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Apple Store inside DC's historic Carnegie Library opens May 11th
Two years after Apple announced plans to turn Washington, DC's Carnegie Library into a retail store, the company will open the doors to its latest flagship on May 11th. This comes after years of planning and months of restoration and renovation.
US National Archives gets into the historical GIF game
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) serves as America's historian, cataloging and preserving the nation's most precious documents, audio and video recordings. On Thursday, NARA announced that it had launched a Giphy channel with more than 150 animations to help showcase its vast trove of video content. The administration plans to expand upon that figure with an eclectic mix of classic footage. via GIPHY What's more, every GIF automatically links back to the archive's website which includes additional information on the significance of the piece. The Bugs Bunny gif above, for example, is actually from short titled "Uncle Sam Speaks" and is actually a compilation of savings bond promotions.
The house where Steve Jobs built Apple is now a historic landmark
It doesn't seem like Patricia Jobs, sister of famed Apple co-founder Steve, is exactly onboard with her family home being designated a "historic resource" by the Los Altos Historical Commission. Not that it matters, anyway. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the decision to preserve the one-story home at 2066 Crist Drive where Jobs got a start building the first Apple computers was made independent of her consent. The distinction, which Patricia can still appeal, also means any renovations/repairs to the home would first have to be reviewed by the commission -- so you can understand why the honor's both a blessing and a curse. Of course, we all now associate Cupertino as the homebase of Apple's current operations. But before Apple could build itself into the consumer tech juggernaut of modern day, and carve out a new spaceship campus, there was just Jobs, a dream and modest home that's now effectively a museum. [Image credit: Patrick Tehan/Bay Area News Group]
'What Was There' project adds a pinch of history to augmented reality
So, it works as such. You dig up ancient photos -- a few generations prior, or even a few decades ago -- scan 'em in, and tag them to their rightful place on Google Maps. Then, folks who visit the 'What Was Here' project website or download the iOS app (all linked below) will be able to see what kind of world they'd be living in if Uncle Rico's time machine actually worked. 'Course, the initiative needs you, you and you to participate if it's to be dubbed a success, so we'd recommend using whatever's left of your weekend to contribute. And then send your mum a "thinking of you" letter using the very map you're improving. Who said retro had to be retro, anyway?
British Library and Google Books partner up to digitize 250,000 out-of-copyright works
Oh paper, ye olde guardian of human wisdom, culture, and history, why must you be so fragile and voluminous? Not a question we ask ourselves every day, admittedly, but when you're talking about the British Library's extensive collection of tomes from the 18th and 19th century, those books, pamphlets and periodicals do stack up pretty quickly. Thankfully, Google's book digitization project has come to the rescue of bewildered researchers, with a new partnership with the British Library that will result in the availability of digital copies of works from that period -- spanning the time of the French and Industrial Revolutions, the Crimean War, the invention of the telegraph, and the end of slavery. In total, some 250,000 such items, all of them long out of copyright, will find a home on Google Books and the British Library's website, and Google has even been nice enough to bear the full cost of transforming them into web-accessible gems of knowledge. Jump past the break for the similarly digital press release.
Google Street View invades historic landmarks, makes it unnecessary for you to ever leave the house
The vagabonds of Google's Street View team have struck again, this time conquering classical French and Italian landmarks for their mothership's immense pictorial collection. As of today, you're able to drop your little yellow avatar in Google Maps right atop such famous locales as the Colosseum of Rome or Florence's Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, whereupon you'll be transported right to it (or, in the case of the Colosseum, inside it) in the same way as if they were any old street addresses. This follows, of course, Google's introduction of an intriguing indoor version of Street View for some of the world's most prestigious museums recently and continues the company's trend of bringing the arts, in this case classical architecture, to a wider audience. We just wonder what reason said audience will have to ever step outside with all this splendor at its fingertips indoors.
The Thinking Machines flashes back to 1968 for a lesson in computer logic, sideburns (video)
Another dusty gem's emerged from the vintage gold mine that is AT&T's Tech Channel archive, and this one's packed full of useful information and some classic Jetsons-style animation. The Thinking Machines pits man against computer to explain how the things reason, and it does so with a soundtrack that's straight out of, well, 1968. Unsurprisingly, the film's populated by giant, button-laden switchboards, early computer graphics, ladies sporting beehives, and gents rocking unfortunate facial hair, but if that doesn't do it for you, it also offers genuine pearls like this: "Best of all, they never get bored. Like other machines, they can do the same monotonous chores all day long without complaining." Someone should tell that to the disgruntled Roomba residing in our hall closet. Check out the full video in all its dated glory after the break.
A series of unfortunate demises: classic arcade game deaths compiled into a tender tribute video
Whatever your flavor of old school gaming, whether you were a future-loving RoboCop killer or a skeleton-slaying Golden Axe swinger, there's a little slice of nostalgia here for you. The guys from BoingBoing have lovingly compiled some of the most memorable death scenes from the games of yore into a video tribute, and they've been nice enough to leave out the names of all the games featured. There's no Pokémon action in there, but still, can you guess 'em all?
Sun.com, the twelfth oldest domain on the internet, will be decommissioned on June 1st
Sun Microsystems, one of the original gangsters responsible for supplying all the electronics and infrastructure we now know as the internet, ceased to be Sun Microsystems in January of last year. Assimilated into the Oracle juggernaut, its operations no longer carry that familiar logo and soon they'll no longer even be referenced in the same spot on the internet. Yes, after 25 years of answering the call of sun.com, the company that no longer is will be letting go of its former domain name as well. The site has already been redirecting users to Oracle for quite a while, but come June 1st, it'll be like the Sun we knew had never even risen. [Thanks, Jeroen]
William Shatner explains what microprocessors are and do... from way back in 1976
For a man that spent the best part of his acting career representing a savvy dude from the future, William Shatner looks pretty well at home in the past as well. This video, dusted off from AT&T's Tech Channel archives, shows Shatner dressed in a casual tan ensemble and dropping some knowledge on the subject of microprocessors. Aside from the retro visuals and presentation, what's great about the vid is that the seemingly lavish claims about where computers could take us -- and their own move toward increasing importance, utility and ubiquity -- actually seem pretty tame in light of what we know today. Beam yourself past the break to see this golden nugget from the Bell Labs archives. [Thanks, Dan]
Researchers claim discovery of lost city of Atlantis, conveniently located in southern Spain
We had to do a double take when we read this headline from Reuters, but sure enough, it's not April1st yet and its writers don't seem to be joking: the location of the lost city of Atlantis has finally been discovered. Such is the bold claim from an international team of researchers, dreamers and intrepid adventurers. With the use of ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography, they've unearthed evidence to suggest that a spot on the southern coast of Spain, just north of Cadiz, played host to what may have been human society's first metropolis. One of the reasons why it's taken archaeologists so long to pinpoint its whereabouts may be the fact that it lies 60 miles inland, where you wouldn't really expect it to be susceptible to the effects of tidal waves (which is what Plato's account of the ancient city identified as its demise). A National Geographic documentary on the subject will be broadcast this evening where we may learn more about what was discovered, the methods for doing so, and the gorgeous tans those scientists built up in sunny Spain.
NASA's Space Shuttle launch videos are spectacularly incredible, incredibly spectacular
Did you know that it takes nearly seven and a half million pounds of thrust to get a Space Shuttle off the ground and into the final frontier? NASA opts to generate that power by burning through 1,000 gallons of liquid propellants and 20,000 pounds of solid fuel every second, which as you might surmise, makes for some arresting visuals. Thankfully, there are plenty of practical reasons why NASA would want to film its launches (in slow motion!), and today we get to witness some of that awe-inspiring footage, replete with a silky voiceover explaining the focal lengths of cameras used and other photographic minutiae. It's the definition of an epic video, clocking in at over 45 minutes, but if you haven't got all that time, just do it like us and skip around -- your brain will be splattered on the wall behind you either way.
Apple engineer uses Lego to rebuild ancient Greek mechanism, will surely try to patent it (video)
The Antikythera Mechanism is what you call truly old school technology. Argued to be the world's oldest known computer, this ancient Greek invention was used some time circa 100BC to calculate and "predict celestial events and eclipses with unprecedented accuracy." Skipping past the two millennia in which it lay lost on a sea floor somewhere, the Mechanism has now been recreated by an Apple software engineer by the name of Andrew Carol, who has lovingly pieced 1,500 Lego Technic blocks together, creating 110 gears and four gearboxes in total. Each box is responsible for performing one piece of arithmetic, and when the resulting machine is fed with appropriate calendar data, it spits out a (hopefully accurate) prediction for the next time a solar eclipse should occur. All well and good, but we're really just amazed by the beauty of those gears working. Check them out after the break.
Google helps scholars mine 1.7 million Victorian era book titles for clues to our historical attitudes
Whether we like, loathe, or never even considered the idea of it, quantitative literary analysis seems ready for its moment in the spotlight. Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs, a pair of historians of science over at George Mason University, have been playing around with the titles of some nearly 1.7 million books -- accounting for all the known volumes published in Britain during the 19th century -- in a search for enlightenment about the Victorian era's cultural trends and developments. By looking at how often certain words appear in text titles over time, they can find corroboration or perhaps even refutation for the commonly held theories about that time -- although they themselves warn that correlation isn't always indicative of causation. Their research has been made possible by Google's Books venture, which is busily digitizing just about every instance of the written word ever, and the next stage will be to try and mine the actual texts themselves for further clues about what our older selves thought about the world. Any bets on when the word "fail" was first used as a noun?
Giroux Daguerreotype is world's first mass-produced camera, about to become the most expensive one too
If you thought that shooters like Olympus' E-P1 or Leica's M8 had old school aesthetics, think again. The real old school -- we're talking 1839 here -- was all about wooden boxes and brass lens protrusions, as you can see above. The double box design of the Daguerreotype lets you achieve focus by moving the smaller inner box away from the front-mounted 15-inch lens. Exposure times can take up to half an hour, though, so you might wanna budget for a sturdy tripod as well. Speaking of budget, if you know the meaning of the word you're not probably not the target audience here, as a May auction in Vienna is set to start at €200,000 ($280,000), with predictions placing the final sale price closer to €700,000 ($980,000).
The Daily Grind: Is space the "final frontier" for MMOs?
"Space: the final frontier." Sounds a bit short-sighted, doesn't it? I mean, no offense to the ghost of Gene Roddenberry, but we've barely scratched the surface of what's out there beyond our atmosphere. To claim that it is the "final frontier" to be explored, charted, and colonized may not be entirely accurate. But, it does make for a catchy slogan and a great series of TV shows, movies, and games (ok, games... historically, not so much).Thus far, "space" may appear to be the final frontier in MMOs as well, but to claim it as such is also short-sighted. The creativity of the human mind is a great thing. I'm sure we'll conjure up some novel concepts or twists on old themes or settings and make them work. The two biggest MMO sub-genres so far are undoubtedly Fantasy and Science Fiction (often space-oriented). Superhero MMOs are making a run for it and so are MMOs in post-apocalytic settings. There are even a plethora of oddly-themed kids games too. Are there any genres we haven't thoroughly tapped yet? What about Horror? Mystery? Crime? Modern warfare? As for settings, what about Earth present? Earth historic? Alternate dimensions? Fairly tales? What genres and settings are you itching to explore?
Breaking down Blizzard's world event so far
Blizzard, as we've said already, has really outdone themselves with this latest world event. It's been so fun and so innovative that players are wondering just why the rest of the game hasn't been this good so far (even though, of course, it's been superb anyway). The zombie invasion really gave players of MMOs everything they've wanted since this genre first came into being -- a growing, changing world populated not by mindless AI characters stuck in static patterns, but actual, creeping story and chaos. For all of the anti-zombie whining, this world event has been MMO gameplay at, I'd say, the best it's ever been.And while I was waiting until the event completely ended to do a final analysis, Colin Brennan over at Massively isn't waiting -- he's got a good analysis up over there about the zombie event and just why it was so brilliant. He describes how the world event not only gave players a terrific reason to hate Arthas enough to go to Northrend and want to fight him, but how the gameplay design of the event (when you are killed by a zombie, you become one) was tuned towards fueling the story and the immersion. As he says, the best way to fight the plague was to embrace the fact it was in the game, whether you were a zombie or a cleansing Paladin.There's lots more to dissect with this world event, including how Blizzard brilliantly invoked something that had happened by accident -- the Corrupted Blood plague -- and incorporated it into the game itself, and how the various zombie abilities were aimed directly at gameplay only possible in an MMO, from the AoE healing to the shrinking plague incubation time. I'll go so far as to say it expanded the boundary of what an MMO can do -- Blizzard let zombies loose on the populace not by hiring GMs to run around on every server, but by giving power to the players. But again -- there'll be time for analysis later, once we've discovered ingame just exactly what's going on here and how it all ties to Arthas. Colin's analysis is a good start, though -- Blizzard really outdid themselves with, even considering the complaints, one of the best world events ever seen in an MMO.
Apple throws out plans for Portland store
Just as the battle for Apple Store Boston continues, ifoAppleStore is reporting that Apple has decided not to further pursue plans to construct one of its retail stores in Portland, Oregon. Apple initially showed interest in building a store in the city in November 2005, when it presented the city's Historic Landmarks Commission with a proposed design. The Commission felt that Apple's trademark metal paneled exterior didn't mesh well with the "historical image" of the Northwest District which it is charged with administering. A second proposed design was rejected by the Commission late last month.Apple previously canceled plans for a store in New York City's Flatiron district due to similar problems involving design approvals.Via MacNN
