Reading List

Pondering why, in the internet era, it has become so common for big tech companies to treat their power users like dirt. (Yes, this is about Google Reader.)

Local newspapers have already faced issues with outsourcing and an array of cuts for years. But the threat is changing—and you should know what it looks like.

Looking back at Apple’s transition from PowerPC to Intel CPUs, and considering why Intel now finds itself in the same position PowerPC did 15 years ago.

Compaq Portable 386 I read a lot on the web about technology, cars, music and media. If you'd like to keep up with me, join my/Extra...

The Print Shop, Brøderbund’s most popular app when that meant a whole lot, had a huge impact on computing. So why is it in the bargain bin these days?

FrontPage tried to solve an important problem in the early-internet era—the idea of making web design accessible to mere mortals—but the code wasn't so hot.

Satellite internet was once seen as a holy grail of connect-anywhere online access. It hasn’t worked yet, but the promise is closer than ever.

How the top-level domain evolved from a solution to a technical problem into something with lots of cultural and marketing value.

The case for minimal web browsers: Perhaps the problem with the modern web browser is that there’s just too much stuff. What if we cut things down?

Businesses want to show up on the front page of a specific search term, and they’re willing to annoy you to get a backlink from you. Please never do this.

How I found home networking nirvana with powerline networking, a technology that might be called poor man’s ethernet. No drilling involved.

The evolution of self-stick adhesives, which are basically everywhere—and had a particularly awful name when they were first introduced.

The in-flight entertainment system was once a novel idea that kept passengers enthralled. Now in the COVID-19 era, it’s both outdated and a serious germ hazard.

The history of color bars, the most common television test pattern out there, and what they actually do. (Also, Netflix has some weird test programming.)

From knockoff Bart Simpsons to CafePress ripoffs, what the long association between T-shirts and bootlegging tells us about copyright.

Most people remember bulletin board systems as having chunky text-based graphics. One developer tried fixing that, but RIPscrip ran head-first into the web.

How one of the most famous computer bugs of all time, the Intel Pentium floating-point division glitch, blew out of proportion into a PR crisis.

With PCMCIA (also known as PC Card), it was easy to upgrade our old laptops. But for years, the tech was relegated to a depressing bureaucratic fate.

A discussion of the ways that large tech companies helped to define the evolution of computer typography. One battle made the CEO of Adobe really mad.

Newspapers said they wanted to protect the print product, but they were raring to go when it came to experimental online news approaches in the early '80s.

Being creative is easier than ever, yet some are motivated to go down the more complicated road to reach creative nirvana. Why is that?