1994
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Amazon rewinds to 1994 to remind you how good music was back then
Jeff Bezos must be an Oasis fan, because Amazon UK has gone all retro to mark the 20th anniversary of the band's iconic Definitely Maybe debut album. If you pop on over to Amazon's Music section right now, you'll see what the company thinks its store might have looked like back in the mid-nineties. Three Oasis videos are available in the Amazon Artist Lounge, including live performances of Digsy's Dinner and Live Forever, which are also available as free music downloads. To keep things authentic, Amazon features the exact album chart from May 16th 1994 as well as "new and future releases" from the Manics, Pulp and The Prodigy. If it's got you feeling nostalgic, then why not crack out that old Weezer CD and celebrate the very best nineties music had to offer, dodgy graphics and all.
Newspaper thinktank predicted the iPad in 1994
It's not often (well, ever) that I consider the possibility someone might be from the future, but maybe Roger Fidler was. In 2007 the Paleofuture blog pointed to the video below, where Fidler and his team at Knight-Ridder describe an electronic newspaper running on what might as well be an iPad... except that the video was made way back in 1994. Most futurists are off the mark, or make forecasts for technologies that are so far off in the future, you'll never know if they are right, but the Knight-Ridder team's predictions for the "electronic tablet" were just eerie. Granted, they forecast it for the turn of the century -- and in their version of the future, people still wore collarless denim shirts -- but it's otherwise freakishly accurate. "We may still use computers to create information, but we will use the tablet to interact with print, video and other information," the video explains. It also goes on to describe personal "profile pages," "interactive maps" and sharing links with friends. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. It even seems like Fidler is channeling Steve Jobs at some points, saying "Nobody needs a manual for their daily newspaper" and that tablet newspapers need to be kept simple. Amazingly, he even seems to describe iAds. Of course, the Knight-Ridder tablet wasn't the first futurist's take on a pad-shaped newsreader, but at least this one doesn't also come with a neurotic killer computer in space. If you were watching this video in 1994, you were watching 13 minutes of the future. Read on to see the clip. Bonus points to Fidler & co. for the classic PowerBook Duo, Newton and other Apple history in the background. [via The Inquisitr; hat tip to Bronwen Clune]
Sony's PlayStation marks 15th anniversary
1994. A good year for many reasons, but for gamers it's best remembered as the year Sony shook things up in a big way with its original PlayStation game console (on this day in Japan, at least -- the rest of us had to wait 'til the fall of 1995). While Sega got a slight head start with its Saturn, the Sony PlayStation's lower price and strong launch line-up of games quickly vaulted it to the top of the pack, and helped bring in the slightly older audience that 3D0 and others tried and failed to capture. Of course, the original PlayStation was also just the beginning for Sony, and the company has taken this opportunity to reminisce a bit about the entire history of the PlayStation brand on a special 15th anniversary website (linked below). Feel free to share some thoughts of your own in the comments.
24 in 1994: the "lost pilot"
How did Jack Bauer ever get by without his magical Treo? We figure it must've involved a whole lot more eyeball threatening than he usually manages to cram into a season of 24. Also, according to CollegeHumor's "unaired 1994 pilot" episode, it involved a pager and some really bad early 90's hair. Consider yourself warned, video is after the break.
