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Apple uses secret internal code names for many of its products before they're released. Over the years, they've come up with some really weird ones -- including one that led to multiple lawsuits. 1. "Carl Sagan"/"Butt-Head Astronomer" - Power Macintosh
As the dot-com bubble reached its peak in 2000, Internet entrepreneurs faced a problem: every word in the dictionary had been registered as a dot-com domain name. So their bold new innovation was to register domains ending in something other than dot-co
Here's a roundup of screensavers from the '90s, when they were delightfully corny, 3D graphics meant "the future," and flying toasters invaded our dreams. Enjoy!
You may have heard about some new bills making their way through the U.S. Congress, related to piracy on the internet. But what are they and what's the big deal? Here's a simple guide to what the laws are and why so many internet nerds (like myself) are
1. Commodore
Just recently we were reminded how delicate our online ecosystem really is when the mysterious group Anonymous took down big websites like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal because they refused to support WikiLeaks. Anonymous is the latest in the fascinating h
My friend and co-blogger here on the _floss, Rob Lammle, had an awesome post a few weeks back: How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job. While I wasn't able to find quite as many people who tweeted their way INTO a job, there's at least one in the list below,
Are you a high school senior with an interest in math or science? Then you owe it to yourself to check out the Intel Science Talent Search, an annual competition for young scientists. Older readers like myself may know the program better by its former n
You may know the sound of these faceless voices, but here are the stories of the real people behind them.
Steve Wiebe, the hapless hero of the video game documentary King of Kong, is trying once again to beat Billy Mitchell's record on Donkey Kong. Why is this news? (After all, he's been going back and forth with Mitchell for years.) Well, it's news becaus
As you settle down with family and friends this holiday season, be prepared: load up your iPhone (or iPod Touch) with applications to get through common holiday disasters. We've got a complete roundup here -- from fun photo moments to actual medical eme
The Wikipedia for Schools project is an effort to distill the vast content of Wikipedia onto one DVD. This single-DVD version is very portable, and can be used in schools worldwide, though its focus on articles written in English probably limits its glob
The Obama presidential campaign made waves last week when it announced Obama '08: The Official iPhone Application. This free application hit the iTunes App Store Top 10, and has generated nearly 700 reviews so far. Whether you're an Obama supporter or n
In honor of Google's tenth birthday*, the search engine has posted a version of itself as it appeared in January 2001 (the earliest available index). It was a simpler time: only 1,326,920,000 web pages were in the index. Today it's over 8 billion, thou
Suzanne Vega's catchy tune has made her "Mother of the MP3" -- though it took a while. Vega wrote "Tom's Diner" as an a cappella song way back in 1982. By 1984 it has been released on an obscure folk compilation, and didn't appear on Vega's studio album
I'm a huge Neal Stephenson fan. There, I said it. Yesterday I pointed to an article on how one fan solved a mystery related to Stephenson's book Quicksilver, last month I pointed to his best essay ever, and today I'm pointing to a new profile of Stephen
Seed is a simple, open-ended game in which you plant virtual flowers, cross-breed them, and create new varieties. Here's a screenshot after a minute or two of
Most clocks are built to keep time on fairly short timescales: windup watches may run a few days between windings, torsion pendulum clocks go about a year between windings, battery-powered watches often go several years on a given battery, and of course
In the fall of 2005, Wells Fargo hired a design firm to redesign the user interface on their ATMs. The old design was deemed clunky, partly because it had to deal with two kinds of machines: those with touchscreens, and those with buttons along the left
How did Neal Stephenson do it? Way back in 1996, he managed to make what's clearly the most boring subject on Earth -- transcontinental data cable installation -- into a clever, engaging 56-page article. Well, he probably did in the same way he made cry
Last week we talked about KittenAuth, a novel CAPTCHA system used to differentiate between humans and spambots -- by using pictures of kittens. Today let's take a look at reCAPTCHA, the system in use by this very blog. What does it do, and why is it goo
I played a fair amount of Ms. Pac-Man in my youth, sometimes plugging my entire $3 allowance into the machine at the movie theater, or the one at the pizza parlor near my grandmother's house. I was never any good at it -- never much good at any arcade ga
The late Sir Arthur C. Clarke was loved by nerds and normals alike for his contributions to literature, film, and technology. Here's a rundown of the five biggest reasons we'll miss him. 1. Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World Clarke kept extensive fil
Last week I covered backing up your Mac with Mozy -- a way to get your most important files backed up online for free. But because the free Mozy solution only stores up to 2 GB of data, you'll need to look elsewhere for a complete backup that covers your