I don’t recall how many quarters I pumped into video game machines back in the 1970s and 1980s. Lots! Now those games are available free to play on the Internet.

Alas, I wasn’t able to get some of the games to work. Perhaps you’ll have more luck.

Archive.org

Researchers estimate that the world has one Wi-Fi hotspot for every 150 mobile data users, which includes phones, tablets, laptops, and you-name-it. France is number one for Wi-Fi hotspot availability, followed the UK and the US.

And in just four years time, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots could balloon to over 340,000,000.

Golly!

BBC

YouTube is allowing mere mortals to enjoy it’s 60 frames per second (FPS) video service. The service, originally announced a few months back, presents videos at a faster rate in either the 1080p or 720p video quality settings. The drawback is that only the Chrome web browser displays such videos.

Forbes

The statistics are out and Windows 8.0 and 8.1 have gained a wee bit of market share. Windows XP is falling. But the big dog remains Windows 7. Nifty chart at the link below.

VentureBeat

The Internet-ready TV is really amazing. I have one. Connected to it are a multitude of devices, each of which is also Internet-ready: The Blu-Ray player offers apps, Google’s Chromecast offers apps, the TV itself has apps, and I’m soonly obtaining Google’s Nexus Player, which offers apps. The kids want me to connect an Xbox One or Playstation 4, both of which offer apps, but I’m reluctant.

The TV is so Internet happy that when the Wi-Fi signal proved too weak, I crawled into the attic and hard-wired the TV with an Ethernet cable outlet. And, naturally, I had to add a hub to connect several other Internet gizmos as well.

Now comes this: Apparently your Internet-ready HDTV is doing more than showing you Netflix and Hulu. Yakov Smirnov joked that “in Soviet Russia, TV watches you.” Apparently, in the United States, Internet-ready TV watches you as well.

Salon

The fattest Android phone I owned was the Droid Bionic — a dismal failure of a device sales wise (and my Droid Bionic For Dummies didn’t fare too well, either), but a lovely phone for its battery life. I even purchased an extended battery that made the phone fatter and last all the doo-dah day. It was delightful.

The trend these days is for thin, stylish phones. Blame Apple. Their new devices are all touted by how delicately thin they are. “The new iPad 20 — so thin it has only one side!”

The sacrifice that manufacturers are making in favor of thin is battery life. Batteries need to be fat to be good. Plus, with a fat phone, you can stuff more goodies inside.

Hail to thee, fat phone!

Gizmodo

I loved Hypercard. It was fun, but it was also unique, object-oriented programming that just about anyone could master. Back in the day, thousands of Hypercard “stacks” where available. They did amazing and useful things. Even I got into the act.

Hypercard is missing today, but it would be fun to bring it back. While the percentage of hobbyist computer users is comparatively low (well, actually nearly non-existent), I still think a place could be found for something useful like Hypercard.

Medium

The phone part of cell phone is there for a reason, but it’s not the first purpose of the device. Today’s phones do so much, that it’s not surprising how a recent survey found that using your cell phone as a phone ranks about fifth on the list. It comes after texting, email, surfing the web — even using the device as an alarm clock.

I suppose the object of the game would then be to dream up a new name for the device. I propose Digital Gooberrabber.

UPI

This is really cute: A collection of mockups of what popular online services would be like had they arrived on the scene about 20 years ago.

Digital Trends