In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Commodore 64, I threw together this timeline of the computing devices I or my family have owned using Timeline 3D. The C=64 had a huge influence on my life. You can read what I wrote about it on it’s 25th anniversary here.
For a couple more months, I have a Treo 650. I’ve been a fan of Palm since I started using one in 1999. I was happy to merge my PDA and cell phone into one unit, bulky though it is. But someone on their product development team got their priorities mixed up… or at least got my priorities mixed up. Somebody decided that it is really important to know if the phone is connected to a network. There is a small LED on the front of the phone in the top, left corner. Green indicates a network connection, and red indicates no connection. That alone wouldn’t be a problem, and seems sensible. Unfortunately, they didn’t stop there. It flashes every two seconds. This is extremely annoying. The light is bright enough to show through most of my shirt pockets. When I’m driving at night, it is constantly in my peripheral vision. I have to make sure it’s covered if I set it on my nightstand before I go to bed. I’ve lost count of the number of times people have informed me that my pocket is blinking. The presence or absence of a network is important information when I need to make a call. It is not, however, a state of which I must be constantly reminded.
