technology

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Code Rush: The Inside Story of Netscape

Today we take great web browsers for granted -- there are several free and open options, and they all seem to work pretty well. But a decade ago, we were still used to paying cash money for new browser releases, and Netscape was doing battle with Microsoft in the courts as well as con users' desktops. In the rush to ship new and better products, and change the browser marketplace, Netscape was about to do something radical: go open source. Netscape was also about to merge with AOL -- not exactly an... READ ON

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Required Viewing: The Machine That Changed the World

Andy Baio of Waxy.org has begun posting digitized versions of a 1992 documentary about personal computers entitled The Machine That Changed the World. Narrated by Frontline veteran Will Lyman, the WGBH Boston documentary is "the longest, most comprehensive documentary about the history of computing ever produced," according to Baio. The documentary is great fun -- featuring extensive interviews with major computer pioneers, it covers a broad spectrum of computer history and trivia. From Baio's... READ ON

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Why reCAPTCHA is Good for Humanity

Last week we talked about KittenAuth, a novel CAPTCHA system used to differentiate between humans and spambots -- by using pictures of kittens. Today let's take a look at reCAPTCHA, the system in use by this very blog. What does it do, and why is it good for humanity? What's a CAPTCHA? First let's review the term CAPTCHA. It's a loose acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." The idea is to force humans to do a (relatively) simple task like read a... READ ON

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CAPTCHA Variants: KittenAuth

Over the coming weeks, I'll highlight a few of the best (and weirdest) CAPTCHA systems available on the web. CAPTCHAs are those "type this word" or "answer this question" tests you see on many web forms -- they're there in an attempt to prove that the entity filling out the form is not a spambot. The term CAPTCHA is an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." (The subject of Turing tests deserves its own blog entry, but let's just summarize here by... READ ON

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Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine

Danny Hillis is best known for his Connection Machine, a massively parallel supercomputer that led to breakthroughs in computational science and parallel computing. (It also was the subject of Hillis's book The Connection Machine, which was a highly technical but fascinating version of his thesis paper on parallel computing. If you want the only halfway mind-blowing version, check out The Pattern on the Stone.) Hillis later led R&D at Walt Disney Imagineering, but in my book the Connection Machine was... READ ON

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Nicholas Negroponte On the Future: Predictions From 24 Years Ago

Nicholas Negroponte is best known today for his work with the One Laptop Per Child project, but he's been doing interesting and pioneering technological work for a long time. In 1984, Negroponte gave a talk at the very first TED conference. His talk was about how people interact with computers, both in the present (in 1984!) and his hopes for the future. Negroponte's discussion is surprisingly relevant to modern technology; his view of technology from the very early days of the personal computer focuses... READ ON

Article

The Dead Man's Switch

Last night's LOST season finale made mention of a "Dead Man's Trigger," which is another term for a Dead Man's Switch. Although these devices are well known to some geeks, I thought I'd write a little explainer to introduce the notion more broadly. (Warning: very minor LOST spoilers follow.) While the LOST switch was in fact a "fail-deadly" (the opposite of a fail-safe), the concept is similar. In fact, this isn't the first time we've seen a Dead Man's Switch on LOST: Season 2 was all about Desmond's... READ ON

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Charles and Ray Eames Explain the Polaroid SX-70

Here's a tangentially related followup to the article on Polaroid photographer Jamie Livingston earlier this week. Some commenters asked about the quality of the photos -- many images seem to be better than what we think of as Polaroid snapshots. How did Livingston achieve advanced effects like changes in depth of field, double exposure, fixed-point focusing, and closeup photography with a Polaroid camera? The answer (in addition to Livingston's skill as a photographer) is his Polaroid SX-70 camera.... READ ON

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Simple Time-Telling: Time Balls

Yesterday we talked about Weather Balls; today let's follow the Wikipedia "See Also" link and dig into the exciting world of Time Balls! The best known time ball these days is the one that drops in New York City's Times Square to indicate the passage of another year. We're all familiar with how that ball works: when it hits the bottom, the clock has hit midnight, marking the division between old and new year. But past time balls dropped far more often: designed to help boats at sea calculate their... READ ON

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Simple Forecasting: Weather Balls

Portland, Oregon has long had a Weather Ball -- a series of lights that tell you, in rough terms, a weather forecast. It's located downtown, on top of a building. From many locations in Portland you can spot the ball and get a general sense of upcoming weather. In Portland, the lights are coded like so (thanks to Lyza Gardner for the explanation): It can tell you one of six things, that is: 1. It's going to get hotter (steady red) 2. It's going to get colder (steady white) 3. It's going to... READ ON