Today is the 40th anniversary of The Mother of All Demos presented by Douglas C. Engelbart on December 9th, 1968 at Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. The demo essentially gave birth to the PC, laying the groundwork for the next four decades of personal computing as well as giving a glimpse of what was to come with the internet. It featured the first public use of a computer mouse, as well as many other new innovations including dynamic file linking, object addressing, hypertext and networked audio/video conferencing.

You can watch the complete demo on YouTube (9 part series of videos).

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more on the anniversary:
“PC premiered 40 years ago to awed crowd”

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40th Anniversary of The Mother of All Demos by Douglas C. Engelbart

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guest post by Jason Schupp

Since 2005, people in cities worldwide have organized to complain through song (rather than Twitter, blogs or talk radio) ever since two Helsinkians plotted to make it happen:

It all got started during a winter day walk of Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen in Helsinki. Perhaps it was due to the coldness of the day that they ended up discussing the possibility of transforming the huge energy people put into complaining into something else. Perhaps not directly into heat – but into something powerful anyway.

In the Finnish vocabulary there is an expression “Valituskuoro”. It means “Complaints Choir” and it is used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously.  Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen thought: “Wouldn’t it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir!”

The first such Complaints Choir was organized in Birmingham, England, and since then, choirs have sprung up in North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Check out the Complaints Choir of Chicago above for a great example, or Singapore’s choir below for acronym overload at the 5:57 mark.

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Complaints Choirs Worldwide

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Anna has been making her boyfriend Derek a really creative series of Bento art, including a Wall-E version and another commemorating Katamari Damacy.

photos by Derek

via Make

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Wall-E, Katamari Damacy & Other Wonderful Bento Art

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San Francisco artist Cindy Yep creates some really great illustrations inspired by science fiction, nature, and Asian pop-art which she features on her website Hamburgerpanda. For instance, the wonderful Jellybot or equally enticing Baconfish. Prints of many of her illustrations are available for purchase through the Hamburgerpanda Etsy store.

illustrations by Cindy Yep

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Jellybot & Baconfish by Hamburgerpanda

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Yesterday we took Ika Zaru to the vet (she was less than thrilled). We recently started going to All Pets Hospital in San Francisco and they’ve been really great. Out front they have a beautiful mural on the side of the building painted by the muralists at Precita Eyes Mural Arts. The mural was designed by Susan Kelk Cervantes and is based on actual pets that belong to staff members or have visited the hospital.

photos by Scott Beale

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Precita Eyes Mural at All Pets Hospital in San Francisco

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guest post by mikl-em

It’s me, mikl-em, geeking out about comedy yet again.

On Monday one of Britain’s great comic actors, the inimitable Stephen Fry (of such shows as The Black Adder and Jeeves & Wooster), shared the sad news via Twitter that director Bob Spiers had died.

Bob Spiers directed most of the episodes of the great series Absolutely Fabulous (aka “Ab Fab”), as well as stints directing such classic British comedies as A Bit of Fry and Laurie (co-starring Fry and his longtime partner in crime Hugh Laurie, now of House fame), John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers, and PBS mainstay Are You Being Served?.

So it turns out that we have Spiers to thank in part for these highlights of the last 3 decades of British comedy. I will not mention, or try to rationalize into this, Spiers’ responsibility for Spice World. I just won’t.

Here’s a Fry & Laurie sketch that Spiers directed:

And here’s a hilarious clip from the first episode of Fawlty Towers that he directed:

In the US we tend to hear about only a narrow sliver of British television comedy, generally way after the fact and hopefully before we’re exposed to a weak American replica. The Office is the exception where the adaptation can measure up to the UK version). Both versions have their own merits. But I’m still glad I saw Ricky Gervais’ version first.

Recent reports are that Fox will do a US version of Ab Fab, under the executive production of Mitchell Hurwitz who produced and wrote the much missed Arrested Development. So hopes are high, but the precedents are awful, including a short-lived Ab Fab knockoff on CBS in the 1990’s with a Designing Women vet as the lead.

A few other British comedy suggestions…. if you have never seen Ab Fab by all means hurry to correct that. Or if you are already a fan then you’ll want to check out French and Saunders, starring Jennifer Saunders (the star of Ab Fab) and Dawn French–Absolutely Fabulous spun out of a sketch from their show. French and Saunders co-wrote most of the Ab Fab series.

I’d also highly recommend French’s series Vicar of Dibley. Or you can go back to either The Young Ones where French and Saunders made guest appearances or The Comic Strip Presents, which featured them and many in the Young Ones’ cast. Both those shows aired briefly in the 80’s on MTV.

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The Comic Legacy of British TV Director Bob Spiers

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Google announces that its Book Search engine now includes magazine archives in its results, in full-color, page-to-page, browseable format.

The Googlers write:

Are you a baseball history fanatic? Try a search for [hank aaron catching babe] on Google Book Search. You'll find a link to a 1973 Ebony article about Hank Aaron, written as he closed in on Babe Ruth's original record for career home runs. You can read the article in full color and in its original context, just as you would in the printed magazine. Scroll back a few pages, for example, and you'll find a two-page spread on 1973's fall fashions. If you'd like to read further, you can click on "Browse all issues" to view issues from across the decades.

Other available titles include Popular Science, New York Magazine, and the more obscure Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Results from magazines appear alongside Book search results, and they can be difficult to ferret out—they've got the word "Magazine" in the result snippet. While there doesn't appear to be a magazine-only advanced search operator you can type in yourself, from the Advanced Book Search page you can ask for results from magazines only.

Skot Olsen, who creates amazing giant squid themed art, is having a solo show at the The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco which opens on Saturday, December 13th.

From Skot Olsen’s newsletter:

Inspired by 19th-century maritime artwork and my love for giant squid, this show focuses on strange and often perilous encounters humans have with the sea and the things that dwell there. From maritime disasters to the commercial harvest of sea monsters to Poseidon himself, this show gives a glimpse of things many people wouldn’t and didn’t live to tell about. If you find yourself in the San Francisco area this December, be sure to stop by the Shooting Gallery, no life-jacket required.

“Blessed Saint Architeuthis” by Skot Olsen

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Skot Olsen’s Amazing Giant Squid Art at The Shooting Gallery

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BeTaMaXMaS is a fantastic website created by Jeffery Bennett that teleports you back to December 1988 to his wood panel basement were you can watch Christmas television specials from that year recorded on his Betamax.

See Previously: Ray Glasser, Keeping Betamax Video Tape Alive

via Waxy

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BeTaMaXMaS, Re-Visit Classic 1988 Christmas Television Specials

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Fonolo, an online phone tool for getting past all the "Press X for ..." prompts on customer service numbers, is now open for public beta. Our sister site Consumerist took a screenshot tour when Fonolo was privately tested, and it looks much the same—in other words, just as cool. Pick a company, browse their phone directory tree by title and automated dialog, choose where you want to jump in, and Fonolo calls you with a direct connection there. We gave Fonolo a quick spin this morning, so read on for screenshots and a quick tutorial on working some auto-dial jujitsu.

Fonolo has limited their directory of businesses covered during their beta phase, but there's still a good range of companies covered—credit card issuers, cell carriers, retailers, even AARP and EZ-Pass (the New-England-area auto-toll taker). Once you've signed up with a username, password, email, and your phone numbers, you'll validate your email and be on your way.

After searching or browsing through their directory for the firm you want to get into, hit the "View Menu" button to see Fonolo's trace of their automated phone tree. You can click "Call here" to get to any area, and where you see little human icons, that's a direct connection to a customer service representative—the person you usually try to get to by jamming "0."

The one drawback I see at a glance is that Fonolo can't auto-store account numbers and get you past the prompts asking for them. That's obviously a whole bushel of privacy and security issues to deal with, but if I'm looking to get deep into a company to deal with a thorny issue, I definitely want to skip past carefully entering 16 digits over touch-tone.

If you've found the prompt, or human, you want to connect to, simply hit the button and Fonolo asks which of your phones you want to be called on when it gets through. It's not instant, because Fonolo is actually doing the drudgery of dialing, pressing "1" for English, hitting "3" for customer service on existing accounts, etc. And you can watch it happen—or, actually, just walk away and wait for your cell to ring:

Fonolo's service worked for me on the three services I tried out—Chase credit cards, HSBC, and EZ-Pass—but, as noted above, I usually couldn't get past any point where the company wanted an account number to continue. Once you're done calling, you can take note of what happened or what needs to be done on the next call, and leave Fonolo some feedback if you had problems:

That's about it for this beta of Fonolo. Sign-ups are free at the moment, so if you give it a try, let us know how it works for you. Looking for a less automated end-run around customer service prompts? Try the Dial A Human! directory, or the previously mentioned 99-cent iPhone app Direct Line.

When like-minded hackers come together to unleash the true power of seemingly simple gear, it's truly a beautiful thing. We've featured a good number of how-tos and hacks over the years that make expensive upgrades unnecessary and unleash seriously cool features in your gear, and 2008 was no exception. In the last year, our iPhones and iPod touches got jailbroken all over again, our wireless routers were graced with a new super-charged firmware, our Canon digi-cams gained pro-level powers, and we learned that our Nintendo Wiis were even neater than we'd thought. Today, however, we wanted to take a long view on the best hacks that unlock the best features in our standard hardware, and ask our readers: What's the best one you've seen so far? Take a look at our gallery of gear-boosters, and vote on a champion, below.

Jailbreak tools for iPhones/iPod touch

When the iPhone 3G and its 2.0 software was released, some of us thought that might be the end of jailbreaking, or opening up your device to third-party, non-approved applications (and, in some cases, mobile carriers). We thought wrong, as there were many apps worth jailbreaking for, and the process got much simpler with the Mac-based Pwnagetool and Winpwn for Windows. The greater issue is that Apple's been roundly criticized for rejecting any software that "replicates" its own apps, and is somewhat secretive about just why it kills and delays other apps, so jailbreaking will likely always have a home on Apple's multi-touch devices.

Canon Hacker's Development Kit

If you've ever been intrigued by time-lapse photography, motion-sensing shutters that can capture lightning, or being able to shoot videos of any serious length, you might not need to shell out for a semi-serious DSLR model—if you've got a Canon, that is. The CHDK lets you do all that and more, including record your photos in the very work-able RAW format, get way more on-screen information about your shots and their settings, and, as Adam put it, generally turn your point-and-shoot into a super-camera. The possibilities are vast, given the number of user-created scripts the CHDK can run. And, in true hacker fashion, you can even play a game or two on your LCD screen (while you pretend to be setting up that staged photo mom and dad want, perhaps).

Homemade Wi-Fi extenders

Sure, you could give Linksys (or Buffalo, or D-Link, or Apple, et al.) the extra cash for an extended, wider-range router than the standard box you've tucked away in the living room or office. But if you don't mind doing just a few minutes of DIY work, you can also create your own higher-powered antennas. We've covered a few ways of doing so, including tinfoil and paper parabolas, internal wiring replacements, and, for that steampunk feel, cooking strainer extenders. If you want to actually boost the power your router gives up, well, we're covering that farther down, but these are all relatively safe and damage-free ways to ensure a solid connection throughout your house.

XBOX Media Center (and its variants)

Ever since our boss bought a "classic," first-generation XBOX off eBay and turned it into a media center with the open-source XBOX Media Center, she's been using to organize all the media that makes it to her television, stereo, and other screens. In the meantime, XBMC has spawned a number of intriguing remixes and spin-offs, including Boxee, and now works on pretty much any platform that's got video cards and a hard drive—Windows, Mac, Linux, XBOX models, and even Apple TVs. If buying another whole system just to watch your downloaded videos and stream MP3s across the house sounds like overkill, use what you've got with XBMC.

The Hackintosh

A good number of folks are impressed with Apple's OS X operating system, yet can't bring themselves to pay the hefty premium for the hardware that Apple says is required for it. But since Steve Jobs & Co. made the switch to Intel processors, a community of hackers has been working to make Tiger/Leopard/et. al. run on gear you can assemble yourself, and, as Adam showed us, there's now a command-line-free way to install OS X on a "Hackintosh" PC. Checking out the benchmarks, you'll see there's not a lot, if any, performance loss in using unlicensed hardware, and the best part is you can have the case and your peripherals look however you want, and cost whatever you can afford.

Super-Router upgrades — DD-WRT and Tomato

As mentioned above, some home network routers just can't reach around all the walls in your house. And if you want to set up specific bandwidth rules—giving you, say, lots of room for World of Warcraft at night, but throttling your BitTorrents while you're actually working—you're usually out of luck. Unless, that is, you've loaded DD-WRT or Tomato on your router. We've walked through installations of both systems and toured a bit of what they can do. Plus, as many have attested, they can make a router more stable, freeing you from frequent oh-crap-hope-that-page-saves runs to re-plug your misbehaved little guy.

Homebrew Wii

It's hard to say, exactly, why Nintendo didn't include DVD playback capabilities on its Wii game system, given that its games are, well, DVDs. So it was only a matter of time before a few clever folks came up with a way of getting homebrew apps and DVD playback on the Wii, without anyone having to bust out a screwdriver or soldering iron. You can add a lot more to that Homebrew Wii channel, and, if you're cool with Nintendo absolutely disliking your doing so, play backed-up Wii games on it. While you're feeling geeky, you can put your Wiimotes to use in reverse by controlling your computer with them.

Rescue old hardware with Linux

Okay, so it's not really doing anything to your hardware that a Windows installation doesn't do. But saving an older, lower-powered computer from e-cycling (or a long, slow twilight in the garage) is one of the main reasons Lifehacker readers switched to, or tried out, Linux. Seriously dated gear can often work just fine in a modern world with Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux, and your mid-range systems—like, say, the last Dell you bought before this one—can be spun into a slick, webapp-focused system with gOS.

Rockbox and iPod Linux

Update: Added after the initial post, due to popular demand/outcry. No intentional slight intended!
In case you needed an example of Linux completely transforming seemingly outdated hardware into the new hotness, music monster Rockbox, and its games-focused counterpart iPod Linux. Rockbox is the glitzier of the pair, adding customized themes, CoverFlow-like shuffling and other current-generation features to your seemingly out-paced iPod, but iPod Linux gives you some serious freedom inside your tiny computer, and has a pretty nice roster of games. For a look around Rockbox, check out Adam's tour of the latest release.

Your choice

Now that you've refreshed your memory on all the weekend-filling projects we've featured here, we want to hear which one truly made your life better, or at least got you excited to be tweaking settings again. Vote for your favorite, or share your own favorite hardware-freeing hack in the comments.

What's the best hardware-boosting hack you've seen on Lifehacker?
( surveys)