Have you ever wondered why your mouse cursor rests ever so slightly to the left? Chances are, that little arrow on an incline is so ubiquitous that you’ve never even thought twice about its 45-degree angle. As it turns out, there’s a very good reason for it. Or was, anyway, back in a more pixelated age.
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While we now take crisp-looking typography for granted, it wasn’t always that way. Back in the 80s, low-res fonts looked dreadful—but fortunately two men changed all that.
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A company known as 3D Systems, which from its name itself can be said to be heavily involved in the world of 3D printing, has just reported itself to have purchased a portion of Xerox. Now, 3D Systems might not be familiar at all, but Xerox – that is a name that surely just about everyone is able to remember, especially when it comes to making multiple copies of the same document.
Before we continue a little bit further, 3D Systems is not exactly a budding company which was formed just last week. Sure, they might not be as famous as the likes of a MakerBot, but it has been around for approximately 30 years, having been founded by the inventor of the rapid prototyping technology which would eventually result in 3D printing. The entire acquisition cost $32.5 million, and it will also involve a segment of Xerox’s solid ink product design, engineering and chemistry team in Oregon. That translates to slightly more than 100 folks from Xerox joining 3D Systems after this acquisition. It is most likely that the team itself, the various laboratories as well as the intellectual property involved will deliver the most heavy hitting impact (a positive one to boot) on 3D Systems’ growing industrial segment. [Press Release]
3D Systems Pick Up Part Of Xerox original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Paper jams are the most basic weapon in copier vs. human warfare, but a few models of Xerox copiers are stepping up their game. They’ve been very stealthily going rogue and secretly changing a few key details of the docs they’ve been working on.
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Xerox is a name that we would more often than not associate with that of digital copiers and photostat machines, but here we are with a system from Xerox that is capable of keeping track of both nurses as well as the medications which have been ordered for their patients. The system’s core relies on a small digital tag which the nurse would wear, and that allows the system to recognize her whenever she enters a patient’s room. All the patient’s relevant medical information will then make an appearance on an in-room display, in addition to any specific data which requires attention.
For instance, assuming John Doe has a particular indicator such as blood pressure that requires closer monitoring, that data will then be highlighted on the display immediately. Not only that, the digital tag enables said nurse to be tracked on the Charge Nurse Overview, delivering where the nurse is at all times. Sounds cool, hopefully it will not be a burden on hospitals when it comes to implementation.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 Medical Hub Edition Launched For Medial Students In South Korea, 3D Printed Skull Implant Ready For Action,
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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Why Xerox never chose to capitalize on the groundbreaking GUI developments made at its Palo Alto Research Center may never fully be understood. But other companies certainly saw the value, and in addition to Microsoft and Apple creating their own graphical computer interfaces, Bell Labs created the Blit in 1982 which was originally called the Jerq as a ‘humorous’ homage to another graphical workstation. More »
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