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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Twice a year, the world’s top 500 supercomputers are announced. The most recent winner is the Jaguar which pretty much wiped the floor with the competition, managing a performance benchmark 69% above the IBM Roadrunner which came in second.

Let’s take a closer look at the Jaguar, the fastest supercomputer in the world today.

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Since the dawn of technology people have been arguing about which technology is better. As with all such debates there are usually no simple answers and it often comes down to personal taste.

These discussions tend to be very infected due to the almost religious belief shown by the most hardcore supporters of a technology, a thorough conviction that all other options are inferior. Sometimes the technology creators themselves also add fuel to the fire by joining the discussions.

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Are you a programmer? Want to do something for the environment and even make the world a better place? Then start optimizing your code!

It seems like today the solution to most software performance issues is to throw more hardware at the problem instead of making the software run faster on existing hardware. Doing more with less is a forgotten mantra, and Wirth’s Law continues to ring true:

Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.

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This has to be one of the more bizarre gadgets we’ve seen lately. It’s a Japanese device called the Akiduki Pulse box that automatically posts your heart rate to Twitter.

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For decades, supercomputers have helped scientists perform calculations that would not have been possible on regular computers of that time. Not only has the construction of supercomputers helped push the envolope of what is possible within the computing field, but the calculations supercomputers have performed for us have helped further both science and technology, and ultimately our lives.

This post pays tribute to some of the most powerful supercomputers the world has seen, all the way from the 1970s until today.

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The Wolfram Alpha team has revealed some information about its hardware setup on their team blog. If you haven’t heard about Wolfram Alpha, it’s a soon-to-be launched “computational knowledge engine” with an interface similar to a search engine. There’s been a lot of buzz about it, for example on ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch.

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Since it launched in 1998, Google has become one of the true giants of the Internet. These days, Google has data centers all around the world and hundreds of thousands of servers. The sheer size of Google today makes it very interesting to look back at its humble beginnings as a small research project called Backrub at Stanford University.

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First of all, a big thank you to all our readers. We hope we have been able to provide you with interesting, fun and thought-provoking articles over the past year, and if you have discovered this blog recently, thank you for joining our ranks!

We have published more than 200 posts in 2008. Since we won’t be updating the blog until next Monday (December 29), here is a selection of our very best and most popular posts from 2008 to keep you entertained in the meantime.

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Christmas is upon us, and like the geeks we are here at Pingdom, we couldn’t help but check out how our fellow geeks worldwide are handling their Christmas decorations. We found some very cool examples where people have put together über-geeky Christmas trees, wreaths and other decorations. And then of course there’s that Christmas tree network monitoring system…

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