I found a couple old concept videos over the weekend, and I thought it would be interesting to see how much has changed.
The Newsboy was originally conceived in late 2008. It was supposed to be a flexible tablet/ereader with a color E-ink screen. It was designed by Propeller, a Swedish firm, in partnership with Halmstad University (Media IT), SVID, and the Swedish Newspapers’ Association as a part of the European project Diginews. [Read more →]
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All this recent talk about sunlight readability inspired me to go pull another tablet out of my collection. This one is over 12 years old, and it’s a shock to see how much the market has changed.
In today’s world you can buy any number of Android tablets cheap. But it only a couple years ago you couldn’t buy them for love of money because they weren’t available; they simply didn’t exist yet. So there were a fair number of tablet owners who went looking for older refurbished equipment and we made do with what we could find.
Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series called Blast From the Past.
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A few weeks back I finally managed to add an extremely rare computer to my collection.
The Palm Foleo debuted back in 2007. This was going to be Palm’s breakthrough product in the new netbook market niche that everyone was just beginning to notice. Unfortunately for Palm, this wasn’t all that great of a design, and the Foleo died before it ever hit the market.
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Here’s another nugget of e-reader history that you might find interesting.
If you know anything about the history of ebook readers, then you probably know that Sony have been in this industry for quite some time. The released the first Sony reader, the PRS-500, in 2006. And before that they also released the Sony Librie in 2005 (only in Japan). But long before Sony released the Librie, they also released the Data Discman.
Sony have been dabbling in the e-reader market for a lot longer than you realize, and they actually released their first Data Discman in 1990. By 2000, Sony had released a number of different Data Discman models. I just acquired another one via Ebay.
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This is a 10″ E-ink prototype that was developed in 2005 by Holly Gates, an engineer who was friends with the founders of E-ink and occasionally built custom devices for the company. This one is based on an A5 size screen that was developed for a Japanese customer (I’m told that it never hit the market).
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The folks who digitized a braille Playboy have just released the archived copy of a CDC 9877 disk pack. This was an 80 MB removable hard disk for a Cray supercomputer.
In the late 70s and 80, Cray Research Corporation made a number of 1 of a kind supercomputers. They were incredibly powerful for their day and they were incredibly expensive. Of course, you now have more computing power in laptop than any Cray models, but that’s what happens with technology.
The amazing part here is not on did they have to figure out how to interpret the data on the magnetic disks, they also had to build a rig just to read the disks. In fact, they haven’t decoded the contents yet; all that is online at the moment are images taken from the raw scan of the 5 platters. And I do mean the raw disk images; that 80MB disk drive now takes up 5GB of ZIP files on one of IA’s servers. UnZip them and you’ll have 20GB of data to play with.
You can read the full report on how finally got the data here; it makes for fascinating reading from a techno-archeology point of view.
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Engadget noticed today that Hothead Games will release a new HH Guide as an iPad app (it’s due in September). This would be very cool if not for the fact that the announcement was actually made on the last Towel Day (May 25). Considering that you could already get the book almost anywhere (including as ebooks), this wasn’t all that interesting of an announcement. So instead of just posting the same old story, I did some digging and I discovered that this iPad app isn’t actually the first online HH Guide.
It turns out that Megadodo Publications, a company that apparently owns (or licenses) the digital rights, have released at least one interactive version of the HH Guide before the iPad app. I found an earlier on the Megadodo Publications website, and get this:
It was released in 1995, and does not appear to have been updated since 1997.
Yes, you can go play with a 14 year dead version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Unfortunately, you’re going to need to download NetScape Navigator v3.0 if you want to see the site in its full glory. (It won’t work on the iPad at all.)This new, innovative, and cutting-edge website even has Sound! and Pictures that Move!
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Here are 2 of the oldest ebook readers on the US market. The larger device is the Softbook Reader, and it’s a generation older. It has a 9.75″ screen, 33.6 modem, funky internal Flash card (8MB), and a stylus.
The smaller device is the GEB2150, and as you can see it is clearly based on the same hardware design. it improves on the design by adding a CF card slot, ethernet port, and going with a slightly less monstrous 8″ screen.
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Image via www.squit.co.uk/computers/libretto.html
I’ve just added a new netbook to my collection. The 100CT is a 10 year old, 2.5lbs brick, but mine isn’t in nearly as good cosmetic condition as the one above.
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Do you recall the obituary I wrote for the Ebookwise-1150? The e-reader above next to the K3 is the Rocket eBook and it’s the grandaddy of the 1150. I thought it would be interesting to show you the oldest best e-reader.
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