Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 5:15AM Oh Steve Ballmer... has anyone brought so many laughs, intentional or otherwise, to the world of technology? We don't know the backstory on what you're about to see, but we will cut Ballmer a little bit of a break, and assume it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. With this guy though, you never know. Here's Ballmer giving you the hard sell (used car salesman style) on Windows 1.0
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 5:46AM Today we buy a computer, rip it out of the box, and start using it immediately. But let's turn back the clock to 1964. Several trucks have just unloaded an IBM 360 mainframe with its 4K (as in kilobytes) of internal memory at your house (if you happened to live at NASA). Before you can fire up the computer, get your film projector ready for the.. training film. Through the magic of YouTube, here's a look at the first few minutes of the IBM 360 "Control Program of Operation" film. It's wild to see the juxtaposition of a man at a chalkboard explaining how something as high tech as a computer works. Also note the early use of "bricks and mortar" to reference how the different layers of programming work together:
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 5:32AM Sure today your phone can more than likely give you GPS-based driving directions. But back in 1994, that was definitely not the case. Unless you had the money to spend thousands on one of the early GPS units, chances were you had to stick to maps like everyone else. That is unless you rented a car from Avis. As you'll see in the commercial below, thanks to the wonder of the Avis Satellite Guidance, even 17 years ago you could get a taste of the future. (As annoying as the kids in the video are, I think the mother may have had plans to leave them somewhere where they couldn't be found again.)
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 6:01AM It turns out we weren't the first to make the connection between retro tech and a certain day of the week. No, we were beat to it by a few friends back in the 90's. I speak of course, of Ren & Stimpy. In this clip a retro salesman is trying to convince R & S to buy "the house of next Tuesday": A house with all the modern trappings as envisioned by the Jetsons.
Yeah, it's a stretch, but how often do we get to have a Ren & Stimpy clip on this page!?
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 7:02AM They don't make 'em like they used to... When's the last time you saw a pool be-dazzled with neon, and six GaGa (before there was Gaga) ladies holding CDs. These were times we shall never visit again, for better or worse: