Google60 is Norbert Landsteiner’s art piece that tries to convey what google.com search would have looked like back in the 60′s — when IBM System 360 monsters ruled the machine rooms. An absolute gem for all the 360 nerds left out there.

Steve Jobs’ Speech From 1983 About Things That Didn’t Exist Until Now | iPhone in Canada Blog – Canada’s #1 iPhone Resource:

Back in 1983, Steve Jobs spoke at International Design Conference (IDCA) in Aspen. Now, the full 1-hour audio recording of Steve’s amazing speech discussing things like wireless networking, App Store and the iPad has surfaced, thanks to folks at LifeLibertyTech.com who got their hands on one of the cassette recordings from the conference which were handed out to all attendees.

(Via www.iphoneincanada.ca)

The Birth and Rise of Ethernet: A History – Input Output:

Nowadays, we take Ethernet for granted. We plug a cable jack in the wall or into a switch and we get the network. What’s to think about?

But it didn’t start that way. In the 60s and 70s, networks were ad hoc hodgepodges of technologies with little rhyme and less reason. But, then Robert “Bob” Metcalfe was asked to create a local area network (LAN) for Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His creation, Ethernet, changed everything.

Back in 1972, Metcalfe, David Boggs, and other members of the PARC team assigned to the networking problem weren’t thinking of changing the world. They only wanted to enable PARC’s Xerox Altos (the first personal workstations with a graphical user interface and the Mac’s spiritual ancestor), to connect and use the world’s first laser printer, theScanned Laser Output Terminal.

(Via h30565.www3.hp.com)

Searching the Internet B.G. (Before Google) – Input Output:

The first major search advance was Archie, which beginning in 1990 made it possible to search through a site’s file directories. Archie was painful to use, but compared to what we had been dealing with, it was wonderful. Archie was quickly followed by the University of Nevada System Computing Services’ Veronica, which tried to provide Archie-style searches for plain text files.

(Via h30565.www3.hp.com)

The History of the Floppy Disk – Input Output:

George Sollman, another Shugart engineer, took an early model of the 5.25” drive to a Home Brew Computer Club meeting. “The following Wednesday or so, Don came to my office and said, ‘There’s a bum in the lobby,’” Sollman says. “‘And, in marketing, you’re in charge of cleaning up the lobby. Would you get the bum out of the lobby?’ So I went out to the lobby and this guy is sitting there with holes in both knees. He really needed a shower in a bad way but he had the most dark, intense eyes and he said, ‘I’ve got this thing we can build.’”

The bum’s name was Steve Jobs and the “thing” was the Apple II.

(Via h30565.www3.hp.com)

 The Shack rocks….well it did back in 1978. Funny part is that the so called e-book was priced around $19.95 to $24.95, just about the same as a e-book today :-)

The compact RAMAC 305……Love the part where the “Lady in Red” opens up the “Trim Gray Process Unit”……yeah baby :-)

If you have sometime and like the look of those old ads from days gone by, check out Vintage Ad Browser. They provide a great interface to browser through all sorts of Ad categories and further break them down by decades.

Yep, a whole archive of ASCII Art, brought to you by Christopher A. Johnson……Ahhh, just like heaven….

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Wow, I still remember this day. I was a first year Mathie at University of Waterloo and was having my “liquid lunch” at the bombshelter when the live coverage of “Mauerfall” started……What a amazing experience that was. Follow this link for a set of amazing pictures from past and present, from the fall of the wall.

Picture courtesy of Sue Ream, photographer (San Francisco, California)

Ghost in the Machine: Jimi Hendrix, originally uploaded by iri5.

Here is a great flickr photo set I came across this morning. Anyone remember cassettes? :-)

If you love(d) 78 rpm records, you owe it to yourself to check out Cliff Bolling’s website. Here he is continually digitizing and adding tunes from the first half of the last century in mp3 format complete with  scratches, hisses, pops and all. It’s absolutely wonderful :-).

He uses an old Garrard Model RC 121 Mark II turntable and a GE VR 1 cartridge that came with the turntable. Right now, there are 3,739 titles on this page linked to mp3′s.

Brad over at bradfortner.com has a great article where he delves into the logic (or lack of) behind companies arguing IP with their own costumers. All I have to say is this, if the said company could write a decent driver, I would have had a little sympathy for them. But lets face it, Creative Labs is probably in a tie with ATI for writing the industries worst drivers for as long as I can remember.

The difference I guess is that when one of Creative’s own users started fixing the drivers, and asked other users for donations to support the effort, Creative went after him. When will these guys learn. If the guy was doing such a good job that Creative felt threatened, they should have hired the dude, not sent him a cease and desist letter. That’s pretty sad Creative.

Anyways, I think Brad is way to generous with the reptilian comparison. Reptiles have brains the last time I checked….right???

If you like to see some of the most prolific Engineers and Scientists of our time talk about how we got to where we are in computers, head over to the Computer History Museum Channel on You Tube. Oh, and if you’re ever in Northern California somewhere, take a side trip to Mountain View and visit the Museum in person, I did.

This is just such a gem I couldn’t help, but put it up. Head over to Briel Computers and have a look. Fully functional Apple I, KIM-1 and Altair PC cases. Man this just took me back in time.

Note that Replica I is actually an “upgraded” APPLE I. Their version has USB and serial and can be used with PC keyboard and power supplies. The Micro-KIM is exactly the same as the original KIM-1, but at quarter the size.