Mental Floss

COMPUTERS

In 1997, the idea that you could access email (specifically Hotmail) via a web browser was pretty revolutionary. "Even attachments show up!" exclaims the host in this charming segment of 'The Computer Chronicles.'

Chris Higgins


YouTube / Computer Chronicles

Our definition of portability has changed over the years, from 1975's IBM 5100 (what we used to call a "luggable" computer) all the way to today's ultrabooks, which are finally actually "notebook" sized -- and still have halfway decent battery life.

Chris Higgins






Apple Challenge To Conventional Computer Design

Apple uses secret internal code names for many of its products before they're released. Over the years, they've come up with some really weird ones—including one that led to multiple lawsuits.

Chris Higgins

As the dot-com bubble reached its peak in 2000, Internet entrepreneurs faced a problem: every word in the dictionary had been registered as a dot-com domain name. So their bold new innovation was to register domains ending in something other than dot-co

Chris Higgins
iStock

Just recently we were reminded how delicate our online ecosystem really is when the mysterious group Anonymous took down big websites like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal because they refused to support WikiLeaks. Anonymous is the latest in the fascinating h

Rob Lammle