anniversary

Later this month, IBM will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Selectric typewriter.

Released on July 31, 1961, the Selectric was unarguably a game-changer in the typewriter space. The device--which took seven years to develop, due mainly to its 2,800 parts--featured a "golf ball" head that moved across the page as users typed. Thanks to that head, the typewriter was the first of its kind to eliminate carriage return, IBM said.

The Selectric has also been tapped as an inspirational predecessor to today's word-processing programs. Users could add different golf balls to the device, allowing them … Read more

Four years ago today, Apple's first iPhone went on sale, a landmark event that bears looking at anew as all eyes are now on the company to announce a fifth-generation of the device.

It's easy to look back at the iPhone's rise and success and see how it's managed to work out so well: Apple took aim at a product category with the same approach it used with the iPod, creating its own hardware and software, then eventually bundling it with extra services and features. Proof enough of that is the App Store, something that began … Read more

LAS VEGAS--"Love," Cirque du Soleil's successful celebration of The Beatles, is five years old this month.

Now that the show has reached this milestone, Cirque du Soleil is willing to unveil more of its secrets. Last week, Tom Wegis, technical director for "Love," served up an all-access, stat-soaked, guided tour of the show's backstage world now it's had five years to settle and grow into its surroundings. "Love" is the only Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil show performed in the round, and the three-level theater seats 2,013 visitors, all within 98 feet of the stage. The space has four control booths positioned in four separate corners (controlling lighting, projection, stage management, and automation, respectively). A total of 276 separate production cues flow back and forth between the booths as the show comes together.

Four automated tracks built into the stage carry artists and smaller stage pieces out into the show. The theater has 10 12,000-lumen projectors for each of two 2,000-square-foot panoramic screens wrapping around the space. Four 832-square-foot semi-transparent screens move in and out of the space, thanks to eight motors. They're illuminated by four 16,000-lumen projectors offering images of The Beatles and their music.

The most impressive machinery powering "Love" from behind the scenes resides under the stage. Nine stage lifts raise and lower artists and set elements in and out of the performance space. The largest motor-driven rack-and-pinion lift raises a center stage segment weighing about 22,000 pounds. Engineers dug 32 feet down into the desert ground to install it; it provides a force of 150 pounds per square foot and can raise the huge stage at a speed of a foot per second.

All Cirque productions stress that the safety of the artists and crew is the primary concern. To that end, the larger set elements are monitored by a specially designed encoder system that confirms that the moving piece is precisely where it needs to be when it needs to be there. If anything onstage strays by so much as millimeters, the movement cuts out and the show stops. … Read more

Anyone who purchased the original Xbox during its launch window quickly came to know its behemoth of a controller, now nicknamed "Duke." This massive beast was barely capable of being handheld because of its anti-ergonomic dysfunctions and wacky button placement.

With Microsoft's announcement that a remastered HD version of Halo: Combat Evolved would be hitting the Xbox 360, we were instantly transported to that awkward time of figuring out which one of our fingers was supposed to reach for those black and white buttons.

Apparently we weren't the only ones. According to Giant Bomb, 343 Industries (… Read more

While most of today's consumer electronics goods are designed with limited life expectancies, high-end audio gear has always been built to last for decades. Sure, it's more expensive to buy the good stuff, but when you stop and consider how many years of enjoyment you'll get out of a pair of really great speakers (or electronics) the investment makes a lot of sense. So instead of buying and replacing gear over and over again, just buy something really nice, once.

My Samsung Blu-ray player conked out just before its second birthday, and the one before that was … Read more

The Apple retail store we know today nearly began as a place where you could grab coffee and a danish and do a little Web browsing on Mac.

Today, on the 10th anniversary of Apple's first retail store, it's time to take stock of just how successful Apple's retail push has turned out to be, despite skepticism from tech pundits and--true story--a near false start selling tasty baked things.

Dial back to 1996, several years before the first retail store would ever open its door: Apple had a very different plan in mind to get its brand … Read more

Apple is said to be preparing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its retail stores, which takes place Thursday, with the possibility of a new product or service.

According to a "solid Apple source," Boy Genius Report says Apple has blocked out time for retail employees to prepare its retail stores, complete with a blackout curtain and new Apple hardware that could be unveiled this weekend.

"Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday," BGR writes. "All materials that Apple stores have received … Read more

Remembering birthdays or other personal holidays can be difficult without use of a calendar or date book. If you're already using Gmail and Google Calendar these dates can kept on hand at all times. To take the pressure off yourself to remember important dates, just follow these steps:

1. Log into Gmail and choose Contacts from the menu in the upper left corner. It will look something like this:

2. Add birthdays to your individual contacts that the calendar will be able to use. Save the contact info and then open Google Calendar.

3. Save the contact and then … Read more

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Microsoft's Azure platform being available for public consumption.

To celebrate, Microsoft has announced two additional companies that have made use of the platform for consumer- and business-facing services. One of those is T-Mobile, which used Azure to speed up the development time for its Family Room collaboration tool for mobile phones. The other is Xerox, which used Windows Azure and SQL Azure to help build its cloud-based printing service dubbed Cloud Print.

Microsoft first unveiled its Windows Azure platform a little more than two years ago at PDC 2008. Then chief software architect … Read more