history

This summer, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., is featuring an exhibit of intimate photographs of computers from its collection that were recently compiled for a book called Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computers.

The book, written by John Alderman and featuring the photography of Mark Richards, chronicles 35 of the most significant computers. The visual history and informative breakdown of the computer reminds us not just how far, but how fast, humans have evolved the computer since the punch card machine.

Click the image of the 1976 Apple I for some highlights from the exhibit … Read more

The information age just got a little older, as the "birthplace of Silicon Valley" has been formally listed on the National Register of Historic Places. More specifically, this is 367 Addison Ave. in Palo Alto, California: the garage where, in 1938, two guys named Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started a company that became known as Hewlett-Packard the next year.

The new historic status is official as of Thursday. (You think it's been Zillowed?)

The house had been built circa 1905 and apparently once housed Palo Alto's first mayor; the garage, however, wasn't built until … Read more

First it was the Google Toolbar, then it was an integrated search box in the corner of my browser. It's no secret Google's been slowly attempting to take control of our computers for years. The desktop search is a testament to that. What's really creepy is the new Web History tracking service Google quietly rolled out last week. This new service doesn't go after items on your computer, rather what you're looking at online.

Google Web History archives everything you've searched for (while signed in to your Google account), and gives you a bookmarklet to bookmark sites you like. The whole idea is to make the browsing experience something you can search through and access from any computer, anywhere. Search history has items listed by time of search, with the most recent ones on a front page.

Searches are broken down by Google category like Web, Images, Maps, and (the now misnamed) Froogle. Users can also see how many searches they've done by month, day, and hour. Drilling down deeper, you can also go in and click on the number of searches and see the top sites and results. It's a total analytic overload.

The real creepy part in all this is the integration you get if you have the Google Toolbar installed on your browser. This will track every single site you're visiting, and apply the same aforementioned analytics so you can keep track of which sites or services you're using the most. Sure, we've had browsing history for years, but it's always been localized. It's a little alarming to see it online, regardless of the fact it can't be shared with others.

The good news is that users can opt-out of Google's Web History program, along with the capability to delete any item that's been archived. The bad news is that if you have a Google account, all your search activity has been tracked since last week.

For more shots of the service, keep reading.… Read more

Google has renamed its "Search History" service "Web History" and broadened its coverage. Previously, the service would record your Google searches. Now, Web History can associate the web pages you visit with your Google Account. Web History keeps a list of the times and links to the web pages viewed and searches conducted. Users have to be signed in to their Google account and need to have the Google Toolbar installed with PageRank enabled.

Google's announced acquisition of DoubleClick has raised considerable concern among privacy advocates, who argue that combining the search engine giant with a major online advertising firm puts too much information in the hands of one company.

The launch of Google's new Web History product should send those fears into overdrive.

The new service allows you to search and view your entire online life, including which pages you visited and when. Google will also analyze your online travels, revealing which sites you visit most frequently and what your top searches are.

The data is available only when you log … Read more

Forget 300. The real way to make ancient history and literature cool is...Halo?

We've already seen World of Warcraft used as a way to bring The Canterbury Tales into the digital age. But that was a student project--this interesting story, which we read on Joystiq, is the project of a professor at the University of Connecticut who's looking to better connect his students with the literature they're assigned in class. This would be Robert Travis, an associate professor of modern and classical languages, who has gone so far as to take an Xbox to class into … Read more

Want to make a timeline of your life, but can't remember every single detail? That's cool, if you use OurStory, an interactive Web timeline of, well, anything.

The site officially exited beta on Tuesday and launched Wednesday here at Demo 07. OurStory lets users collect and organize photos, videos, and blogs chronologically. It's a social timeline, because you can invite your family and friends to contribute their own content to your timeline or just add their comments. If you prefer, OurStory can be antisocial too; set it so no one can help you or see the timeline … Read more

Before I start talking about Footnote, a new service that lets users annotate and enrich digital public-domain documents with notes, links, and discussions, I should emphasize that the phrase "history geeks" in the title of this post is not intended to be derogatory in any way. I was a history major in college (history of science, to be more exact) and I'm really excited to explore Footnote, which I read about in a Smart Mobs post by Howard Rheingold. The site has inked a deal with the National Archives to make all 4.5 million of its … Read more

Is it just me or has the History Channel gotten kind of bloody? Every time I turn it on there are either some tanks rolling by, some new demonstration of vintage Smith and Wesson firearms, or that R. Lee Ermey guy yelling at the camera. Clearly, the cable network's been trying to distance itself from its reputation for snoozeworthy documentaries that detail every UFO sighting of the 1960s or the postal correspondence between Paul Revere and his horse. But they may have gone a little too far with the new season of "Shootout!", which makes an over-the-top … Read more