technology

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A History of Index Cards and Tabs

Productivity site 43 Folders has turned up a 2005 article from MIT's Technology Review on two of the most elemental innovations in office technology: the tab (as in a tabbed folder) and the index card. In Keeping Tabs, Ed Tenner delivers some excellent... READ ON

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The iPhone SIM Removal Tool

Here's a silly thing that brightened my day. When you mail in an original iPhone for repair, Apple provides the "iPhone SIM Removal Tool" to help you take out your SIM card before sending the phone in. The "tool" is very... READ ON

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The Rock-afire Explosion

Remember Showbiz Pizza Place? In the 80's, Showbiz franchise restaurants competed with Chuck E. Cheese's, offering animatronic robot rock, an arcade, and (perhaps only incidentally) pizza. The most memorable aspect of the entertainment experience was the Rock-afire Explosion, a full animatronic band that played in sync to hits of the day, employing surprisingly detailed movements and choreography. Although Showbiz Pizza was ultimately taken over by rival Chuck E. Cheese's, some complete Rock-afire... READ ON

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WarGames 25-Year Retrospective Panel

Remember WarGames? 25 years ago, it was the movie that brought such nerdy topics as IMSAI computers, modems, War Dialing, implausibly oversmart artificial intelligence, and Matthew Broderick to a global audience. (Well okay, it was technically Broderick's second film role, but I don't see anybody doing a 25-year retrospective on Max Dugan Returns....) Anyway, WarGames was a big hit, and an inspiration for young nerds everywhere. 25 years on, Google invited a panel of writers involved with the movie to... READ ON

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The Best Essay Ever - On Cable Laying??

How did Neal Stephenson do it? Way back in 1996, he managed to make what's clearly the most boring subject on Earth -- transcontinental data cable installation -- into a clever, engaging 56-page article. Well, he probably did in the same way he made cryptography exciting in Cryptonomicon and a dystopian corporate future funny in Snow Crash: by being a super smart guy writing about stuff that's actually interesting, beneath its veneer of super-dorkitude. In Mother Earth Mother Board, Stephenson... READ ON

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Using AI to Improve Animation

Torsten Reil gave a TED Talk in 2003 called Simulating Humans, describing his research on animating human characters in 3D. Reil discusses how traditional video game animation is static and repetitive: animators create each character animation, and the character goes through the same motions every time -- every time the character falls down it's exactly the same animation of falling down. As a result, human characters in games have looked pretty unrealistic, and movie animation has taken a long time to... READ ON

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More on Paul Otlet's "Mundaneum"

Paul Otlet's work first caught my attention last May due to a 2003 Boxes and Arrows article. Otlet's work was a sort of conceptual precursor to the World Wide Web, and was in effect an extremely well-organized and mechanized library -- but I'd never heard of him, despite having been through a pretty thorough Library Science Bachelor's program. Now the New York Times has a detailed article, complete with new graphics and a video, on Otlet's efforts. Here's a taste: In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans... READ ON

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The Old Calculator Web Museum

Remember that old paper-tape calculator your folks used to do their taxes? Or the crazy beige 70's calculator your high school math teacher insisted on using? Well, those look positively modern compared to what you'll find at The Old Calculator Web Museum, an extensive collection of vintage math machines. The calculators in this online collection range from simply antiquated to utterly bizarre. Others look like they're taken from early NASA programs (surprise -- the Wang LOCI-2 was indeed used to... READ ON

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Spore: The Buzz Begins

I've wanted to play Will Wright's next game, Spore, for years. I first wrote about Spore way back in February 2007, proudly and naively stating that "our wait will soon be over." Well, I was right if by "soon" I meant "in another year and a half." Spore has been in development since 2000, and it finally has a reliable release date: September 7, 2008. Let's hope the wait has been worth it. Spore is a video game unlike any other. Following in the tradition of Wright's SimCity and The Sims, it's a... READ ON

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George Dyson on the Birth of the Computer

George Dyson returns to TED with a seventeen-minute talk explaining the origins of the digital computer -- in hilarious style. Briefly starting with Leibniz's machine-based calculus proposal from 1679, Dyson takes us on a humorous ride through early computer development, with tons of anecdotes from early computer engineers' notebooks (including scans of all sorts of amusing notes). (If you can't see the visuals well enough below, try downloading the full-size MP4 file). If you like history or math,... READ ON