Hasta La Gadget!

AT&T’s video archives are rich seams of juicy historical tidbits, and today’s offering is a fine example. It’s sharing footage of the Bell Blit, a graphic interface that Bell Labs developed after being inspired by the Xerox Alto. Originally named the Jerq, it was created by Rob Pike and Bart Locanthi to have the same usability as the Alto, but with “the processing power of a 1981 computer.” Watch, as the narrator marvels at being able to use multiple windows at once, playing Asteroids while his debugging software runs in the background on that futuristic green-and-black display. The next time we get annoyed that Crysis isn’t running as fast as you’d like it to, just remember how bad the geeks of yesteryear had it.

Continue reading Meet your desktop’s ancestors: AT&T exhumes footage of the Bell Blit (video)

Filed under: Desktops, Software, Alt

Meet your desktop’s ancestors: AT&T exhumes footage of the Bell Blit (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CEO Kaz Hirai didn’t spend too much time on it during the keynote, but Sony has just announced two new changes to its Music Unlimited service that it no doubt hopes will help it lure in more customers. The first is a 60-day free trial that will be available to all new customers. Those looking to stay on beyond that will also now have a new subscription option to choose from, dubbed Access, which will give you unlimited streaming for a monthly fee of €4.99 (or just over $6).

Filed under: Internet, Software

Sony announces 60-day Music Unlimited trial for new customers, new monthly subscription tier originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you decided to change your NFC Phone‘s OS over to CyanogenMod 9 to avoid all the skinning and restricting, now you have a mobile payment option called SimplyTapp. Produced by the modding group and two of its members, the app requires free or paid NFC cards from CyanogenMod or retailers like McDonald’s and Whole Foods. Card user info is guarded in the cloud, which “allows separation of the card credential from the vulnerable handset,” for increased security, according to CM and SimplyTapp. CyanogenMod also announced a new version of its ICS-based CM9 OS, version 9.1, which will fix bugs and add new devices. A stable release will be coming soon, but meanwhile, why not head over to Mickey D’s and freak them out by paying with your modded Galaxy Nexus?

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

CyanogenMod releases SimplyTapp NFC payment app for CM9, launches CM9.1 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 06:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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And you thought your future brown Galaxy S III would be special. We’re just learning the full story of how avid fan Shane Bennett got what may be the rarest version of Samsung’s flagship phone through an unusual chain of events. After half-jokingly asking Samsung Canada for a free phone with the drawing of a dragon as a token gift, Shane was given a kangaroo drawing as a response; the overwhelming reaction to his posting that story on Reddit led to not just a thank-you trip to a Galaxy S III launch party but a custom phone designed around his off-hand doodle. We’re not kidding when we mean custom, either. Along with the distinctive front and back, his phone came with matching on-screen wallpaper and even a specially wrapped box. The likelihood of anyone else receiving a similar gesture is slim — who’d want to spoil the originality? — but credit has to go to community manager Drew Bomhof for going the extra distance and acknowledging that even a giant phone maker is only as strong as its individual customers.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Samsung sends Canadian a truly unique Galaxy S III, guarantees a loyal customer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 03:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s been a lot of nostalgia circulating around the PC world in the past year, but there’s only one element of early home computing history that everyone shares in common: the floppy drive. A guest writer posting at HP’s Input Output blog, Steve Vaughan-Nichols, is acknowledging our shared sentimentality with a rare retrospective of those skinny magnetic disks from their beginning to their (effective) end. Many of us are familiar with the floppies that fed our Amigas, early Macs and IBM PCs; Vaughan-Nichols goes beyond that to address the frustrations that led to the first 8-inch floppy at IBM in 1967, the esoteric reasons behind the 5.25-inch size and other tidbits that might normally escape our memory. Don’t be sad knowing that the floppy’s story ends with a whimper, rather than a bang. Instead, be glad for the look back at a technology that arguably greased the wheels of the PC era, even if it sometimes led to getting more disks than you could ever use. Sorry about that.

[Image credit: Al Pavangkanan, Flickr]

Filed under: Storage, Alt

Writer breaks down floppy drive history in detail, recalls the good sectors and the bad originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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