Tag: RETRO TECH

Call us old-fashioned, but there's nothing quite like pulling the ol' photo album down from the bookcase and flipping through the past few decades with friends and family. Sure, perusing pics on Facebook is a surefire way to blow a few hours, but, for our money, physical copies still reign. (This probably explains why that digital photo frame we got for Christmas is still gathering dust in ...

It seems the economic downturn is dragging out the death of the 56k modem -- it's good news if you're in the dial-up Internet business, but bad news for everyone else. Even as broadband Internet makes its painfully slow march across the American heartland, some are holding on to their painfully slow dial-up connections. Why would someone stick with download speeds that make your first gen iPhone ...

Who doesn't love 'Pong?' Nobody, that's who. That's why we just had to tell you about the Pong Museum, a Web site dedicated to all things 'Pong.' The museum opened its virtual doors on January 27 to celebrate the 40th(ish) anniversary of 'Pong' and the Magnavox Odyssey (the first commercially available video game system). Along with a detailed history of the game and all of its various ...

Before they were mortal enemies, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were just two big dorks who really liked computers, and each other! Of course, the video (check it out after the break) also predates that whole Windows thing by about seven years. This bizarre dating show, taken from an Apple Event in 1983, features a bunch of software guys in '80s-era-preppy khakis and polo shirts answering questions ...

If you're old enough to remember floppy disks, you're old enough to remember the days of installing programs 1.4 megabytes at a time. A blank CD-R can store something like 500 times that amount of information, and a DVD-R many times more than that, so even we nostalgic old-timers aren't quite willing to go back to the ways of exchanging files by floppy. But, if you're dying for a taste of the ...

Unless you have some unexplained obsession with gadgets of yesteryear, you probably haven't been paying close attention to how many brands of portable CD players your local retailers have been stocking. According to Currys over in the UK, however, it's being pressured to order up truckloads of 'em to satisfy the 50 pervent uptick in demand compared to last year. Moreover, John Lewis (a ...

Shake it like a... well, you know. Since switching to digital, we've often missed the look and feel of prints from our old Polaroid cameras. Sure, you can boot up Photoshop and employ a set of filters and level adjustments to achieve the Polaroid look with the washed out colors and white borders, or you can check out the new Poladroid software. Once you open the app, drag your photos onto the ...

There is no denying that the '80s were the hey day of educational video games. We can't even count the number of hours we spent sitting in front of our IBM PCs, Apple IIs, and TRS-80s playing 'Oregon Trail,' 'Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego,' and 'Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.' The Educational Games Research Blog has compiled a list of its top 10 educational games from the '80s, and we're ...

Have you ever wondered what royalty eats? We have. We also sometimes think about what rich people eat... We bet its really, really yummy. Sigh... Jan Wilkinson, the director of the University of Manchester's John Rylands Library, has plans to put the cookbook created by the chefs of King Henry II online. The 14th-century book is one of 40 rare manuscripts photographed and placed online by the ...

Eastman Kodak Co. may be ceasing production of its pioneering color film Kodachrome, devotees worriedly told the AP. For decades, Kodachrome's uniquely vibrant colors made it the favorite medium of multitudinous still and video photographers, including amateur snapshot takers and National Geographic contributors alike. Since the '80s, the film's popularity has taken severe hits, one with the ...

It's always fun to look back to see the "cutting edge" of technology from eras past. If you're in London, you'll have to stop by the British Library Business and Intellectual Property Centre, where a collection of Victorian era gadgets has gone on display. Some of the gadgets are terribly unsophisticated precursors to modern must-haves, such as the wrist-watch-styled GPS ancestor with scrolling ...

One music retailer in California has cornered the music cassette sales market. Big deal, you say? Well, it is when you consider that, in jail, digital music players are useless and CDs are dangerous contraband. But, for some reason, cassette tapes and players are allowed, which means that millions of people in this country are forced to use an outdated method of music distribution that many ...

Oh, gross! This story sounds like it came from The Onion, but be afraid: The UK Guardian's Observer newspaper said it, and so it must be true. Turns out a devastating virus, or "Tape Mould" as the Brits are calling it, is ravaging VHS tapes from the '80s and '90s all over the United Kingdom. ('Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'! 'Desperately Seeking Susan'! 'Degrassi Jr. High'! -- all gone!) More ...

Researchers have uncovered an old recording of the human voice. Not impressed? You should be. The recording predates Thomas Edison's 1877 recording of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" by nearly two decades. The 10-second clip of a unknown person singing the folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" was recorded by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in 1860. According to an article in today's New York Times, ...

In a bit of major interstellar concurrence, New York-based Web developer Dan Budiac just paid $2,600 on eBay to buy the same model Apple II he grew up with two decades ago. Which, oddly enough, is about $200 less than he'd pay for a brand new MacPro that came out less than two months ago. The Apple IIc was still in the original packaging and had never been opened. "When this auction came ...