iFixit is well known for posting teardowns and repair guides for modern hardware (like the new iPod Shuffle.) To celebrate the addition of game console guides to their site, they did teardowns of five classic and not-so-classic game consoles: Magnavox Odyssey 100, RCA Studio II, Atari 2600, Nintendo Famicom, Nintendo Virtual Boy. Marvel at the 1.78 MHz processors and the 128 bytes of RAM you got for $200.
posted by smackfu on Sep 8, 2010 - 10 comments

What do you do when you're supposed to come up with 50 separate webpages on a poorly defined topic? You come up with a mix of dangerous products (most of which were successful before their dangers were known), second-best technologies, just plain silly ideas, cool things that never caught on, uncool things that DID catch on and modern annoyances (including one that your website uses) to make "Time Magazine's 50 Worst Inventions" (link points to FULL LIST, or just refer to all the tags).
(I know, not the BEST of the web; just the MOST of the web)
posted by oneswellfoop on May 30, 2010 - 43 comments

Dead Games Tell No Tales Not every video game makes it to the store. Sometimes it's because a company is wary of unleashing a new character property on the world, but other times it's because the publisher overworked the game's development staff to the point of exhaustion. Occasionally a game heavily infringes on a more popular game, leading to a lawsuit. Worst of all is when company politics kills a promising project. Failing hardware never helped anybody either. On the other hand, sometimes there is no reason at all why finished video games are sent to the wastebasket instead of the retail shelf.
posted by Servo5678 on Aug 1, 2005 - 15 comments