Theron of IDIDTHAT.com isn't letting old rotary phones go to waste. This Bay Area artist is repurposing them into cool lamps ($167+) whose headset is hovering in mid-air as its light source. The cord is flexible and can be repositioned as you like. Neat!

They write:

In the early 1970s herds of rotary phones spanned the countryside. Social by nature, the phones bred in most homes and soon every imaginable color was available. Hunting was easy! Firmly attached by a cord, trappers harvested their cases by the thousands. They were at the brink of extinction when a few cordless models got into the population. Today’s cellular phone is the result of careful breeding management. We celebrate the near extinction event, with the release of our popular recycled phone lamps in every imaginable color. Relive the 1980s or earlier and be the talk of the town. Like really, people talked on these and now they will talk about these. One customer said “Truly the coolest thing I’ve ever purchased.”

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(Princess and her regal consort both SOLD) Our expeditionary team returned with one of the last breeding pairs of turquoise blue phones known to exist.  Behold a princess phone lamp and her regal consort in their corded glory.  Several large and unnamed museums have made offers, but we just can’t see them locked in a glass case!  They belong in their natural habitat, the rumpus rooms of America.  Take one home today before they are forever extinct.

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In 1927, folks in the Fresno, California area went down to the local cinema to learn how to use those new-fangled dial telephones that everybody was talking about. This is the charming footage, a combo of live action and cartoons, created by the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (AT&T) that they saw 91 years ago.

The AT&T Archives writes:

In 1922, New York City was introduced to dial. The first popularized dial telephone was a desk set candlestick model; the smaller, more familiar desk set came later.

It took decades for dial to sweep the entire Bell System. The last holdout was Catalina Island, off the coast of California, which finally converted to dial in 1978. In Camp Shohola, Pennsylvania, an internal automatic switch system still connects campers with the outside world, it's the oldest functioning Strowger switch in the world.

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In this press conference, Microsoft finally reveals its plans for Skype.