Lotus Notes and the Dangers of Starting From Scratch

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Lotus Notes, launched in 1989, was a pioneering collaboration platform that combined encrypted messaging, rich text, attachments, and database-driven shared workspaces long before such features became common in email. While admired for its powerful, cross-platform capabilities and programmability beyond typical email clients, Lotus Notes’ unconventional interface and slow adoption of emerging email standards limited its broader appeal, ultimately leading to its eclipse by more user-friendly, standards-based tools like Microsoft Outlook and web-based email.

https://buttondown.com/blog/lotus-notes-email

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The Interim Computer Museum

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The Interim Computer Museum is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving computing history by offering interactive exhibits that combine vintage hardware with modern enhancements. It provides hands-on experiences to explore the evolution of computing technology and operates in partnership with the SDF Public Access UNIX System, supporting its mission through community events, remote access, and artifact preservation. Visitors can engage with the museum by visiting in person, joining as members, or donating to support its activities.

https://icm.museum/

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Virtual Worlds

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In the 1980s, the Commodore 64, an affordable home computer with just 64 kilobytes of memory, became the platform for Habitat, one of the first massively multiplayer online virtual worlds developed by Lucasfilm’s games division. Habitat introduced groundbreaking concepts such as avatars, in-game currency, user-driven economies, and social interactions, effectively creating an early version of today’s virtual worlds despite technological constraints like 300-baud modems. The project revealed the complexities of online community dynamics, including both creative collaboration and antisocial behavior, marking a pioneering moment in the evolution of digital social spaces.

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/virtual-worlds/

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Retro Computing Fonts

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Kreative Korporation offers pixel-perfect TrueType recreations of bitmap fonts from vintage computers and operating systems, including the Apple II, Commodore 64, TRS-80, Apple Lisa, and Macintosh. These fonts preserve the authentic look of classic character generators using a special conversion process that creates precise outlines from bitmap sources. Collections feature various styles and resolutions, providing retro computing enthusiasts accurate typographic representations of old hardware displays.

https://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/retro/

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The Computer Museum of America Reclamation Project

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The Computer Museum of America’s collection, stored for 21 years in San Diego State University’s Love Library basement, is now being indexed and promoted following a 2025 grant. The extensive archive includes computers, hardware, software, magazines, and manuals, offering a vital resource for studying the technological innovations of the past 70 years and their profound impact on society. The museum aims to support future research across disciplines by preserving and sharing these artifacts that document the Computer Revolution and the Information Age.

https://computer-museum.org/wp/

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Commodore 64 Released September 1, 1982

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The Commodore 64 launched on September 1, 1982, as the first computer with 64KB of memory priced under $600, quickly becoming the best-selling computer of all time with over 10 million units sold. Its combination of affordable price, color graphics, flexible sound capabilities, and strong software support gave it remarkable staying power, keeping it popular well into the 1990s. The C-64 played a significant role in shaping a generation of programmers and retro computing enthusiasts, with renewed interest continuing today through emulation and FPGA-based reproductions.

https://dfarq.homeip.net/commodore-64-released-september-1-1982/

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A 12TB Steam “Teraleak” Spills More Than a Decade of Lost PC Gaming History

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A 12TB data leak has surfaced containing a vast archive of Steam content from 2003 to 2013, encompassing thousands of depots including public releases and unreleased pre-release and prototype versions of games. This “Steam2 Teraleak” originates from Valve’s now-defunct Steam2 server architecture, which was replaced in 2013 by the SteamPipe system; the leaked data was reportedly accessible via a public API endpoint with no protection. The leak provides rare insights into a decade of PC gaming history, revealing lost or previously unseen content across many Steam titles.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/08/a-12tb-steam-teraleak-spills-more-than-a-decade-of-lost-pc-gaming-history/

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Windows 98 Disk Defrag Simulator

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Defrag98 is a free, browser-based simulator that recreates the classic Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter experience, complete with authentic visuals and period hard-drive sound effects. Users can select from virtual drives of various sizes and speeds to watch simulated disk clusters rearrange in real time, capturing the nostalgia of 1990s PC maintenance tools. The simulator runs offline as a web app and does not interact with actual device files, serving purely as a retro computing tribute.

https://defrag98.com/

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Stone Tools

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Stone Tools is a blog dedicated to exploring productivity software from the 8- and 16-bit computing era, focusing exclusively on work-oriented applications rather than games. It features detailed retrospectives of classic software like AppleWorks on the Apple II, Visual Basic for Windows 3.1, and Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS, providing insights into the design and impact of these early productivity tools. The site serves as a resource for enthusiasts interested in the history and evolution of retro computing productivity applications.

https://stonetools.ghost.io/

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