The Museum of Failed Gadgets

We live in a world fascinated by gadgets and other devices... but we often forget, that for every successful gadget, many others were failures; and in Sweden there is a museum dedicated to preserve those historic failures.

Why you can still close Windows' windows with a double click on the top left corner

It's kind of funny to look at computer History as already having things that newcomers may not understand how or why they work the way they do: and a prime example is the ability to close a window by clicking on its top left corner.

The origins of Adobe and PostScript

Today, no one will stop to think how the text that shows up in their computer screens is transformed into pixels that make it legible no matter if it's being shown on a large screen TV or a tiny smartphone display. It's one of the many things we take for granted. But in order for it to work, someone had to deal with the not very appealing task of making it happen.

A few decades ago, the mere act of displaying different fonts in different type sizes was a big headache. And considering you'd need to create fonts that could handle different devices, ranging from a low resolution computer screen to the highest DPI high-quality printer, it's no surprise that the "right solution" would become a very big deal. Professor Brailsford from the University of Nottingham tells us the John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, as they setup Adobe and created PostScript.

Two more "genius" that came from Xerox PARC, the place from which we owe so much today, starting with the mouse and the windowed graphical user interfaces we've grown to love so much.

Douglas Engelbart - the "Father" of Computer Mouses and ARPANET - passed away

People sit down at their desks and immediately put their hand over a mouse to interact with the computer screen in front of them; windows move around the screen, allowing you to do multiple things at the same time; you click on a hyperlink and immediately expect to see a page on your screen that is being served by a computer on the other side of the planet. We consider all this to be "common", and we might even be tempted to think that things are possible just because... it "happens".

But it isn't so. Things are possible because someone had the vision to turn them into reality. And all of the things I mentioned before are possible, in large part, thanks to Douglas Engelbart - a technology pioneer that brought us the graphical user interfaces, the computer mouse, and even the foundation of what  would grow to become the Internet.

Nothing better to remember him by watching the amazing "Mother of All Demos", that reminds us that everything we now take for granted... had to be invented first.

Cellphone is 40 years Old

Today we take for granted being able to pull a cellphone out of the pocket and making a call to anyone else in the world, but there was a time when that seemed like science fiction. In fact our trusted cell phone is "only" 40 years old, although I doubt many youngsters would still be able to even pick up that "brick" they called cellphone back then.

The first phone call using a cell phone was made by Marty Cooper, working at Motorola, that decided to ring a friend working at the competing Bell Labs, asking him "I'm ringing you just to see if my call sounds good at your end."


If you think current smartphones are heavy and have lousy battery life, you'll like to know that back then, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x (the first commercially available mobile phone) weighed 2.5 pounds and it lasted for about one hour of talk time. And let's not forget about price: at $3,995 it would be enough for you to buy nearly every single high-end smartphone today, and still enough to spare for next year's models.

How Google would be in the 60s

Ever stopped to consider how amazing it is that Google can process millions of records in a fraction of a second, even as you are typing a search query? Probably not... but if you had to go back a few decades, back to the sixties, and tried to achieve something similar using the available technology... things would be quite different.

Just how different? Well, you can try it out by visiting this Google 60 - and get to grips with punched card technology, together with printed paper outputs, and magnetic tape reels... and be thankful all those things are now mostly obsolete.

It certainly will bring back a lot of nostalgic memories for some of our readers. :)

The Internet in 1981

For younger generations, used to smartphones, the internet, computers and videogames, it might be hard to imagine how things were "back in the day". The days where color computer screens gave way to green phosphor CRT monitors, and the internet... well... it was slightly different than the one we have today (to put it mildly! :)

Watch it and enjoy...

How Tech Companies Got Their Names

Ever wondered how tech companies got their names? Why is Apple called Apple? How Intel came to be?

The following infograph shows you the origin of tech giants like Compaq, Oracle, Intel, and many others, and while Apple's name has a very simple explanation, you'll learn that Google's name is due to a badly written cheque, and that it was a flip of a coin that got us a Hewlett Packard instead of a Packard Hewlett.

[received by email]

Linux is 20 Years Old

Looks like congratulations are in order: Linux is 20 years old.

Along the years, much has changed since Linus Torvald first released it into the wild in 1991. I imagine no one could ever think Linux would now be all around us, from washing machines to routers to... pretty much any and every "intelligent" electronic device out there.

Now, it is spreading even faster, in the pocket of millions of users of Android smartphones.

Be sure to celebrate any way you can and be sure not to miss the following video. :)

Secret Evolution of Typographic Chars

They show up all around, ones more common, other not so... Who hasn't seen the ever present ampersand (&)?
What about the pilcrow, the section sign (§), the hedera, and even the lovely asterisk(*)?

They all exist for a reason, and their evolution along history is quite interesting, for example the "&" and, began as the latin et, and evolved like this:

If you want to know all the secrets about these symbols, just jump ahead.