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20 Classic Smartphone Apps: Where Are They Now?

Millions of apps have been released for the iPhone and Android devices over the years. In the early days of smartphones, there were some apps and games that were particularly popular and important. Let’s check in on some of t…

How Screen Savers Literally Save Your Screen

Winding pipes, dizzying 3D mazes, a haunted house, colorful flurries—screen savers used to be fun. They also used to serve a very important purpose, and may still today. That purpose was described in the name itself all thi…

Remember When New CPUs Were Always a Huge Upgrade?

Nowadays, it seems like many PC hardware upgrades are mostly iterative, incremental upgrades. Other than a few extra cores, or faster-clocked cores, we’re not getting anything truly exciting or earth-shattering. What ever hap…

What Happened to 3D Desktops Like Bumptop?

Some of the most memorable scenes from Jurassic Park and Minority Report involve 3D computer interfaces that look amazing onscreen but haven’t taken off in real life. Yet 3D desktops aren’t dead, and their peak is still ahead…

StumbleUpon Made the Internet Feel Small

The internet is home to over one billion websites—and no great way to aimlessly explore them. StumbleUpon was the answer to this problem. It put a big “Shuffle” button on the internet, and the web didn’t feel so big….

The 10 Worst Computer Viruses in History

Computer virus: Those two words instantly make us sweat—and for good reason. Since the 1980s, viruses have wreaked havoc on everything from our inboxes to industrial facilities. While cybersecurity has improved, the damage…

22 Classic Windows Games You Can Play Right Now

Do you fondly remember playing card games in a classroom on a Windows 95 workstation? Perhaps you passed the time in an early 1990s office cubicle sweeping for mines. You can relive the classic games of Windows past today. We…

What Ever Happened to HD-DVD?

Just like VHS and BetaMax, there was once a format war between the winning Blu-ray format and the now-defunct HD-DVD format. The war between these two formats was over in a mere two years, so what happened?…

Where Did the Term “Computer User” Come From?

We use the term “computer user” frequently, but with so many people who purchase computers, why not say “computer owner,” “computer customer,” or something else? We dug into the history behind the term and found something we …

Why Was Atari Called Atari?

With powerful branding and design, Atari became a household name in video games and computers during the 1970s and early ’80s. We’ll explain how its founders came up with the name and what it means.

What Is a Pixel?

In our age of digital media, we often take for granted the humble pixel. But what exactly is a pixel, and how did it come to be such an important part of our lives? We’ll explain.

Radio Shack’s First PC: 45 Years of TRS-80

45 years ago, Radio Shack released the TRS-80 Micro Computer System, a 1977 personal computer that launched an era of low-cost PCs along with computers from Apple and Commodore. Here’s what was special about it….

5 Ways Windows Phone Was Ahead of Its Time

In the mobile OS landscape, Windows Phone wasn’t around for very long (2010-2017). It was never very popular, but Microsoft infused it with some new, interesting ideas. A few of those ideas ended up being ahead of their time….
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