Hey kids, wanna go back in time?

If you’re looking for a “lean back” experience, we’d recommend the YouTube Time Machine.

But if you’re looking for something a little more “lean forward,” check out the jsTerm telnet emulator from Peter Nitsch. There are a bunch of bookmarks to choose from in the drop-down, so click around and visit some far-off locales.

The project is based on Flashterm, but Peter has hacked it together in HTML5. It uses Canvas to render the graphics, drawing a new image every time you press a key, plus WebSockets and Node.js to handle the client/server connection. You can dig into the source on github.

Not as hardcore as PuTTY, but it’s a pretty unique use of HTML5 and Canvas, so it’s obviously cooler.

I was a telnet kiddie back in the day — it’s what we did in the 1980s before web browsers, and before you could read Wired magazine on a gopher server — so this really brings me back. It has me itching for some Doritos, a Mountain Dew and the first three Chili Peppers albums.

See Also:

• Learn Enough Unix for Your Resume
• The Death of Telnet