My thanks go out to Geoff Balemans for pointing me to a wonderful video by Douglas Adams, narrated by Tom Baker, called Hyperland.
This show illustrates all sorts of good stuff that was coming before the Internet was implemented as we know it today.
One of the highlights is all the technology demos done with HyperCard. I loved HyperCard as soon as I saw it. At first it was black and white, in fact 2 bit, they added colour through extensions but it just got worse. In the end, Apple dropped the project, but perhaps it was already perfect.
There are some alternatives but nothing comes close to the seamless environment created by the great Bill Atkinson.
Created in 1990, predicting life in 2005, it's well worth a look.
You're not alone in missing that great hypertext authoring app. In fact, I believe that a port of HyperCard (or its successor) is bound to come to iPhone/ iPod Touch sooner or later - they're practically made for one another: a device with fixed-size screen, great comms capabilities, a camera and (indirectly) microphone, all multimedia components well in place, and NO 2D-GRAPHIC/ COLOR/ SOUND GLUE TO BIND IT WITH! This cannot go on.
ReplyDeleteSomeone please call Bill Atkinson, tell him to check (again) into that motel in Mountain View where he once singlehandedly coded the HyperCard, seals barking in the distance 'n all.
Ianf
You're not alone in missing that great hypertext authoring app. In fact, I believe that a port of HyperCard (or its successor) is bound to come to iPhone/ iPod Touch sooner or later - they're practically made for one another: a device with fixed-size screen, great comms capabilities, a camera and (indirectly) microphone, all multimedia components well in place, and NO 2D-GRAPHIC/ COLOR/ SOUND GLUE TO BIND IT WITH! This cannot go on.
ReplyDeleteSomeone please call Bill Atkinson, tell him to check (again) into that motel in Mountain View where he once singlehandedly coded the HyperCard, seals barking in the distance 'n all.
Ianf
Hey guys... you should check out TileStack.com. It's the real deal. They are striving for 100% backward compatibility and they have added a number of modern features such as in-browser stack editing, embedding of created stacks, playing stacks on the iPhone, etc.
ReplyDelete