How Pixar Helped Win 27 of the Last 30 Oscars for Visual Effects

The evolution of technology always amazes me. Even more so, when it can so clearly be seen within the every day life, such as household items, day-to-day activities, or, like in this particular case, movies.

Well done, Pixar! Keep it up!

Faces of Open Source

Faces of Open Source is an on-going photographic documentation of the people behind the development and advancement of the open source revolution that has transformed the technology industry.

Given the immense contribution of these people to the world around us, I find it surprising that they are so far from the celebrity status and most people in the world won’t know any of these faces.  Even people in technology sector itself, won’t probably name even half of these people by the picture alone.  For some, even the name won’t mean anything.

Kudos to this project for trying to make these faces slightly more familiar and for giving credit where credit is due.

Unix Folklore

Unix Folklore brings back a few bits of UNIX history from the Bell Labs:

The UNIX operating system, which was created by Ken ThompsonDennis Ritchie, and others at Bell Labs in the early 1970’s, revolutionized the computer industry in ways that are still felt today. Researchers at Bell Labs continued to develop UNIX (in various forms) for more than 30 years. For most of that time, UNIX researchers shared the same physical lab space which allowed a lot of folklore to accumulate over the decades. The lab is now gone but archivists at Bell Labs saved everything that was in the room – creating a time capsule of computing’s past. These are some of the curiosities taken from the UNIX research lab at Bell Labs headquarters in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Each has its own story – some widely known, others now forgotten.

The History of Unix, Rob Pike

Rob Pike talks about the history of Unix and his quite remarkable career.  And here’s my favorite quote from the video, referring to “The Unix Programming Environment” book:

It is amazing to me that the book that came out in the late 1983 is still technically relevant today.  It’s insane!




Killed by Google


Killed by Google is a long list of Google projects which are no more.  It looks sad and depressing, yet very impressive.  Google killed way more projects than most companies would even start.

And in all that long list, the one that still pains me the most is the Google Reader.

And if you want to see this in a different design, have a look at Google Cemetery.