea was to keep the initial design as simple as possible”, they added. Around the time of taking the submission of wishes offline, two days after launch, they reported statistics of 73,000 unique visitors from 156 countries with over 20,000 messages. On day two, a few isolated groups in the US attacked the website. The two students, however, said they were committed all day and night protecting the website, and successfully managed to fend off the hackers. The creators said the lack of sleep and all the efforts put into running the website smoothly were “definitely worth it because of some of the amazing wishes people made to Steve Jobs”.

One such posted example was: “Your vision and creativity has touched us all. I hope you are spending your day comfortably with loved ones as you recover. Warmest wishes on your special day as we all celebrate with you throughout the world you’ve changed forever”.

Raoul is a fourth year student who met Gabriel, a second year, during the course while being an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant in tutorials. The duo have worked on a web based project before and learnt a lot from the venture.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, turned 56 last Thursday and has been suffering from health problems. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009. Much speculation regarding his health continues as he has taken medical leave for the second time without specifying a return date.