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'Quake' marks its 20th anniversary
Attention gamers of a certain age: you're about to feel very, very old. June 22nd, 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the original Quake, id Software's classic first-person shooter. It may not be quite as genre-defining as the Doom games that preceded it, but it was still considered revolutionary. For a start, it was presented entirely in 3D (with semi-realistic lighting, no less) at a time when most shooters had to make do with '2.5D' engines -- even the zero-gravity title Descent had some 2D. Quake was also one of the first games of its kind to be built with internet multiplayer in mind, not just local networks. And who can forget the eerie soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor?
'Battlefield 1' breakdown reveals a close attention to history
Video games play fast and loose with realism by definition, but authenticity still matters to some degree After all, it's hard to enjoy a history-focused game if there are obvious factual errors. So how does Battlefield 1 stack up, then? So far so good, if you ask the World War I history buffs at The Great War. They've conducted a shot-by-shot breakdown of the cinematic trailer and revealed that EA DICE is largely faithful to the technology of the conflict -- including in ways you wouldn't expect. That shovel-wielding German soldier you see above makes sense, for example, as the infantry learned that bayonets got stuck in victims. Early tanks behave as they should, and things like gas masks or pickaxes (for Italian soldiers scaling mountains) are true to form.
Anne Frank's story to be told in VR
You can already tour Anne Frank's hideaway in virtual reality if you can't make it to Amsterdam, but producer Jonah Hirsch is taking that one step further. He's creating a VR experience, Anne, that will tell the Holocaust symbol's tale in 360 degrees. Details of how it will work aren't available, but you'll get to at least get to wander around the secret annex where Frank and others hid from the Nazis for two years. The project is still young (you're looking at a rough version above), so it may be a while before you're trying Anne for yourself.
Unofficial Apple museum shows decades worth of gear
Apple isn't about to open a museum any time soon, but that isn't stopping fans from making one of their own. Prague's newly opened Apple Museum showcases what's billed as the "biggest" private collection of Apple gear, ranging from some of the earliest systems to models you can find in stores today. The collection includes some relatively hard-to-find items, too, including the Lisa, the Twentieth Anniversary Mac and a Beatles Collector's Box (complete with iPod and rip-it-yourself CD library). The tributes to the company are over the top at times -- expect to see a lot of Steve Jobs quotes -- but it might be worth the trip if you're in town and have a penchant for Apple gear.[Image credit: Apple Museum, Imgur]
The first website went online 25 years ago today
If the web were a person, it wouldn't have trouble renting a car from now on: the world's first website, Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web, went online 25 years ago today. The inaugural page wasn't truly public when it went live at CERN on December 20th, 1990 (that wouldn't happen until August 1991), and it wasn't much more than an explanation of how the hypertext-based project worked. However, it's safe to say that this plain page laid the groundwork for much of the internet as you know it -- even now, you probably know one or two people who still think the web is the internet.
Data-mined photos document 100 years of (forced) smiling
Here's an odd fact: Turn-of-the-century photographers used to tell subjects to say "prunes" rather than "cheese," so that they would smile less. By studying nearly 38,000 high-school yearbook photos taken since 1905, UC Berkeley researchers have shown just how much smiling, fashion and hairstyles have changed over the years. The goal was not just to track trends, but figure out how to apply modern data-mining techniques and machine learning to a much older medium: photographs. Their research could advance deep-learning algorithms for dating historical photos and help historians study how social norms change over time.
Google Street View gives you a tour of ancient Jordan landmarks
Jordan is home to some extremely significant historical and religious sites. However, visiting those landmarks in person is no mean feat -- which is why Google just added many of them to Street View. Fire up your web browser and you can get virtual, 360-degree tours of more than 30 ancient locations, including the city of Petra (above), Jerash and legendary castles from the Crusades. We suspect that this will pale in comparison to the grandeur of seeing these relics first-hand, but you should at least have an inkling of what the experience would be like.
Explore 4,500 British Museum artifacts with Google's help
The British Museum in London holds an array of beautiful and historically significant artifacts including the Rosetta Stone, which helped historians to understand the ancient hieroglyphics used in Egypt. Today, the organisation is teaming up with Google to bring its various collections online as part of the Google Cultural Institute. The search giant has been developing this resource for years by continually visiting and archiving exhibits around the world. With the British Museum, an extra 4,500 objects and artworks are being added to its collection, complete with detailed photos and descriptions.
One of the world's first personal computers is up for sale
Many people don't know the history of the Kenbak-1 Digital Computer, but it's considered to be the world's first commercially available personal computer -- and one is going up for sale in just a few minutes. John Blankenbaker introduced the $750 machine in 1971 -- years ahead of the more well known Altair 8800 and Apple I, but after the Datapoint 2200 -- hoping to sell it to schools as a way to introduce people to computer programming. It didn't have a microprocessor at all, and contained only 256 bytes (you read that correctly) of RAM. No more than 50 units were ever made, although a few have been popping up for sale in the last few years. One recently sold for about $31k, and another model is going on sale via German auctioneer Breker within the hour. It's certainly a piece of history, but if that's a little too rich for your blood, then hide your credit card details and just read our Time Machines article to catch up on the history of this groundbreaking device.
Open this link as a different user with Chrome Canary's new feature
Switching between Chrome browser profiles is easy. But, like all trivial internet tasks, it can somehow become a chore. Or, worse, all too easily forgotten about. Especially if you're just about to open a link you don't want popping up in, say, your corporate browsing history. An update to Google's testbed Chrome Canary browser lets you open links as any user logged in, not just the one you're currently using. Right click, "Open Link as..." and your sneaky peek at that bacon fat popcorn recipe, won't show up in your vegan partner's browser history (if you're sharing a laptop).
'Citizen Kane' to 'Call of Duty': The rise of video games in universities
Picture an art school. Visualize the hallways of a university dedicated to the arts, the classrooms lined with paint tubes, charcoal sticks and nude models. Imagine the galleries where outgoing seniors present their final projects. Consider the thick-framed glasses that sit atop students' noses as they sketch, sculpt, write and design the things that lurk in their wildest daydreams. Now picture a creation so strange that the school's professors aren't sure how to critique it from an artistic angle, let alone how to assign it a grade. In Pasadena, California, Art Center College of Design graduate Ashley Pinnick faced this problem in her last semester, with her final project: a video game.
3D printing resurrects Iron-Age Irish musical instruments
While 3D printing is often used for advancements in medicine or science, such as FDA-approved drugs or rocket pumps, this week it made an academic one. A PhD student at the Australian National University recently used a 3D printer to duplicate an Irish artifact previously known as the "Conical Spearbutt of Navan," thought to be a tool and weapon. Billy Ó Foghlú's replica was able to prove that the ancient spearbutt was, in fact, an ancient mouthpiece -- likely to an iron-age horn.
The AP adds 550,000 old newsreel clips to YouTube
The Associated Press has teamed up with British Movietone to share more than a century's worth of newsreel footage with the denizens of the internet. The pair will upload more than a million minutes of archival clips to YouTube with the intention of creating a "view-on-demand visual encyclopedia" for the world. The 550,000-plus stories range from footage of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake through to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It's not the first time that a news organization has used YouTube to take its archives online. Last year, British Pathé uploaded more than 85,000 newsreel clips from between 1896 and 1976 to the site. Users can feel free to embed the clips in whatever story they're working on, but we assume that re-editing the work isn't permitted. Which is a shame, because we were hoping for some cheeky dance remixes of the footage of Prince Charles getting frisky at the Rio Carnival. Which, for no reason at all, we've embedded below...
Smithsonian crowdfunds preservation of Neil Armstrong's spacesuit
If you've ever wanted to lend a hand preserving a piece of US history, now's your chance. The Smithsonian launched a Kickstarter campaign to gain support for restoring Neil Armstrong's Apollo 11 spacesuit for display at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. While the artifact hasn't been on display since 2006, funds raised through the effort would allow it to be properly preserved ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo mission in 2019 and for an upcoming "Destination Moon" gallery that's scheduled to open in 2020. The campaign is seeking $500,000 to cover the cost of the conservation project and a climate-controlled case for the suit. During the course of the preservation, the suit will get faded colors in the American flag patch stabilized to prevent further deterioration, stains removed and a careful cleaning to keep lunar dust in place. Funds will also be used to construct a digital version via 3D scan so that classrooms around the world can examine it in detail for the first time.
Rare Enigma machine sells for $233,000
An unnamed buyer has purchased an ultra-rare three-rotor German Enigma machine for the better part of $233,000. It was sold by an equally-secretive "European museum foundation" by the auctioneers Sotheby's in London for almost twice the expected price. During the Second World War, German troops were instructed to destroy their Enigma machines to prevent them falling into enemy hands, with only a handful surviving. While tainted as a piece of Nazi memorabilia, the item is also a valuable artifact in the history of modern computing. The Allied effort to break the code and Alan Turing's involvement would pave the way for the devices we use today and interest has been renewed since the release of The Imitation Game.
This is the Nintendo PlayStation that almost was
It might seem crazy today, but in the early '90s Nintendo and Sony were working together on a video game accessory that'd add CD capabilities to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. There would also be a separate Sony console that'd play SNES cartridge games and titles for the SNES CD system dubbed the PlayStation. As legend tells it, the deal went sour when Nintendo instead announced a partnership with Sony's competitor Philips for the optical add-on at the same CES that Sony unveiled its Nintendo-centric PlayStation. The rest is history. What you see above might as well be a unicorn, then.
Studio wants to preserve games with the same care as movies
Classic movies frequently get reissues and remastered versions with behind-the-scenes content, but games seldom receive that kind of affection. More often than not, you get a barebones port, a technical upgrade (which sometimes breaks the experience) or a full-on remake. Reborn studio Digital Eclipse thinks the industry can do a better job of preserving these classics. It's launching ports that are more about honoring the history behind a game than upgrading it, much like the Criterion Collection does for movies. Its inaugural title, Mega Man Legacy Collection, will include both the first six Mega Man games as well as artwork and other bonus material from the series' early days. About the only major change to the games themselves will be a Challenge Mode that "remixes" gameplay to add some extra spice.
Apple I worth $200,000 gets tossed out for recycling
You're about to get a textbook lesson in why you should always, always check vintage gadgets before you toss them out. A woman discarding her late husband's electronics inadvertently gave a Milpitas recycling firm an ultra-rare Apple I computer that ultimately sold for $200,000. While the recycler's policy is to share half the revenue from these sales, the woman refused to offer her name or get a receipt -- she's missing out on a $100,000 check for trading in a piece of computing history. The company would recognize her on sight, but its only chance of rewarding the mystery donor right now is to get the word out and hope she returns. [Image credit: Emmanuel Dunand /AFP/Getty Images]
Google wants you to download your web search history
Wondering what you were searching for online a few years ago? You now have a (relatively) easy way to find out. Google has quietly trotted out an option to download your entire search history. So long as you searched using your Google account, you'll have a permanent record. Of course, this is something of a mixed blessing given how pervasive Google is at this stage. While the archive may help you dig up a keyword you're struggling to remember, something tells us that it'd be all too easy to dredge up embarrassing memories -- we hope you didn't Google your classroom crush.
Google Art Project adds hundreds of 3D sculptures and animal skulls
The Google Art Project already archived thousands of murals, paintings and more for viewing on the web. Not all artifacts are flat, though, but the folks in Mountain View added nearly 300 3D scans so you can examine detailed animal skulls and ornate sculptures from the comfort of your sofa. Flip through new collections from six museums before rotating a skull with your mouse or touchpad to see features from every angle -- like the Helmeted hornbill above from the California Academy of Sciences. If you're not into animal bones, don't fret: There's art, too. Thanks to places like the Dallas Museum of Art and Museo d'Arte Orientale, you can ogle sculptures, masks and other ancient artifacts as well. And all without having to get in the car.
