At the risk of playing Captain Obvious here—it’s easy to see why people would want to go online for more information after big events—I’ll conclude that feltron’s research into CNN.com’s traffic over the last 13 years is proof that historic events drive pageviews and unique visits.
At least that’s true if you’re a well-known baseline news source like CNN. Feltron’s graph below, aside from plotting the site traffic’s steady rise, also points out the 10 busiest weeks, shows how much of the traffic each part of the site enjoys, and marks important events in recent (American) history.

The research also makes it …read more

Apple fans remember October 23, 2001 as the debut of the first ever iPod. Turns out right on the day of its launch, people were already dissing what’s easily Apple’s most successful product line as “just another MP3 player”. Get ready to feel smug folks, for hindsight always is, and dismissive thoughts were saved for posterity at the MacRumors forums:

elitemacor: “iPoop… iCry. I was so hoping for something more.”
WeezerX80: “Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve! Where’s the Newton?!”
Pants: “hey – heres an idea Apple – rather than enter the world of gimmicks and toys, …read more

Remember when everything you needed fit into a bunch of nifty floppy disks? (yes, I’m that old) What about the first time you got a hard disk?
Matt Komorowski was lucky enough to get his first computer during the early 1990s—which came with a 30GB hard disk—and he was ” wondering how I could possibly fill all 30 megabytes of hard drive space, even if I had a thousand years.” now we know how short-sighted that supposition was. Like Matt, I’m looking to buy a 1 terabyte hard disk soon, probably for or with my next computer, as it takes only …read more

The quality betrays the following video’s age, but dissing Microsoft for coming out with unreliable OSes is a timeless practice. Here’s how David Bradely, inventor of Ctrl+Alt+Del, gave Bill Gates the rhetorical smackdown, during the 20th anniversary celebration of the IBM PC:
I honestly wonder what was going through Gates’ head, after Bradely joked that the Microsoft founder was responsible for making the key combination famous (implying of course, the numerous crashes that necessitated Ctrl+Alt+Del)? Was he the socially awkward geek unable to produce a witty comeback? So like yours truly, except for the billions of dollars in net worth of …read more