Retro

Face it, most of today's shiny new gizmos will be hopelessly out-of-date in a few years and taking up space in landfills not so long after that. The iPhone 5 may be a marvel of engineering and marketing genius, but like iPhones of years past it's doomed to be cast aside when legions of Apple fanboys and girls stand in line to buy the iPhone 6 sometime next year. And so it goes.

Four years ago I wrote about my friend Gene and his Linn LP 12 turntable, the one he bought 30 years earlier.… Read more

If you used to build with toy bricks and play 8-bit video games, check out these $250 Hal Pixel sunglasses from Protos, with aesthetics inspired by Lego (or perhaps Minecraft terrain).

Fortunately, the glasses don't crumble easily like those Lego sets my friends would accidentally step on. … Read more

The phrase "immersive experience" gets bandied about quite a bit, but it's often an overstatement -- unless you happen to be in a room completely surrounded by a fully playable Ms. Pac-Man game.

Keita Takahashi, the creator of Katamari Damacy, got to experiment with a variety of video games for the recent Babycastles Summit at the Museum of Art & Design in New York.

Takahashi's new take on Ms. Pac-Man involved projecting it onto the walls and ceiling of a room. It looks like what would happen if Tron and Ms. Pac-Man got together, minus the glowing skin-tight suits.… Read more

Turning light switches on and off is a necessary, but dull, part of our lives. It doesn't have to be like that. With a $29.99 Power-Up Arcade Light Switch Plate from ThinkGeek installed, turning on the living room light will become a retro-gaming adventure.

A bright red joystick turns the light on and off. The switch plate makes classic "pew pew pew" noises when you press the buttons. This will allow you to pretend to play Space Invaders in the dark of your bedroom at 3 in the morning. … Read more

Like your iPad well enough but wish you lived in the heyday of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg? The iTypewriter lets you go all angel-headed-hipster on your tablet.

Austin Yang, a product and industrial designer in Edinburgh, Scotland, conceived of the iProduct as a way to merge new with nostalgia. Just slide your iPad into the landscape iPad dock like a piece of blank paper and start typing. Little mechanical hammers with protective coverings align with the touch-screen keys on your iPad to deliver a tiny electronic discharge as you click-clack away. … Read more

An American Final Fantasy II cartridge is rare, and may even be unique. If you want to add one to your collection, be prepared to open your wallet wide and dig deep -- it could set you back a cool $50,000 on eBay.

Role-playing game Final Fantasy II is more than 20 years old, first hitting the market in 1988. Developed by Square -- now Square Enix -- the game features retro pixellated characters, dungeons and the ever-present Chocobo.

The game itself was never released on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) outside of Japan -- and that's what makes this eBay lot special. … Read more

You're lounging on your couch watching "Star Trek" reruns. You need someplace to set your sleek new MacBook. How about on your Crunching Numbers G4 coffee table, where its ancestors can keep it company while you're gone?

Reform Designs is recycling old Macs in a creative way by turning them into coffee tables that will match your geeky decor. The whole table is made from up to 70 percent reclaimed materials, so you can feel green about your purchase.… Read more

How do you tweet in Morse code? Using Arduino and antique signal lamps, it turns out.

Thanks to students from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, you can now see what "I just washed my face and brushed my teeth. #Monday" looks like when expressed via old maritime communications technology.

The students' #CPHsignals "Morse code light signal installation" transmits signals between two Copenhagen, Denmark, neighborhoods, Nyhavn and Chavn. Visitors can tweet messages using iPads attached to antique signal lamps on either side of the harbor or from anywhere using a @reply to @signals_nyhavn and @signals_CHavn.

An Arduino interface translates the tweets into Morse code and broadcasts them across the water (in what happens to be a very pretty light show at night, it's worth noting). So far, conversations between the two sides of the harbor have proven pretty tame, with lots of friendly greetings exchanged and no "man overboard" crises reported yet. … Read more

Today's OMG isn't your grandpa's digital shorthand, but it turns out it is old enough to be your great-grandpa's abbreviated analog slang.

Letters of Note dug up a letter penned by John Arbuthnot "Jacky" Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone and Admiral of the Fleet in the British Royal Navy (OMG! what a title) to then Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill in 1917 that contains a very early use of the acronym.

In a letter relating a few good rips of the Germans and decrying the current naval situation of the day, Lord Fisher … Read more