2018 Tedium Highlight by Ernie Smith: Inspired by something I saw online, I bought Phone Relief, an “As Seen On TV” product that turns any phone into a hands-free phone—so you don’t have to. 

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Ernie Smith’s 2018 Highlights

December 2018

Another Year of Tedium

The state of our Tedium in 2019 is a pivotal one if you love the idea of creating things online. Let’s talk about why—and what we can do to keep it safe.

Desperation-Tinged Gift Ideas

Every year, Tedium looks back and publishes a last-minute gift guide full of odd crap we found from the prior 12 months. Think we’re gonna change gears now?

The Infomercial Game

From Kevin Trudeau to Miss Cleo, infomercial schemes of the past 40 years have a lot in common with the “dark patterns” of the modern-day app economy.

The Internet, Through A Filter

As content filters re-enter the digital conversation, a look back at the internet filters of the ‘90s, and the librarian who sold the Supreme Court on them.
November 2018

Hometown Proud

The Independent Grocers Alliance (IGA), a loosely franchised grocery chain, is basically designed to allow locals to own their own stores. It's genius.

Corporate Casserole

Pondering Thanksgiving through an exceedingly corporate lens. Some of the holiday’s most important elements were brought to you by marketing and lobbying.

Hands-Free Horrible

Inspired by something I saw online, I bought Phone Relief, an “As Seen On TV” product that turns any phone into a hands-free phone—so you don’t have to.

Counting All Cars

Pondering the evolution of electronic tolling, the system that doesn’t slow you down even as it charges you to use it. It has roots in the theremin—sorta.

Beyond The McRib

Pondering the way that retired or obscure fast food menu items create cult followings. Had a Taco Bell Chili Cheese Burrito lately? Consider yourself lucky.
October 2018

Let's Overanalyze Fun

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the “Fun Size” candy bar, let’s highlight the time Mars tried to sue one of its largest competitors for using the term.

Simulated Crime

The evolution of the police training simulator, and how it directly inspired one of the most fascinating video game companies of the ‘90s.

Dual-Pronged

Pondering the staple, and separately, the stapler, as they came together over time to saddle a few stitches and inspire a few tall tales.

The Halloween-Industrial Complex

After the 2008 recession, commercial real estate firms had a ton of empty buildings. Fortunately, Halloween stores were ready to fill the gap—for a month.

Silicon Persistence

Decades after Silicon Graphics' heyday, its supercomputers have found themselves a new home with a small community full of enthusiasts—some just teenagers.

Extreme Googling

It’s easy to forget given its size, but Google fundamentally changed our relationship with information. Two decades later, we’re still feeling the effects.
September 2018

Network Effects

For more than a decade, it's been a common sight in U.S. airports to see newsstand-style shops named for cable news networks. Why, of all things, this idea?

Giving Candy A Bad Name

The surprisingly true story of Ayds, a diet suppressant candy that was incredibly successful until its name became forever associated with something else.

We’re Making A Zine

If you’re a fan of Tedium in digital form, you should know that we’re going to create a physical form. But not just any physical form. Zine form.

VCR Plus Dice

From board games to stunted game systems, the many attempts to turn VHS into a platform for games ran into a big problem: There was only one way forward.

Close Your Open Tabs

A case in favor of browser tab minimalism, or closing the tabs you’re not using. Sometimes, information overload has its limits.

Double Trouble

How a court battle involving groundbreaking disk-compression software foreshadowed Microsoft’s status as an antitrust darling.
August 2018

Clippy Couture

Clip art gets a bad rap as an artform, in part because it’s everywhere. Let’s give it some grudging respect by filling in some historic gaps.

Trapper Keeper Contraband

The Trapper Keeper is a beacon of nostalgia, but generic branding and school rules have pushed it off to the side. Good luck finding a new one.

The Ballad of Yo! Noid

In the '80s and '90s, advertisers got the idea to market products to kids through video games. The games aren't half-bad (mostly), but they're still ads.

Retail’s Tech Champion

Sears and Roebuck—a firm that has seen better days—helped sell the public on computers, video games, and online services. (They made great catalogs, too.)

Nothing But Net (And Ads)

The rise of the ad-sponsored dial-up ISP offers some useful lessons on promising too much in the age of MoviePass. Good luck getting rid of that ad.

Symbiotic Infringement

Pondering the shutdown of a YouTube user who uploaded lots of John Oliver videos over a multi-year period—and probably made John Oliver more popular.

Pens for Pennies

How cheap ballpoint pens, which are easy to lose and easy to make, changed the world due to their sheer disposability. They're really freaking cheap.

Everything You Want

A theory about the inspiration for Verizon's name that Verizon probably doesn't want to admit, because then they'd have to pay Vertical Horizon royalties.
July 2018

TV’s Hidden Math

How the calculus of ’80s television programming lives on into the present day—and why the Disney Channel always seems to cancel shows after 65 episodes.

Click, Clack

The famed mechanical keyboard switch manufacturer Cherry has been around since the 1950s—but it's only been defined by keyboard switches in the past decade.

Duck, Duck, Goose?

What if someone solved one of retro gaming’s biggest headaches and few people noticed? Such is the tale of the Modern Mallard, the great Duck Hunt fix.

The Agony Of Repeat

The tale of a guy who became famous for falling down once, only to have that fall replayed every single week on a legendary American TV show.

Still Grasping At Straws

Businesses and cities are ditching the plastic straw, the ultimate commodity object. But the shift is controversial, and alternatives don’t come cheap.

The Internet's Final Frontier

Pondering the nature of digital connectivity in the one room nobody wants to consider internet access in, even though we use it all the time: The restroom.
June 2018

Members Only

Pondering the surprising number of musical acts that have official members that don’t actually play an instrument or sing. You know, like Coldplay.

The Other Browser War

Why a new “feature” Opera added to its browser this week really makes me wish they’d ask me to pay them money for the right to use their browser.

The Toy That Talked Back

Four decades ago, the Speak & Spell came about, and the result was Texas Instruments’ greatest gadget and a pop-culture icon.

Solved

The surprising place that Unsolved Mysteries holds in modern culture—as a show that’s still being updated, years after being taken off the air.

Flexible Noise

The history of flexi discs, the cheap alternative to vinyl records that was once a marketer’s dream material and an unusual Cold War workaround.

With ARM Wide Open

The story of ARM Holdings, one of our most important tech companies, is full of sheer luck, happy accidents, and a faded British computing icon.

Hooked On Velcro

How Velcro became one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, despite simultaneously gaining an unfashionable reputation.

The Future of Fringe

Puppeteer Chris Carlson, currently running for California governor, might be the long-shot political candidate the world needs in 2018. Please keep running.
May 2018

Window Dressing

When macOS was still OS X, some Windows users weren't afraid to remake their desktops in Apple's vision. It was the ultimate case of imitation and flattery.

The Chinese Robocall Blues

Like spam messages, robocalls aim for the broadest possible audience in an effort to get someone, anyone, with its scam. And both are annoying as heck, too.

Make Some Noise

Sound cards like the Creative Sound Blaster were the missing element that computers needed to take on multimedia. Then, they faded from view. Here's why.

They Steal Horses, Don’t They?

Discussing the rise of organizations that fought against a very specific type of crime: The theft of horses. However, that wasn’t all they were doing.

Unsettled

Ticketmaster pulled a fast one on the concert-going public by making it impossible to redeem free tickets in a class-action settlement. We should boycott.
April 2018

Ink-Stained Pixels

The Kindle and the Nook have defined the eBook, but there are literally decades of prior art for this device—an idea many readers still haven’t warmed to.

It’s Not HBO, It’s UHF

The quickly forgotten phenomenon of scrambled television stations that ran over the air on UHF signals. Not everyone had cable TV at first.

No Thanks, Spammers

How search engine marketers are ruining what’s left of the open web through too aggressive automation. No, I won’t add your link to my old piece.

Going Through The Motions

The evolution of the robotic arm, a product invented in the U.S. that came to define modern factories around the world. It wasn't an easy sell in America.

Fishing For Checks

The rise of mail fishing—which involves sticky glue, string, and blue postal mailboxes—represents a growing threat to the physical mail system. Really.

The Oracle That Spoke Too Soon

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison sold the tech world on the Network Computer, a machine designed to kill the PC’s dominance. The problem? It was 15 years too early.

Tales From The Minibar

The hotel minibar was an exciting and interesting new direction for hotels at first. But it’s since declined. Is a lack of new minibar ideas to blame?

Tommy’s Back

A review of the first part of “Best F(r)iends” from a big fan of “The Room.” Long story short: It’s a solid addition to the Tommy Wiseau catalog.
March 2018

It’s New To You

The story of FuncoLand, the retailer that made the used video game market a thing—and how GameStop, which bought Funco, sort of bastardized that mission.

An Institute You Can’t Disparage

How an activist named Terry Rakolta tried—and failed—to convince Middle America to stop watching “Married … With Children.” She might have saved Fox.

Please Clap

The tale of The Clapper, a device that introduced millions of people to the idea of simple home automation. Would we have Alexa without it?

Press Your Luck

Academia finally did an in-depth study into the nature of the button press, along with how we could possibly make our buttons just a little more effective.

Drip And Drive

Have you donated blood lately? Maybe you'll get inspired by reading the history of how we got modern blood donation, including (of course) the bloodmobile.

Literal Dad Rock

How a famed guitarist best known for working with Frank Zappa and King Crimson scored a hit with his daughter, mocking his semi-successful music career.

A Screwy Straw Stat

A curious estimate seen in a wide variety of stories about plastic straws was uncovered by a 9-year-old. How big of a problem is that?

On Memedom

Analyzing the impact of a tweet of mine that went so viral that it nearly broke my phone. Something about sad pepperoni brings out all the retweets.
February 2018

The Polyphonic Screed

The evolution of the modern cell phone ringtone—and the Ukrainian guy who wants to give Apple’s default noises a refresh.

Rethinking the Funny Page

With the loss of one newspaper comics-page giant and the departure of another, now’s a good time to reflect on whether the whole model needs to be reworked.

Consumer Conflict

From literary advocacy to union battles to communism claims, the origin story of the organization that publishes Consumer Reports kind of has it all.

Fall Of Voodoo

In a few short years, the graphics card company 3Dfx Interactive provided a polygon-laden shock to the PC world—then fell apart, fast. What happened?

A Beautiful Neighborhood

The story of Neighborhoods, one of the great unheralded albums of the private press era. Read the story of the album and its creator, a Portland jazz icon.

Ban The Box

The defining debate of the early compact disc era centered around the longbox, a wasteful form of packaging pushed by retailers and paper manufacturers.

Tech’s Biggest Racket

Why Apple’s MagSafe connectors are both incredibly great and incredibly wasteful—in that they’re expensive, proprietary, and break very easily.
January 2018

Primitive Streaming Gods

Lessons from the music industry’s initial consumer-hostile reaction to the Napster saga. Going from $16 CDs to unlimited streaming is really hard.

I See This Dog Everywhere

Why Chico, a stock photo dog you’ve probably seen on dozens of flyers and websites over the years, is secretly the future of pet modeling. He's perfect.

How's Your Soldering Technique?

The story of solder, the unsung hero of the digital revolution that benefits from a low melting point. It’s what keeps the circuits attached to the silicon.

The Worst Part Of Waking Up

As our alarms went from analog to digital, the noises they made became a lot more abrasive. Here's the story of the technology behind your alarm clock.

The Lazies

Is the great icon of bad film awards missing the boat in the modern era? Some thoughts on the overly broad, overly obvious Razzie nominations.

Dots Vs. Pixels

Two tales of resolution, only one of which involves screens. Do you know your dots per inch from your pixels per inch? Let's break down the difference.

The Gift Of Abstraction

Pondering why the electronic gift card, which is newer than you think, took over the retail industry so quickly. Who had it first, anyway?

Why “Zombie” Lingers

In the wake of Dolores O’Riordan’s passing, reflecting on why The Cranberries’ “Zombie” is one of the most-watched YouTube videos of all time.

Your Position, Triangulated

The evolution of the global positioning system, the greatest non-internet idea to come out of the Space Race, and why the military initially hobbled it.

Kodak Krypto

Why the news that Kodak is trying to cash in on the cryptocurrency trend is literally the most depressing piece of business news, ever. Die, cheap gimmicks!

Lucky Tickets

The South Carolina lottery system preps a big payout, thanks to a really annoying computer error. But is the state actually liable for the ticket flub?

You've Been Warned

We pass by all sorts of crazy warning signs every single day—including police tape, wet floor signs, and crazy road warnings. But do they actually connect?

Is Blogging Dead?

As some ponder whether the practice of blogging should be seen in the past tense, it may be better to consider what the concept gave us in the first place.

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