Collaborate Disseminate
Satellite internet was once seen as a holy grail of connect-anywhere online access. But for various reasons, it hasn’t worked out that way—yet. Continue reading We Could Have Good Satellite Internet If We Wanted
Third-party developers weren’t always quite so revered in the video game industry, but a pair of legal decisions helped them earn their place at the table. Continue reading How Third-Party Game Devs Reverse-Engineered Their Way Onto Your Consoles (and Into Your Heart)
Paint Shop Pro was a 90s shareware superstar that still lives on today, and it was first developed by one guy who loved to be an underdog. Continue reading How an Airline Pilot Took on Adobe Photoshop—and Nearly Won
Paint Shop Pro was a 90s shareware superstar that still lives on today, and it was first developed by one guy who loved to be an underdog. Continue reading How an Airline Pilot Took on Adobe Photoshop—and Nearly Won
In 1998, a Hong Kong telecom firm spent $1.5 billion trying to make video-on-demand happen. iTV was so ahead of its time that it beat Netflix’s DVD service. Continue reading Before There Was Netflix, Hong Kong Had the First On-Demand Streaming Service
Bose Wave stereo systems were legitimately innovative when they launched in the 90s—as was Bose itself. The marketing might make you forget that, though. Continue reading The Story of the Bose Wave, the Stereo System Built for the Infomercial Era
Car stereos have traditionally been both valuable and easy to spot in an idle vehicle, making them a key target for thieves. Why aren’t they getting stolen nearly as much anymore? Continue reading The Decades-Long Quest to Design a Car Stereo That Can’t Be Stolen
For a few years in the mid-1980s, the RAM industry and the oil industry had a lot in common: Supply fluctuations could get severe. That’s why the most common kind of RAM was hard to find in the summer of 1988. Continue reading The Year That the Entire Computer Industry Ran Out of Memory
For more than 20 years, John Scherer’s Video Professor offered instructional videos and discs to make computers accessible to novices. Where did it go? Continue reading The Rise and Fall of the $100 Million Company That Taught America to Compute
It wasn’t just about games. In the 80s and 90s, shareware democratized the way computer software was sold. Unfortunately, adware sort of dimmed its charm. Continue reading The Story of Shareware, the Original In-App Purchase