Computer History Museum – Selling the Computer Revolution – Marketing Brochures in the Collection

Image from cover of timeshare brochureComputer History Museum – Selling the Computer Revolution – Marketing Brochures in the Collection is a magnificent site that makes available brochures and manuals from their collection. These include the Apple – 1 Operation Manual. The cover images alone make an interesting study.

There are many ways to study the history of a technological topic. One of the most neglected, though also the most revealing, is to look at the advertising materials companies have produced to promote their products. In a technical field such as computing, buying decisions, as expressed in such materials, are often based on a complex blend of ‘atmospheric’ messages focusing on status, and highly-detailed technical information about the product itself. (From the Overview)

The State of the Union in Words: Rich Prospect Browsing

Image of Web Page from New York TimesThe New York Times has a wonderful example of rich prospect browsing in The State of the Union in Words: A Look at the 34,000 State of the Union Words Delivered of George W. Bush. They show the different State of the Union addresses with the pattern searched for in red on the left. On the right they show frequency bubbles for key words including the one you search for. Rich prospect browsing is an idea I learned about from Stan Ruecker – see the Humanities Visualization projects he is involved in.

Thanks to Daniel for showing this to me.

UK Entrances to Hell

Image of Entrance to Hell
The catalogue of UK Entrances to Hell is a collection of images of strange dark entrances (usually boarded up.) There is now a Flickr group too. Remember the safety rules:

Rule 1: It may be an obvious thing to say but NEVER try to go inside an entrance to Hell.
Rule 2: Always approach an entrance on your stomach.
Rule 3: Don’t shout at the devil (not even with good news).
Rule 4: Wear rubber gloves for 3 or 4 days after your visit.

This site came up when I googled “go to hell”.

Deus In Machina | Exploring Religion and Technology in Comparative Perspective

Image of woman and technologyThis weekend I attended parts of a conference called Deus in Machina | Exploring Religion and Technology in Comparative Perspective that was organized by Jeremy Stolow. The conference started with a great paper by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimlett, “Social Sofware and Contemporary Jewish Life” that dealt ways in which new social networking tools are being used to reach out to youth. She talked about the The Open Source Judaism Project and other projects that are supported by ?û?¶?™ ¬ª MATZAT.

Centre National de Resources Textuelles et Lexicales

Synonyms for French "Content"The Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales (CNRTL) is a centre attached to the Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Fran?ßaise (ATILF / CNRS) lab at Nancy Universit?©. They have a portal for lexical, morphological and etymological work in French. It takes a French word and will give you synonyms, dictionary entry, etymology and so on. Neat. I wonder if it can be mashed into a TAPoR tool?

This is thanks to Jean-Guy.

iPhone: Is it magic?

Mike Elgan has an article on iPhone: 20 things we don’t know (Jan. 12, 2007) in Digit a magazine about “the future of digital design”. In particular I agree with his questions about the touch screen interface and virtual keyboard – will it be responsive enough for Blackberry users who do push e-mail?

Image of Apple NewtonOne way of asking about the iPhone is to think about the Newton PDA which was also supposed to be a magical reinvention of personal computing. Like the iPhone, and unlike the iPod, it tried to do lots of things and as a result didn’t do anything well. The Palm Pilot got the PDA market right by doing fewer things very well and in a small enough package to fit in your pocket. As pretty and desirable as the iPhone is, I worry that it will be a delicate and fat phone; a slow and poor Internet device; and an expensive iPod with little memory.

That said, it will shakeup the cell phone business. If it doesn’t take off, someone else will get the need for new designs and digital integration right.

Update: Shawn pointed me to an article Apple Ushers in Era of the Fluid UI by Om Malik. Malik correctly, I think, identifies the fluid interface as the important innovation.