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October, 2011:

Furphy Tank End

Oct 25th, 2011
by CannibalRabbit.
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Furphy Tank End

I spotted an Australian icon at the Kyabram Show – a Furphy Water Tank [^] end.

The Furphy water cart was an early exercise in branding. One of the key parts of the brand was the “Good, better, best – never let it rest – till your good is better – and your better best” seen here at the bottom of the end.

The Pitman shorthand [^] across the middle of the tank says “Water is the gift of God but beer and whiskey are concoctions of the Devil, come and have a drink of water”. The additional Pitman section between Shepparton and the middle band has Billy Hughes [^] slogan “Produce and populate or perish” – one of the main concerns in Australia in the middle of World War 2.

The water cart gave rise to the term “Furphies” – information of a dubious nature, some might even say rumours!

Ye Olde Internet Browsers

Oct 20th, 2011
by CannibalRabbit.
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In Before Netscape: the forgotten Web browsers of the early 1990s [^] Matthew Lasar at ArsTechnica takes us back to that time to those early days and shows us how far we have come in the 18 years since Netscape’s Mosaic launched.

Before Internet Explorer, even before Netscape, there was a whole ecosystem of different browsers that were evolving. This was back in the early 1990s when the concept of the publicly accessible internet, the information superhighway, was just beginning to catching on.

Pundits were still trying to tell us that this new thing was just a passing fad and it would never catch-on, it was just too complicated. But new browsers seemed were springing up all over the place. Some of them were even able to show in-line image, rather than having to open them in new windows, then came sound and video.

ArsTechnica - Before Netscape the forgotten browsers