Jobs says it was the “Blue Box” that inspired his life of invention. The Blue Box was a device that reproduced the tones AT&T used to connect phones worldwide. When Jobs found a list of the tones in an AT&T technical journal at the Stanford library, he and Steve Wozniak created their own box and used it to call the Pope. They didn’t actually get the Pope because they were laughing too hard just before he came on the line.

Bob’s experience with the Blue Box brought down Ramparts Magazine. Like Jobs, he had read about the box and got his hands on the AT&T technical journal. Bob wrote a “how to” article for Ramparts on making free phone calls worldwide. AT&T got a court order to confiscate every issue of the magazine before it went on the stands. With that enormous loss of revenue, the magazine never recovered.

“Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview” is a joint effort of technology writer Robert Cringley and Landmark theater co-owner Mark Cuban. Cringely made Triumph of the Nerds, a successful PBS miniseries. A highlight of the show was Cringely’s interview with  Jobs in which he sorely criticized Microsoft for making bad products. You can see that interview in this film, but it’s a lot more than that.

“Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview” screens at the Landmark’s Century Centre Cinema Wednesday and Thursday, November 16 and 17 at 2828 N. Clark St. in Chicago,  7:15 pm and 9:00pm. For a list of  theater locations nationwide, visit stevejobsthelostinterview.com/

1992 Smart Phone

A reader sent us an item from Time Magazine, which otherwise we never get around to reading. It’s a history of tech gadgets, many of which will surprise you.

Way back in 1992, IBM introduced an $899 device called “Simon.” Simon was a touchscreen mobile phone, personal digital assistant, pager and fax machine, all in one. It had a calendar app, calculator, address book and world clock. You could use your finger or a stylus on the touchscreen. For the whole list, do a Google search on “All time 100 gadgets” or click here.

Bob notes that to this day we get pitched on “new” products he saw 30 years ago at a trade show. Thirty-five years ago, the “Xerox Star” personal computer had a touch pad, a mouse and an icon display nearly identical to what was later used on the Macintosh. Xerox executives dumped the “Star” because they said there was no market for a product like that.

Ray Turley, an 82 year-old New Zealand woman, got a new career when she started taking tutorials to learn how to turn photographs into art. Now she sells around twelve canvases a year, she says.

Landscapes are her big sellers. She learned how to use Corel Painter and Photoshop from tutorials on Karen Sperling’s latest DVD, called “Painting for Photographers.” We were impressed by Turley’s art. You can see it at tinyurl.com/artmag1.

You don’t have to know much to follow the DVDs. They go step-by-step. But you will need patience to learn the full bag of tricks. The DVD isn’t cheap at $140, but it’s probably cheaper than tuition for art lessons.

It’s annoying to find a great video or article but not have time to view or read it right then. Using a new free “Spool” app from GetSpool.com, you can tag it and watch the video or read the article offline later. Among our host of pet peeves are long articles and videos that have several minutes of introduction and then move forward by explaining how man discovered fire before they get to the point. You can watch those long ones later on any computer or mobile device that can access the web. The app is free but you have to sign up for an invitation and get on the waiting list. We found the response was quick.

There is a similar free app called “Instapaper,” which makes it easy to tag text for later reading, but not video. Spool covers more, since it handles video and audio, as well as text. And if you’re reading a thread (a continuous discussion) in a user forum, or a multi-page article, Spool saves the whole thing, not just the first page.

– “Teardowns: Learn How Electronics Work by Taking Them Apart,” by Bryan Bergeron; $25. The title strikes right to the point here, and the author tells you how things work, from smoke alarms to electric guitars, and provides pictures of the insides. Once you know how something works, you can think about ways to improve it or even make it obsolete.

– “Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics,” by Stan Gibilisco; $35. This is like a text book, with a quiz at the end of each chapter. It’s well done, and includes some useful algebraic formulas. Basic stuff you should know.

– “Robot Builder’s Bonanza, fourth edition.” By Gordon McComb; $30. Build your own electronic sensors, make a spider robot out of electric guitar strings.

– “Arduino, a Quick Start Guide,” by Mark Schmidt; $35 and “Programming and Customizing the PICAXE Microcontroller,” by David Lincoln; $50. Both these books teach the reader how to program the two most popular circuit boards for controlling electro-mechanical devices.

– “15 Dangerously Mad Projects for the Evil Genius,” by Simon Monk; $25. The latest in the long-running Evil Genius series. What intrigued us here was how to make a magnetic coil gun. Projectile velocity is dismal; work on it.

– “Make, #27,” a regular magazine published by O’Reilly Books, $15 per issue. Covers many subjects but this one features turning a Roomba carpet cleaner into a roving spy robot.

Last but far from least each issue of the monthly magazines Popular Science and Popular Mechanics have instructions for building electro-mechanical projects. These are not toys! Want to build your own electron microscope?

In 1978, Shiva Ayyadurai was asked if he could create a system like the inter-office mail that some companies used, but one that could be used outside of the office. He was at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey at the time. He not only could solve that problem but he got a copyright on his creation in 1982.

CompuServe and MCI Mail were the first formally-sanctioned email carriers. They arrived on the scene in 1989. Bob used CompuServe in those days and Joy started a little later with Prodigy. AOL didn’t come along until 1993. Hotmail, which is now the world’s most popular online email service, was born in 1996.

If you don’t want to carry your textbooks around, or scan them into digital files yourself, Kno.com is a good way to go. They’ve digitized 100,000 textbooks and you can get them for 30 to 50 percent off the regular price. Read them on your computer or use their iPad app.

The iPad app has a nice Facebook feature: You can post your thoughts directly to your Facebook wall without leaving the page you’re on. It also has a “Journal” feature: Highlight text and it goes right into the Journal. Tap the Journal to see all your highlights. And not least of all, place your thoughts in a sticky note off to one side of the text. A new 3D feature lets you rotate, zoom and spin molecules and other objects.

We bought “Playwriting for Dummies” for $10. Kno has a 15-day return policy, but it’s a good idea to check Amazon for the title first. The prices were the same every time we checked, but Amazon lets you preview the book, something Kno doesn’t. Amazon, by the way, has a new “Cloud Reader,” so you can read digital books in your web browser without downloading a program first.

CourseSmart.com also has digitized textbooks. They didn’t have the playwriting book we found at Kno, or “Memoirs of Jane Austen” and other books that aren’t really textbooks per se, but they do have standard works, like “Biology, 10th Edition.” Their website claims they’re the leader for textbooks.