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The Grammy Museum built a streaming service to share its archives
The Grammy Museum will share its archives on a new streaming service COLLECTION:Live.
'Overwatch' Archives event opens a month early for 2020
Blizzard's annual Overwatch Archives event just went live a month earlier than you'd expect. The limited-time event, which features story-driven co-op missions that provide backstories for Overwatch heroes, usually takes place in April. For 2020, though, it will run from March 12th through April 2nd, giving you something to do in case you need to stay at or work from home due to COVID-19 fears.
Smithsonian opens up 2.8 million images to the public
The Smithsonian Institution is releasing a whopping 2.8 million high-res, two- and three-dimensional images from its collections to a new Open Access online platform. The material comes from all 19 Smithsonian museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo, and it's available for free to anyone with a web browser.
A video game museum is rebuilding an MMO designed for the Commodore 64
Thought you were old-school for playing Everquest and Ultima Online? Step back, son: those games are spring chickens next to 1986's premier virtual world: LucasFilm's Habitat. Don't fret if you haven't heard of it -- the Commodore 64-powered online world only lasted for two years and was exclusive to Quantum Link, an ISP that would eventually evolve into America Online. Habitat seems fairly basic by today's standards, but it was a breakthrough in its own era, featuring support for thousands of simultaneous players in a self-governed virtual world. It's gaming history, and Alex Handy, founder and director of the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment in Oakland, is trying to revive it.
Broderbund founder donates company archives to National Museum of Play
Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? She's currently lurking at The Strong museum in Rochester, New York. Broderbund Software founder Doug Carlston has donated company records, design documents and games for permanent archival at the The Strong's International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG). The Strong's Broderbund Software Collection includes material documenting the creation of Lode Runner, Prince of Persia, Myst, SimCity, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and other landmark PC releases. The collection spans Broderbund's founding in 1979 up until 1997, when the developer was acquired by The Learning Company. The new collection supplements a previous donation of archival materials from SimCity creator Will Wright. Featured material is available for research purposes on request. [Image: ICHEG]
Timothy Leary-developed video games found in New York Public Library archive
The New York Public Library recently discovered a treasure trove of video games in its archives created by psychedelic evangelist Timothy Leary. Over 375 floppies (talk about flashbacks) containing a "dozen or so" games developed by the LSD-advocate in the '80s -- some are playable via emulation -- are now on display in the library's rare books and manuscripts division, according to The New York Times. The good doctor's digital works had a self-help bend to them, advocating self-improvement by interactive means as opposed to pharmaceuticals, and apparently recreational drugs as well. If you fancy yourself a cyberpunk, Leary also had an in-progress project based on William Gibson's Neuromancer, replete with writing by William S. Burroughs and a soundtrack by Devo. He had more than just prototypes, too: His Mind Mirror was commercially released in 1985 and sold 65,000 copies for publisher Electronic Arts. If you can't make it to the NYPL, a version has been adapted to Facebook so you can glean your personality profile from your... profile. [Image credit: Jaycobs / Flickr]
Twitter search upgraded to pull in results older than last week
The ease of dumping our historic/inane messages into Twitter has fueled the service's growth so far, but the ability to retrieve relevant ones later has, until now, lagged behind. CEO Dick Costolo promised last year that the company was working on "architecting search" to allow access to the archives, and today the company announced its search feature is finally able to include tweets that are more than a week old. That follows the release of archive dumps that allow users to mass download and search through their own tweets. Expanding the search function's memory from goldfish to elephant size is going to roll out across the web and mobile apps -- already sporting a freshly redesigned search -- over the next few days. For now, Engineer Paul Berstein explains in a blog post that results will slowly continue to grow to include a greater percentage of tweets ever sent, with search results weighted by elements like number of favorites, retweets and clicks.
Twitter archive begins rolling out to users today, enables sorting by month and keyword
A "small percentage" of Twitter users may have noticed the feature earlier this week, but the rest of us should officially have access to the service's archive tool soon. After downloading your own Twitter archive, you'll be able to launch an HTML file that provides a familiar web interface, but with vastly improved searching features and full access to all of your tweets since your very first day on the site. The advantage of Twitter archive is twofold: you'll have a backup of all of your tweets (and retweets), but you'll also be able to dig through all those masterfully crafted messages more quickly and efficiently, thanks to localized storage. Initially, the archive option will only be available for users with accounts set to English, but those of you displaying the site in other languages will have access "over the coming weeks and months." Check it out at the source link below.
WildStar catalogues lore in its Galactic Archives
Senior Narrative Designer Cory Herndon is all about the lore of WildStar, which is why he's equally excited about the methods to relay it to the player. In the most recent WildStar Wednesday, Herndon unveils the game's Galactic Archives, which will do just that. The Galactic Archives will seem familiar to codices in other MMOs and RPGs. Entries are categorized into locations, creatures, sentient species, notable individuals, plants, minerals, technology, lore, enemies, and allies. Players will naturally unlock Archive sections as they play, expanding each individual article as more is discovered in-game. Herndon points out that while the Galactic Archives aren't the only method of relaying story, they are a crucial tool in gathering everything the player's experienced into one handy location. He also says that players pursuing the scientist path will enjoy expanded and additional selections beyond what others experience.
University of Michigan's Computer and Video Game Archive houses over 3,000 different games, roughly 35 unique consoles (video)
Systems such as the ColecoVision, TurboGrafx-16 and 3DO may have been ousted from most home entertainment centers long ago, but they still have shelf space at the University of Michigan's Computer and Video Game Archive. Slashdot caught up with Engineering Librarian and Video Game Archivist Dave Carter and took a look inside the repository, which has curated around 35 classic and current-gen platforms and more than 3,000 different games. Having "one of everything" is the project's ultimate goal, but the logistics of acquiring every new game make achieving that feat a stretch. "Our realistic goal is to be sort of representative of the history of video games, what was important -- what was interesting," Carter said. "And then, not only to preserve the games, but also to preserve the game playing experience." As a "useable archive," patrons of UM's library can dig in and play at different stations with era-appropriate monitors and displays. While many visit for leisure, students have used the resource to research topics ranging from music composition to the effects of texting while driving (using an Xbox 360 racing title and steering wheel peripheral, of course). You can catch a glimpse of the collection in the video below or visit the archive's blog at the more coverage link.
Meet your desktop's ancestors: AT&T exhumes footage of the Bell Blit (video)
AT&T's video archives are rich seams of juicy historical tidbits, and today's offering is a fine example. It's sharing footage of the Bell Blit, a graphic interface that Bell Labs developed after being inspired by the Xerox Alto. Originally named the Jerq, it was created by Rob Pike and Bart Locanthi to have the same usability as the Alto, but with "the processing power of a 1981 computer." Watch, as the narrator marvels at being able to use multiple windows at once, playing Asteroids while his debugging software runs in the background on that futuristic green-and-black display. The next time we get annoyed that Crysis isn't running as fast as you'd like it to, just remember how bad the geeks of yesteryear had it.
Kodak announces 'asset protection' cinema film, thumbs nose at your digital movie collection
Kodak may not be beloved by digital filmmakers, but it's not fallen out of love with the talkies. It's new "asset protection" cinema film is designed to save motion pictures from being lost if your digital-storage-medium-of-choice is rendered obsolete. It's designed for long-term archive storage, with your Hollywood blockbuster stored in a "human-readable" format that'll remain usable "well into the future." As such, the reels are loaded with dyes that will reportedly remain stable for "decades," but the company thinks will remain viable for over a century -- in stark contrast with the short life of your average hard-drive. It'll add a monochrome offering to the range later in the year, but if you want the color version now, your people will have to talk to Kodak's people, Mr. Producer.
Einstein Archives website rolls out first phase of project to get 80,000 documents online
Believe it or not, there are still things that have yet to be put on the internet. That has included most of Albert Einstein's archives, a portion of which has previously been available, but which now has a greatly expanded online presence courtesy of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (and a grant from the Polonsky Foundation UK). The first phase of that expansion includes some 2,000 digitized documents, ranging from personal correspondence to scientific papers, which are fully searchable and able to be examined right down to the finest detail. Additional documents will continue to be added over the course of 2012, with the ultimate goal being to get all of the 80,000+ items in the university's own archives online (they've all already been cataloged). No word on any future plans for tablet apps or the like, but you can dive into the new website right now at the source link below.
Do we have the right to be 'forgotten' on Google? Spain asks ECJ to investigate
Google has already tasted European hot water over its revised privacy policy, and soon the European Court of Justice (ECJ) may expand its remit to consider other related issues too. Spanish judges are asking the top court to consider complaints from 100 Spaniards who wish to have their names removed from news articles and websites. Among the complainants are a plastic surgeon who wants to delete archived references to a botched operation, and a man who appears on the Google News aggregator for alleged non-payment of social security. Google itself told Reuters that it supports the "right to be forgotten," but only if it's applied to search engines "in a way that protects both the right to privacy and the right to free expression." If only life was as simple as Pay N' Spray.
Stanford archives provide rare glimpse into Apple's early days as mere seedling (video)
Housed in a climate controlled storage facility operated by Stanford University, nearly 600 feet of shelf space is dedicated to preserve documents, videos and memorabilia of Apple and its early days as a young startup. The collection holds rare gems such as interviews with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, both of whom discuss some of the rationale behind Apple's name -- Jobs asserts that it was selected to place his company ahead of Atari in the phone book. Originally intended to furnish Apple's corporate museum, the materials were donated to Stanford in 1997 after Steve Jobs' return to the company, which was most concerned with financial survival at the time. According to the university, more than 20 significant collections have been added to the archives in the subsequent years. The warehouse holds blueprints of the Apple I, user manuals, magazine ads, TV commercials and T-shirts, along with thousands of photographs that document Steve Jobs during his years as CEO of NeXT. Other rarities include a $5,000 loan document -- signed by the two Steve's and the partnership's third co-founder, Ron Wayne -- a spoof of Ghostbusters that starred former CEO John Sculley and other company leaders, who played "Blue Busters" to eliminate IBM, and handwritten sales entries of the very first Apple II's. While the location of the facility is undisclosed, we can only hope that, some day, the collection will be showcased for fanboys, fangirls and the public alike.
Daily Mac App: Keka
Great free archive utilities are pretty hard to come by on the Mac. Keka is the exception. If OS X's built-in compression utility doesn't do enough for you, Keka could be the answer. Keka's been around since 2009, but only recently made it into the Mac App Store. Unlike Growl, Keka is available both as a paid, US$2 app from the Mac App Store and as a free download from the Keka project site. The two versions will be kept in sync, so there'll always be a free option. Of course if you use it, supporting the developers, either by a donation or buying it in the Mac App Store, will help them continue to update it. Keka allows you to compress files in multiple formats. Zip, 7z, Tar, Gzip and Bzip2 are all included. What's more Keka can extract even more with RAR, 7z, Lzma, Zip, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, ISO, EXE, CAB, PAX, and even ACE supported. Keka also supports encrypted archives meaning you can password protect compressed files, as well as split archives -- handy when you have file size limitations. Like the Unarchiver and others, you can set Keka as the default extraction client, so files can be decompressed with a double click. If you want to get a bit more advanced, the Keka Dock icon serves as the one-stop shop for compression. Drag and drop files onto it to either decompress or create a new archive in the default format of your choosing. Format and compression method can be changed quickly from a pop-up menu from the Dock icon. It's all very slick.
Daily Mac App: iZip Archiver
Simple handling of compressed archives is a breeze on a Mac, simply secondary-click and hit "Compress". Likewise opening a zip file is as easy as a double-click. But what happens when you want to get a bit more advanced with your compression archives? That's where something like iZip Archiver steps in. iZip Archiver is available from both the Mac App Store and directly from the developer's site. The version available in the Mac App Store is a fairly limited application, but the free version available from izip.com allows you to do a couple of things that your Mac can't do natively, even with the likes of The Unarchiver, TinyExpander or Stuffit Expander installed. Essentially iZip Archiver will allow you to create archives in .zip format, secure them with a passcode and share them via files.com. That bit of the app doesn't really add anything to the default Mac-archiving experience. But what it will do is allow you to open and edit archives without extracting them first. Opening an archive mounts it like an external drive or .dmg, and allows you to look through the contents, open, edit, rename or extract single files, as well as add to or delete items from the archive. In this way you can add files you'd forgotten to zip up, or remove files you no longer want in your archive without having to unzip and re-zip them. For small archives it only saves a little time, but for really massive archives, skipping the extraction step will save you heaps of time. iZip Archiver supports ZIP, ZIPX, RAR, TAR, TAR.GZ and 7ZIP files, so most common archives are covered. There are other alternatives like BetterZip 2 and Stuffit Deluxe to name just two, but most of them aren't free. So if you're looking for a free tool for the occasional archive modification, iZip Archiver will do the job for you for nothing. The restricted iZip Archiver is available from the Mac App Store, while the more fully featured version is available directly from the developer's site.
Royal Society opens its archives to the web, is less elitist than the name suggests
Get ready science nerds, you're about to get a lifetime's worth of reading material for free. The venerable Royal Society, the over 350-year-old British scientific organization, has just opened up its archives to the web-dwelling public. That's over 60,000 scientific papers dating back to the first ever peer-reviewed research publication in 1665. Other highlights include Isaac Newton's first ever published paper, research from Charles Darwin, and Ben Franklin's famous kite experiment. Don't waste any more time, go hit up the source link for all the old research papers you can handle.
Google News Archives stops digitizing old newspapers, picks great day to do it
Ain't like you'll be reading 'em anyway after today's over.
Playboy archives coming to iPad tomorrow
If you've been waiting for those Playboy archives ever since we heard about them in January, the wait is almost over. App Advice says the web app containing all back issues of the famously controversial gentleman's magazine will finally be ready to go on the iPad tomorrow, for a subscription price of $8 a month, of course. Back in March, an iPad app was released, but it's since disappeared from the App Store, perhaps because of Apple's restrictions on adult content there. Of course, the web app has no such restrictions, so interested subscribers will be able to browse all of Playboy's 50-plus years of content. We're just reading it for the articles, of course. But if this flies with consumers, we may see more publications going with a web-based content service occasionally, rather than depending on the Apple App Store to deliver archived content.
