March 24, 2023

Washington Post: The internet rediscovered Blockbuster’s website. Press play on nostalgia.

Washington Post: The internet rediscovered Blockbuster’s website. Press play on nostalgia.. “The movie rental franchise, which first opened in 1985 and at its peak had more than 9,000 stores worldwide, has all but disappeared after it filed for bankruptcy in 2010. (A lone Blockbuster-branded store remains in Bend, Ore.) But nostalgia for it was triggered this week when some internet users realized its website, Blockbuster.com, had been revived with the words: ‘We are working on rewinding your movie.’”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
September 15, 2022

PC Magazine: Google Photos Rolls Out Its Biggest Ever Feature Update for Memories

PC Magazine: Google Photos Rolls Out Its Biggest Ever Feature Update for Memories. “Google Photos is harnessing our collective need to share nostalgia with its biggest-ever update to Memories, which surfaces snapshots from recent years. The redesign, according to product manager Yael Marzan, will feature more videos—including ‘the best snippets’ from longer videos automatically trimmed ‘so you can relive the most meaningful moments.’”

Tweaks & Updates 0
November 13, 2021

Mashable: Why YouTubers are using vintage camcorders to feel something

Mashable: Why YouTubers are using vintage camcorders to feel something. “While cleaning out her apartment, Maddie Dragsbaek found her very first video camera. It’s a Sony Handycam that her parents gave her in 2009. She was in middle school at the time and uploading homemade music videos, skits, and vlogs to her then-fledgling YouTube channel. Roughly 10 years later, Dragsbaek now uses the same camera to document parts of her life for her 190,000 subscribers.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
October 16, 2021

The Conversation: What happens to your life stories if you delete your Facebook account?

The Conversation: What happens to your life stories if you delete your Facebook account?. “Millions of people have invested billions of collective hours building what scholars call a networked life narrative, in which people ‘co-construct’ their social identities through their interactions with one another. Perhaps you’ve never thought about how archiving the small moments of your life would eventually amass into a large narrative of yourself. Or how interactions from your family, friends, colleagues and strangers would create meaningful dimensions of that story.”

Research & Opinion 0
August 29, 2021

Hackaday: IRC Server For MS-DOS

Hackaday: IRC Server For MS-DOS . “The recent flurry of projects based around Internet Relay Chat (IRC) should be a fair indication that the beloved protocol is not going anywhere. Now, thanks to [Mike Chambers], you can add to the IRC ecosystem by hosting your very own MS-DOS based IRC server.” I had a PC XT that I had to use with a black and white TV because I couldn’t afford a real monitor. Sunday nostalgia: it’s real.

Other Things I Think Are Cool 0
February 19, 2021

Autumn Christian: The Problem with Future Nostalgia

Autumn Christian: The Problem with Future Nostalgia. “Many of us millennials seem to be mourning not just the loss of the past, but the loss of an alternate future. There’s a feeling that maybe we had a bright hope but seemed to have taken a wrong turn at some point. That’s what things like vaporwave, futurefunk, and high-resolution pixel art seem to be conveying — not just looking toward the past, but toward the future we could have, by creating something of an alternative past. An alternate world where maybe we could have moved toward the collective dream we shared.”

Research & Opinion 0
November 12, 2020

New York Times: Go Ahead, Binge Old Movies and Jam Out to ’90s Hits

New York Times: Go Ahead, Binge Old Movies and Jam Out to ’90s Hits. “Some people swear by silent breakfasts. Others recommend breathing exercises. For another group of people, the ultimate coping mechanism for political angst and the pandemic is escaping into a world of yesteryear — listening to 1990s hits, watching old films and playing 16-bit video games. When everything has turned upside down, why not go back to a time when the world seemed simpler?”

COVID-19 0
June 28, 2020

New York Times: In Vintage TV Ads, a Curious Fountain of Hope (and Cheese)

New York Times: In Vintage TV Ads, a Curious Fountain of Hope (and Cheese). “Search YouTube with the word ‘commercials’ and the decade of your choosing, and you will find hundreds of compilations, including transfers of old broadcasts with everything but the advertisements and the breaking news updates edited out. I put on these compilations as background noise when I’m doing chores or eating dinner. It allows me to make believe that I live in a world I never got to inhabit but is still familiar, a time that seems simpler by virtue of the fact that it isn’t actively making me miserable.”

Research & Opinion 0
May 25, 2020

Wired: I Can’t Stop Escaping Into Google Photos’ Nostalgia Vortex

Wired: I Can’t Stop Escaping Into Google Photos’ Nostalgia Vortex . ” This spring, the coronavirus pandemic shut down college campuses and canceled gatherings across the country. For those of us so privileged that our only diagnosis is to stay home, long stretches of isolation and anxiety spirals still take a mental toll. The idea that there might be an escape hatch from the fear and grief many of us are feeling, however temporary, has never been more seductive. My own colleagues have found escapist respite in Animal Crossing and reality TV, ASMR and a Barbie Polaroid camera. On sleep-starved nights, I’ve tapped through each one of my apps, in search of solace within the safe perimeter of my phone screen. This was how I opened my long-dormant Google Photos app—and unleashed the most potent diversion of them all.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
January 13, 2020

Slate: The Insanely Popular App That Mimics Those Flimsy Disposable Cameras From the ’90s

Slate: The Insanely Popular App That Mimics Those Flimsy Disposable Cameras From the ’90s. “While the hazy, overexposed aesthetic of the photos it takes isn’t all that different from what you can achieve in with Instagram or VSCO, David’s Disposable ups the verisimilitude by simulating the most inconvenient aspects of using a disposable camera. Using the app requires you to squint at a minuscule virtual viewfinder. And after you take the picture, you can’t see the resulting image until 9 a.m. the next day, a feature premised on the assumption that what kids really admire about disposable cameras is the wait time for developing photos.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
November 9, 2019

Ars Technica: The best science and math moments in Sesame Street’s first 50 years

Ars Technica: The best science and math moments in Sesame Street’s first 50 years. “There was nothing on television like Sesame Street when it premiered 50 years ago, and the truth is, there’s still nothing quite like it now. (That’s a big reason why it was such a valuable acquisition for HBO in 2015.) Throughout the years, the show has always been on the front lines of what’s important to teach children. And as some of the show’s greatest hits demonstrate, long before educational advocates began popularizing the STEM acronym (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), Sesame Street was already there with silly characters promoting serious lessons.” I am always here for the pinball song. One two three FOUR FIVE six seven eight NINE TEN eleven twelve….

Other Things I Think Are Cool 0
April 27, 2019

Wired: The Rise and Fall of Facebook’s Memory Economy

Wired: The Rise and Fall of Facebook’s Memory Economy . “Facebook’s Memories feature—where it shows you pictures and posts from a day in the recent or far-gone past—used to be my favorite thing about the platform. I mean, I have posted some hilarious things that my son said when he was little, and that time I went on a reporting trip to Area 51 was seriously cool. Heck, I’ve reposted it three years in a row. Now, though, I think Memories is the platform’s most cynical element. It’s a cheap ploy to keep us creating new posts, keep us interested, at a time when our interest is starting to drift away.”

Research & Opinion 0

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