The Softalk Apple Project & FactMiners to Host Global Collaboration Day Event!

The official announcement is forthcoming, but here's a peek into what's ahead...

The Softalk Apple Project and FactMiners are pleased to announce that we will host a Global Collaboration Day Event "all day" on September 17th.! :-)

Details of our event will be forthcoming and announced here as an update to this news item. Time is short, so we're in crunch mode to be ready for this fun event.

Softalk Apple Project Partners with Internet Archive to Accelerate Magazine Digitization and FactMiners R&D

The Softalk Apple Project and FactMiners.org are very pleased to announce our partnership with the Internet Archive which will dramatically accelerate the digitization, preservation, and public access to an archival-quality digital collection of the full 48-issue run of the Apple edition of Softalk magazine.

Previously Unknown Softalk Top 30 List for September 1984! (as I imagine it...)

A page mockup of Peter Caylor's Forecast for the Top 30 list of an imagined "49th issues" of Softalk

I recently had the chance to combine my love for retro computing and Softalk magazine with a "homework" assignment required for a Decision Support Systems class I've been taking. We needed to exercise our skills in model-based forecasting, so I saw a great opportunity to use this assignment to take a much closer look at the time-series of data represented by the famous Top 30 software sales charts at the back of every issue of Softalk (except the first).

Softalk Apple Project 2014 - Researcher of the Year Awards

As part of our commitment to support research collaborations, we are very happy to announce The Softalk Apple Project 2014 Researcher of the Year Award recipients; Chris Torrance, Laine Nooney, and Kevin Driscoll. The recipients of this inaugural year of our Researcher award are especially noteworthy as they have been trailblazers in our effort to establish The Softalk Apple Project as a vital, grassroots (unaffiliated and so-far unfunded) Citizen Science/History project.

Digging In to the Roger Wagner Archive

For all of you Assembly Lines fans out there, STAP's multi-award winning Chris Torrence recently posted this excellent YouTube video showcasing the new book, Assembly Lines: The Complete Book, the first in his series of Assembly Lines videos. To date he has posted three videos. The first of his videos is reposted here. It provides an overview of the table of contents with general information about the book itself and where you can get it.

Softalk Apple Project 2014 - Volunteer of the Year Awards

As we wrap up the first full year of The Softalk Apple Project (STAP), Timlynn and I are pleased to report our progress. While nearly everything done during the first year of activity has contributed in its own small way to moving our projects toward sustainability, two areas are especially noteworthy; our Volunteer activity and our Research "Honeypot" initiative. Here we are happy to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts of our volunteers.

Assembly Lines: The Complete Book

Assembly Lines: The Complete Book cover

I am very excited to announce that Assembly Lines: The Complete Book is now available as a hardcover from Lulu press. Roger Wagner’s Assembly Lines articles originally appeared in Softalk magazine from October 1980 to June 1983. The first fifteen articles were reprinted in 1982 in Assembly Lines: The Book. Now, for the first time, all thirty-three articles are available in one complete volume.

Our Softalk Magazine Preservation Talk at #MCN2014

We invite you to view the "Lively Talkin' Slide" Edition of our recent presentation about The Softalk Apple Project and our related FactMiners project at #MCN2014, the premiere museum informatics conference. We again thank the Museum Computer Network Association and PICTION for sponsoring our Emerging Professional scholarship that enabled Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky to attend the conference to learn, network with Kindred Spirits, and make our presentation to the museum informatics community. The opportunity for growth of both our projects was phemonenal and will be a source of enthusiasm for our continued evolution of these grassroots Citizen Science/History projects.

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