Retro Tech Tuesday: Radio Shack 8-Track On Sale!

Oh, 8-tracks... How we miss you... Although come to think of it, maybe it's good you didn't catch on. After all, with room for eight tracks, you could've led the music industry to produce albums of only eight songs. Of course in this digital single world, it wouldn't really matter, would it?

In this ad Radio Shack has really captured the excitement of the in-car 8-track player, while also confirming that $59 minus $29 really is a savings of $30! Buy two! Great advice!

Retro Tech Tuesday: Hey Ladies!

The geeks might be rising again, but if this ad is any indication, the geeks used to rule back in the day as well. Oddly, I can't find any confirmation that was the case. I can tell you that this is exactly what happens when the guys of TDL walk into a Starbucks wit a MacBook Pro. The exact. Same. Thing.

Image: TechEBlog

Retro Tech Tuesday: LEGOs and 8-Bit Music Combined!

We'll admit it: we're cheating this week. Rather than talk longingly about some technology from a far off year, today we're looking at a new video featuring two of our favorite things: LEGOs and the glorious world of 8-bit music in this music video from Daniel Larrson. (Kudos to BuzzFeed for the find!)

Retro Tech Tuesday: Apple's 2000 Internet Strategy

Today we turn back the clock just a bit, to 2000. Only nine years ago, yet somehow it feels like an eternity in internet time.

It was in 2000 that Apple announced some exciting plans for the internet. Those plans included iReview (iWhat? the newer mac users ask) which was a site for reviews of sites, as well as perhaps the most dated part of their announcement was "a multi-year partnership and investment with Earthlink for Internet access." As crazy as that sounds now, at the time, it actually made a lot of sense. Apple needed to ensure that Mac-friendly gateways to the internet existed.

Another forgotten announcement from that time: KidSafe. As Apple described it:

KidSafe specifies what kids can see, rather than trying to filter out what they shouldn’t see. KidSafe downloads a software module into the computer’s operating system, which then verifies that each requested web destination is KidSafe by checking with Apple’s KidSafe server. Apple’s server contains over 50,000 KidSafe sites, with over 10,000 new sites being added per month. All KidSafe sites are approved by certified teachers and librarians. KidSafe can also disable Internet email, chat sites and games.

Today's youth run amuck, and it's clearly Apple's fault for killing off KidSafe! Seriously though, it was an interesting feature to sell parents on getting a Mac, and it's a little surprising it didn't carry over to the paid .mac and later MobileMe services.

Want to check out the rest of the iTools features? Here's the original press release, still available on Apple's site.

Retro Tech Tuesday: The CED Player

Don't you dare call it a laserdisc player!? No, this beauty, from my personal collection is the CED Player, or capacitance electronic disc. It was the brainchild of RCA (this player is by the folks formerly known as RadioShack) and it could've ruled the at-home movie-watching world if it wasn't for those VHS and Betamax brats. There were some limitations that kept CEDs from getting off the ground though, despite heavy investment by RCA.

First, as hard as it is to believe, unlike laserdiscs, CED players had physical needles that played grooves in a record, just like a phonograph. (it's a little more complicated than that. See the wiki page for more info.) Keeping the records as close to scratch-free as possible was key, hence the records are permanently placed inside thick plastic sleeves, and the whole thing gets inserted into the player, kind of like the early CD ROM trays.

Second, these things are heavy. Very heavy. A handful would probably weigh more than your whole DVD collection. You had to be careful not to stack them on top of each other, as the weight could warp the records at the bottom.

Third, the movie selection left something to be desired, although it appears every Charles Bronson movie ever made was available.

And of course, as Betamax and VHS entered the scene, there was the little fact that CED's were play-only devices. 

Still, the CED was the first way to experience Star Wars at home in stereo, and it serves today as an odd and finicky format. The video quality was similar to VHS, but it had something about it that just "felt" a little different, and for reasons I still can quite figure out, TRON on CED was a real headache inducer for me. It's hard to keep the machines humming along today. Mine, like several is the victim of a stretched/warped drive belt, so buyer beware. Oh, and I had to buy a special extra heavy duty shelving unit to store the CED's on after the closet shelf was dangerously close to breaking.

Come to think of it, it probably would've never worked as a mobile media solution either, seeing how a small child could probably stop breathing if just one or two discs fell on them.