viewmasterThe Electronic Talking View-Master Was the Original Oculus Rift (Gizmodo)

Seen here in an ad dating back to February of 1983, the Electronic Talking View-Master used the same slideshow discs as previous versions of the toy. But they were embedded in a special cartridge alongside a tiny vinyl record that would be played at the same time.

The TeleRead Take: It’s interesting looking back at old iterations of technology, isn’t it? Back in the day, when they didn’t have anything like what they wanted to do, they had to invent something completely new. And so we got a View-Master reel with a phonograph-style record cartridge—not unlike the original talking movie ideas, or the slideshow-with-audio-recording displays you often see in museums. I’m not sure I’d compare it to the Oculus Rift, per se, but it was certainly something. And also well before its time, in any event.

As Gizmodo also notes, the View-Master is about to make its return in the form of a Google Cardboard-compatible device.


Google Play Books Can Now Sync Notes to Google Drive (Lifehacker)

The option is buried in the app’s settings. Once you enable it, Play Books will create a folder in your Google Drive account and fill it with any notes or highlights you make while reading. You can duplicate the notes document and edit it as a regular Google Doc. This can be particularly handy if you’re doing research or trying to track a complex story.

The TeleRead Take: Google Play Books is already my favorite EPUB reader. It offers a lot of useful abilities, such as a Whispersync-like ability to open to the last page you read on any device. This new notes sync function just makes it a little bit more Kindle-like.


Fresh Beer Only Demystifies Brewery Codes So You Always Buy Great Brew (Lifehacker)

Once you find your beer, you’ll be able to read whether the brewery uses a “best by” date, a bottling date, or some other confusing number to indicate how fresh the beer is and whether the stock should be rotated. In some cases, you’ll see a plain date anyone can understand (and the site will tell you how it’s formatted and where on the can or bottle to look for it), but in other cases you’ll have to decipher whatever code the brewery is using to indicate freshness. Don’t worry, Fresh Beer Only explains how you can do it right there in the store.

The TeleRead Take: I certainly can’t argue with an app that tells me how to make sure I have the freshest possible beer! But it’s interesting to note that this app is effectively just a stand-alone e-book. There’s nothing really to it except a bunch of lists that tell you how each brewery or microbrewery stamps the bottling or best-by dates on its bottles. You could get the same effect just by going to the Fresh Beer Only website and using a page grabber to download the lists they have up there and convert them to an e-book yourself. But on the other hand, at just $1.32, the app is cheap enough that the time you’d spend making an e-book manually would be worth the app’s pocket-change price.


Google Contributor Lets You “Directly Support” Sites, and Other Misleading Statements (The Digital Reader)

There’s no real relationship between GC users and the sites they visit. The users are part of Google’s ad networks as advertisers and are not directly contributing to any single site.

So if you’ve signed up for Google Contributor with the idea that you were helping sites by giving them extra money, you were mistaken.

The sites you visit are not getting any more money from you than they would from other advertisers. As far as the site is concerned, it is a zero-sum game.

You’re simply paying for the privilege of showing yourself something in place of the usual ads. While that might suit you, do be careful that you don’t overpay for the privilege.

The TeleRead Take: It seems this Google Contributor thing is basically a pay-for-adblocker service—the money you pay in simply lets you buy your own blank adview on a given site instead of being subjected to their ads. This kind of reminds me of Readability’s pay-for-adblocking plan that fizzled after almost nobody stepped forward to claim their share of the revenue.

One interesting thing here is that the amount Google pays to advertisers doesn’t necessarily match the amount you kick in. Nate kicked in $10 per month, but only ended up being dinged $3 worth of ad-impressions per month, with the rest credited to his account. Anyway, I suppose it’s something, anyway. But people who use ad-blocking software don’t have to worry about it regardless. It might be a better idea to use something like Patreon if you want to support your favorite site.


Psychic Capital: Tech and Silicon Valley Turn to Mystics for Advice (SF Weekly, via a Business Insider story linked on Slashdot)

Nor, as [Wiccan Reverend Joey] Talley’s tech clients can attest, too beyond her qualifications. Despite lacking a background in computer science or IT, Talley is occasionally called on to perform cyber security miracles. Her approach is more Etsy than McAfee.

"Most people want me to protect their computers from viruses and hacks," she says, "so I’ll make charms for them. I like to use flora."

Jet, a black gemstone energy-blocker, is ideal for debugging office hardware, Talley says; bigger or more vulnerable computer networks often require "a rainbow of colors to divert excess energy." If all else fails, she can cast a protection spell on the entire company, office supplies included.

The TeleRead Take: Among my friends, there’s long been a running joke about particularly involved technological procedures requiring “sacrificing a chicken” to get them to work properly. But this is the first time I’ve seen someone taking that idea almost literally!

In a sense, though, it’s an interesting return to the origin of organized religion. It originally came about when people thought the real world was too complicated and hard to understand, and they needed someone to intercede with it for them. Now it’s the technological world that’s complicated and hard to understand.

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