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The First American Subway
Recently my local paper, the Boston Globe, was lucky enough to explore the abandoned sections of our sometimes working subway system. As reporter Noah Bierman described it, the experience played out a lot like film noir, compete with wingtip shoes. More »Seiko Brings Back Their Famous Talking Pyramid Clock
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We're almost clear of the aughts. Just one more week, and we get to leave this decade behind for good. But before we do, it's worth taking stock of the absolute worst gadgets these last ten years have given us. More »Modo Walked the Fine Line Between "Ahead of Its Time" and "Just Stupid"
The Modo, a wireless handheld introduced in 2000, couldn't give directions. It refused to make calls and had no interest in displaying fresh emails. It was too busy being cool. Alas, I never got to touch it. More »That Old Dial-Up Dilemma: How To Get Incoming Calls While Surfing the Superhighway
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In 1999, 45 million Americans had pagers. They were an equal-opportunity technology, owned by drug dealers, whores, doctors and CEOs—and new college students whose parents couldn't drop the leash. At least there was the code. More »The Smartest Mouse Pad That Ever Lived (and Then Died)
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In January 1985, the phone rang. The caller announced that he was Orson Welles and that he wanted to have lunch with me. Thus began one of the most extraordinary and bittersweet adventures of my life. More »Aibo and the Days of Hot Dog-on-Robot Action
In 1999, the world met Aibo, the $2,500 robotic dog from Sony. The following year brought quite the litter of less expensive mechanized pups. Real dogs, however, had mixed feelings about their cyber counterparts. More »12 Vintage Portable Televisions Make You Glad To Be Alive in 2009
I remember my best friend had a portable black and white TV in his room back in the day—kind of similar to the Magnavox BD 3902 pictured in OObject's list. More »The Wassup Commercial: Back In the Days When Men Communicated
More »My Tech Buyer's Guide from 2000 Is Pretty Hilarious
Nine years ago, as a young tech reporter at Time Magazine, I co-wrote a buyer's guide with the latest and greatest gear known to man. Today, it sounds ridiculous. More »100 Years of Failure: 10 Technologies We Were Promised But Never Got
In Your Flying Car Awaits, author Paul Milo discusses "robot butlers, lunar vacations and other dead-wrong predictions of the 20th Century." Here are 10 calamitous tech failures. Even the ones that did make it aren't anything like their original visions. More »The Cigarette Lighter Watch: Because Everyone Smoked in the '80s
A lot has changed with regard to our views about smoking since this lighter watch combo was created in the '80s. In its day, it would have been the ultimate smoke break gadget. Check the time...light up a cigarette... More »Retromodo Made New: The Cobra-Matic Casemod
It's ability to play tunes long gone, this 1951 Zenith H664 Cobra-matic phonograph was born anew thanks to modder Alvin "Mach" Barber. More »'A 10-Year-Old Can Do It Blindfolded!'
There is so much odd and potentially wrong in regards to this vintage dishwasher ad, I don't even know where to begin. [Flickr via copyranter]ASCII Art, Circa 1934
And so a timeless truth is revealed: If you put enough nerds in front of a set of lettered keys, one of them will produce awkward art, eventually. More »Top 5 Assclowns Laughing at the iPhone Back in 2007
Every Single One of Cormac McCarthy's Works Was Typed on This
Cormac McCarthy has spent many years bent over this typewriter banging out books and screenplays, including All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Now, after many decades, he's giving up his trusty old gadget. More »Vintage Cheese: Nothing Says Holidays Like a Family High on Technology
Hands up if you're taking a laptop home this weekend to escape family craziness by jumping online for a while. Me too. But if you believe these bizarre 1980s ads, computers were meant to foster an age of dazed family-togetherness. More »Pinball Machines Were Sneakier Than You Think
There's a great read over at Cheap Talk about how digital pinball machines changed the industry, back when there still was an industry. They were big tables where you flick a ball around, but they were smarter than you think. More »