Yesterday I made a live appearance on Word of Mouth, a show on New Hampshire Public Radio, talking about my recent piece, “Why History Needs Software Piracy.” You can listen to the audio of the interview online. The interview appeared at the top of the show and lasted about 9 minutes.

It was my first live radio interview, so I’m not sure if I made any sense. Even if I didn’t, you can check out the dulcet tones of my telephone speaking voice.

Compact Disc Protection

Here’s a computer artifact you don’t see very often these days: a CD caddy. Many early CD-ROM drives (released roughly 1985 – 1993) required the use of CD caddies, which were designed to protect CD-ROM discs from dust and rough handling. With a CD inside, they look a lot like a bigger version of a 3.5″ floppy disk, albeit with a clear window on one side.

When I ran across this caddy in my collection recently, it made me think a little deeper about why engineers invented them in the first place. Why were CD caddies so common at one point, I wondered, and why are they virtually extinct today?

I have decided that it all boils down to the price and preciousness of commercial CD-ROM discs.

[ Continue reading [ Retro Scan of the Week ] The CD-ROM Caddy » ]

Elsewhere on the web (PCMag), I’ve got a slideshow up that celebrates educational computer games of the 1980s. You know — those games like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers you played for exactly 30 minutes a week at the school computer lab between Logo binges.

Like all my slideshows, expect nostalgia aplenty. Unless you didn’t grow up in the 1980s. In that case, you’ll probably absolutely hate this slideshow. Avoid it at all costs!

If you’ve read this blog for some time, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of shareware games. Specifically, I love shareware from the “golden age of PC shareware,” an era I just made up that roughly spanned 1988-1996.

And by “PC shareware,” in this case, I mean IBM PC compatible. I was not involved in shareware or BBS scenes for non-IBM computers, so I am not nearly as familiar with them.

With that in mind, take a gander at this new slideshow over at PC World in which I attempt to pick the The 12 Greatest PC Shareware Games of All Time. Whether I have succeeded or failed is not exactly the point, because as I always say, you can never objectively rank greatness. But even if you don’t agree with my picks, it should provide a fun journey down memory lane.

When you’re done reading it, I’d love to hear from you guys — what are your favorite shareware games of all time? Feel free to bring other platforms into it if you want.

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If you love shareware games, check out my 2009 interviews with the twin titans of PC shareware, Scott Miller of Apogee and Tim Sweeney of Epic MegaGames.

Over at Technologizer, I’ve written an opinion piece that argues why history needs software piracy.

I had the idea for this piece a few years ago, so it’s nice to finally put my thoughts into written form — especially at a time when public debate over digital piracy’s role has reached a new high.

I don’t claim to be laying down the final word on the subject; instead, I view my piece as the beginning of a broader discussion about piracy’s role in the study of history. I hope you enjoy it.

Believe it or not, but solid-state drives have been around for 35 years now. I recently took a look back through solid-state history and compiled a slideshow for PC World called Evolution of the Solid-State Drive. It traces the SSD through history and touches on a number of important milestones, such as the first-ever SSD and the first flash SSD. I hope you enjoy it.

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Previous entries in Benj’s “Evolution of…” series:
Evolution of Computer Displays
Evolution of Video Game Media
Evolution of Removable Storage
Evolution of The Cell Phone

A U.S. Airman types in coordinates while designing a weaponized golf course.

Discussion Topic of the Week: Have you served in the military (any country)? If so, did you use computers as part of your service?

While browsing through my file archives some years ago, I ran across a few folders of locally cached web pages. Browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer saved these files in order to speed up load times upon future visits to the same sites. Browsers today do the same thing, but the functionality was far more vital in the days of sluggish dial-up modem connections.

From those folders, I culled a large collection of vintage web banner advertisements from 1996 to 2001. Each one is a bite-sized time capsule of web and Internet history, recalling events and trends of the day. You’re about to see a big ‘ole gallery of these ads with minimal captions that include a month and year they were captured (I got this from the file dates of the images). A few of the ads betray some interesting browsing habits, like the two for online gambling sites. I blame my brother.

If you’re tempted to click on any of these (like I am) then I suppose these ads did their job, but you won’t find anything on the other side. Most of the sites advertised in these banner ads went out of business long ago.

If you have any memories of the products or sites showcased in these ads, please feel free to share them in the comments below.

[ Continue reading 50 Vintage Web Ad Banners » ]

The time Apple went AOL.

In the lost era between Jobs (1985-1996), Apple produced many strange and ill-fated products. Here we see an ad for eWorld, Apple’s subscription dial-up online service that launched in June 1994.

eWorld offered proprietary features like message forums, email, weather, news, and other information in a fashion similar to CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL. It also provided an early consumer portal to the Internet.

Due to its high price ($8.95 per month plus $7.90 per hour from 6 AM to 6 PM on weekdays), poor marketing, and the fact that the World Wide Web was breathing down its neck, eWorld never really took off. Apple shut down the service in March 1996.

By the way, Happy New Year!

Discussion Topic of the Week: Did you ever use a subscription online service? Which one(s)?

Quite possibly the first ever print ad for Sid Meier’s Pirates!

Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite Sid Meier game of all time? Oh, and what did you get for Christmas?