9.
Kodak's PhotoCD and CD-PROM: The evolution of film. Kodak's idea was to mix the then-new CD-ROM technology with photo processing. It never caught a big chunk of the market outside of the U.S. because it was proprietary and you had to take your photos to Kodak centres for digitizing, and as a result you got a CD that you were supposed to play on Photo-CD players hooked to your telly. More
here at the whackypedia. CD-PROM was another bright idea by Kodak that never took off.
I read several times that PhotoCD enjoyed some limited success among professional photographers. Perhaps in the U.S. Certainly not in this part of the world (South America). In the
words of EMedia:
"You almost feel sorry for Kodak sometimes. Photo CD was a failure. Their impressive 6X recorder and Disc Transporter were reliable, but too pricey for most customers who needed them."
10.
Late '90s 'Internet appliances' a lot of companies from 3com to Gateway computer sank millions into developing "internet appliances" hailed as the holy grail of low-cost computing, an evolution of the PC, without the fat.
You were supposed to install them in your kitchen, in your bedroom and living room instead of a full-blown PC, most offered almost instant-on and a limited web browser. Clearly this was an idea before its time. I own a few
Gateway Internet TouchPad appliances that work very well to this day, they were based on the low-power, x86 compatible Crusoe CPU from chips firm Transmeta, and ran an AOL client ported to Linux, using the Mozilla/Netscape "Gecko" browsing engine.
Alcatel Webtouch One (1999). If it only had an Ethernet port instead of Dial-up, and a 2007 CPU!.
Ironically, the hardware proved too slow and the amount of memory too limited, and the price too high. According to the whackypedia, some have called internet appliances "one of the eight biggest tech flops ever". But nothing prevents the same concepts being applied today. In fact, some say todays' hits like
Nokia's pocket Internet Tablet or also the Pepper Pad Web
Tablet are a resurgence of the late-90s "internet appliance" concepts.
Linux powered Gateway Connected Touchpad, with IR keyboard and touch-screen
On a related note, I'm still awaiting a Gateway CTP re-edition using today's technology to install in my kitchen. It should ideally feature Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-for peering with other devices-, wired Ethernet -ideally Gigabit-, a decent GPU capable of full-screen MPEG2/MPEG4 video, the same form factor and touch-screen as the GCTP but at a higher-res like 1024x768, a modern CPU -single-core AMD Turion?-, 512MB RAM, a decent Gnome-based current mobile Linux, almost instant-on with Flash based storage the ability to connect to it a nice thermal
printer so I can use it to keep track of groceries to buy and print my weekly shopping list.
The INQuirer
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