We often think of computers as a very modern phenomenon, but there were actually plenty of computers around 50 years ago. They just weren’t an everyman commodity, instead limited to goverment and corporate use. And they certainly weren’t small. Some of them had imaginative names like Whirlwind, Colossus and Pegasus, while others were slightly less poetic with names like Z4, AN/FSQ-7 and ENIAC.

Below we have listed as many as 19 examples of computers from the early days, pioneering efforts that although cutting edge in their day now look lovingly retro.

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Although Lists isn’t a new concept (Friendfeed has had them for months) they have proven to be a great addition to Twitter. Lists make it easier than ever to categorize users and curate content for your followers and yourself. The ability to create lists does indeed add fantastic value to Twitter, and lists can even be grabbed as an embeddable widget that can easily be customized and added to your personal website.

Looking for cool twitterers for your lists? Look no further. Here are 25 notable geeks, picked from five excellent tech lists.

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With the release of Google Public DNS, it appears that Google is making good on their earlier call to action for making the Web faster. In conjunction with that announcement several months ago, they launched the “Speed” site at Google Code with the headline “Let’s make the Web faster.” After setting up their DNS servers, which replaces the DNS servers from my ISP, I can confirm that my web browsing is indeed much zippier than before. So much so that it’s sort of shocking that ISP’s don’t seem to do much DNS optimization on their own – then again, why would they?

At first, this got me thinking about the self-serving aspects of Google Public DNS, in addition to Google’s other speed initiatives – which include Chrome, Chrome OS, and the announcement of the SPDY protocol.

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There are an impressive number of website analytics packages out there, with a wide range in price and features. But many of those analytics tools are only available online: you have to log in to a website to get at your data. The options for a desktop-based tool are fewer and farther between, but there are a few useful tools out there.

Check out these four options to see if a desktop application will fit the way you handle your website analytics.

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When Apple introduced push notifications to the iPhone this summer, we immediately thought of what a great match it would be for our monitoring service. After all, the main point of the Pingdom uptime monitoring service is getting alerts when your website or server goes down.

So, when we started work on version 2.0 of our iPhone app, this was one of our top priorities. Now the new version is here, with push notifications, graphs, and more.

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In the past few weeks, there have been some major shifts in the BitTorrent community which have had a resounding impact on the larger world of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. They’ve led to some of the largest BitTorrent sites completely changing focus, or figuring out smarter ways to continue sharing files illegally.

Meanwhile, Adobe announced a massively interesting inclusion in their upcoming Flash player 10.1 update – a seemingly innocuous version number that is adding some world-changing P2P technology to Flash video streaming.

I’d like to discuss these opposing trends of illegal versus more legitimate uses of P2P technology, and what they ultimately mean for how we use the Web.

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Google made a huge splash when it announced its plans for the Chrome operating system, a web-centric OS where essentially everything is run through a web browser. One great promise of Google’s Chrome OS is the arrival of low-cost, lightweight hardware, since most of the storage and other data handling is done in the cloud. Perhaps that 100-dollar computer will finally become a reality.

But there is a problem. A rather big one. The strength of the Chrome OS, that it makes maximum use of online resources, also limits its potential adoption. To have any real use of the OS you need a decent Internet connection, and that has some significant implications we need to look at.

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