Skip to Content

Are you prepared for Wrath of the Lich King? WoW Insider has you covered!
AOL Tech

Posts with tag anniversary

Search Google as if the Last 7 Years Never Happened

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 1st 2008 at 10:45AM

Search Google as if the Last 7 Years Never Happened
In honor of their tenth birthday, Google has brought back the oldest version of its search page it could, from 2001. The older design, with its thick letters and the goofy exclamation point, isn't just old school on the surface either. Searching the anniversary edition of Google brings back results from the 2001 search index. That means searching for "iPod" brings up results for "Image Proof of Deposit Document Processing System" and searching for "Switched" returns result for the "switched on classroom."

Why would you want to search the Internet from seven years ago? Who knows, but its actually kind of fun to see what things we've come to take for granted in under a decade. Just try searching for MySpace or YouTube. [From: TechCrunch]
  • Read
  • Permalink
  • Email this
  • SHARE
  • 0 Comments

World's First 'Modern' Computer Turns 60

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 21st 2008 at 1:09PM



It was 60 years ago that the first modern computer -- at least according to some -- was born in a lab in Manchester, England. The Small Scale Experimental Machine, or Baby, as it was affectionately known, was the first truly reprogrammable computer that had an analog for RAM. Unlike its predecessors, the ENIAC and Colossus, Baby could accomplish a variety of tasks by inputting different instructions "right out of the box," so to speak (ENIAC and Colossus could theoretically serve multiple uses, but only after several days or weeks of complex rewiring). Baby was the first general purpose computer as we've come to understand the term.

It first successfully completed a set on instructions on June 21, 1948, calculating the highest factor of a prime number, which would be 1.

By todays standards, Baby was absurdly primitive, its CRT memory unit could store a total of 1024 bits of information, with less power than a modern pocket calculator (it could take around an hour to do simple tasks). By contrast even bargain basement PCs today come with 1 gigabyte of memory, or 8 billion bits.

Baby was the immediate precursor of the Manchester Mark I and the Ferranti Mark I, the first commercially available computer. A working replica of Baby is on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. [Source: BBC]
  • Read
  • Permalink
  • Email this
  • SHARE
  • 0 Comments

World's First MP3 Player Is 10 Years Old

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 11th 2008 at 11:05AM

The MP3 Player Turns 10 This Month
It's amazing how quickly pieces of technology can become not only an accepted, but also indispensable parts of everyday life. It's hard to believe, but the MP3 player, now more accurately called the Digital Audio Player (DAP) or Personal Media Player (PMP), is 10 years old. Of course, most people just call it the iPod, but that's a whole other story.

It was back in March of 1998 that the world first got a glimpse of the MPMan F10 at the CeBit tech trade show in Hanover, Germany. The prototype garnered enough attention that, by May of that year, the Korean company Saehan Information Systems was mass producing the devices. By summer of 1998, the 32-megabyte (MB) flash device was on sale in the U.S. for $250.

At 3.6 x 2.75 x 6.5-inches, the MPMan was significantly larger than any media player on the market right now, save some of the largest wide screen video players. The Walkman-sized-device could only hold a small handful of songs, and its display was only slightly fancier than your standard digital alarm clock.

By now, of course, Saehan Information Systems and its MPMan are all but forgotten. In fact, many mistakenly point to the Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 as the first commercially available MP3 player, but the MPMan beat that CD-player-sized wonder to market by several months.

The bulkiness and limited capabilities of both devices may make them seem quaint when compared to your 32-gigabyte (1000 times the capacity of the original MPMan) iPod Touch, but these archaic devices helped spark a revolution that has completely changed the way we buy and consume music and media.

Gallery: The First MP3 Player

  • The MPMan F10 from Eiger Labs
  • Eiger Labs F10 in Black
  • F20 the Sequel
  • The original
  • F20v with 64 Megabytes!


From Register Hardware (via Engadget)

Related Links:
  • Permalink
  • Email this
  • SHARE
  • 3 Comments

Happy Birthday Wikipedia

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jan 17th 2008 at 8:34AM

Happy Birthday Wikipedia
It's hard to believe but this week Wikipedia is only 7 years old. Just 2,561 days ago the free and editable by every one encyclopedia that has become a staple in so many people's lives didn't exist.

In that short time, Wikipedia has gone from interesting experiment, to a fairly reliable source on an absurdly broad range of subjects. As of this morning the English version counts over 2.1 million articles in it's database.

For all the controversy surrounding the reliability of the open-source knowledge encyclopedia, it has certainly proven its worth. Some studies have found Wikipedia to be just as reliable, or more reliable than many commercial, peer-reviewed tomes, and the site can be credited with helping to jump start the user-generated content revolution we all know as "Web 2.0".

While we would never say that Wikipedia is perfect, we sure are glad it's here.

From Wired

Related links:
  • Permalink
  • Email this
  • SHARE
  • 0 Comments

The 'Blog' Turns 10

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Dec 19th 2007 at 4:27PM

The Revolutionary Blog Turns 10
Happy belated birthday, blogosphere! In case you didn't know, December 17 was the 10th anniversary of the term 'Weblog,' which was shortened to 'blog' at some point. The term started with a man, Jorn Barger, who used the phrase to describe his Web page where he posted links of interesting things he found around the Internet.

Back in 1997, blogging was hardly the phenomenon it is today. Some of the most conservative estimates put the number of true 'weblogs' at that time in the lower double digits. These days no one can really say how many blogs are out there. Technorati, a blog tracking service, estimates that 120,000 new blogs pop up every day. In April the site was tracking just over 72 million blogs.

The blog has morphed from its early days as a way of sharing cool finds (like Digg minus the voting), to the primary form of information dispersal on the Web. Blogging has become the format of choice in the fast-paced world of tech (like Switched.com) and politics, and has empowered a generation of new journalists. Now the New York Times has blogs, the Daily Kos is one of the most important forces in the Democratic party, and even CNN has the YouTube-esque iReport citizen journalism program. Like it or not, in less than 10 years time, blogs have completely altered the face of media.

From the BBC

Related Links:
  • Permalink
  • Email this
  • SHARE
  • 0 Comments

HP's New '70s-Style Retro Calculator

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 13th 2007 at 1:51PM

HP Celebrates 35th Anniversary of Landmark Calculator
Most of our readers are probably too young to remember the slide rule. An archaic device for doing arithmetic that was the standard before the arrival of high powered and practical pocket calculators. HP is continuing its year long celebration of its 35th anniversary by honoring the device that almost single-handedly killed the slide rule -- The HP 35.

To mark the 35th anniversary of this engineers' favorite, HP has released the HP 35s, a powerful programmable pocket calculator (oh alliteration) in a design reminiscent of the original HP 35.

The new calc has much more memory, more functions and sadly ditches the original single line LED display for a two line LCD with adjustable contrast. The HP 35s is also only $60, compared with the $395 the original HP 35 fetched.

From Engadget

Related Links:
  • Permalink
  • Email this
  • SHARE
  • 4 Comments


    AOL Tech Network



    Latest Reviews from CNET.com

    CNET provides the latest tech news, unbiased reviews, videos, podcasts, software, and downloads, making tech products easy to find, understand and use.

    Top Product Reviews

    Weblogs, Inc. Network

    AOL News

    Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in:

    Joystiq
    Download Squad
    The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
    BloggingStocks
    Xbox 360 Fanboy
    Autoblog
    Big Download Blog
    Fanhouse NFL Blog