There is a lot of information at our fingertips on the internet. But sometimes, we forget about things from our past, so searching for them online isn’t an option.

Retro Recall, from the company appcreatives, is a fun iOS app that randomly shows you TV shows, music, and movies from the 80′s and 90′s in a fun and sharable way. It’s 99 cents, and you can bring back memories from the US or the UK, whichever country culture you’re interested in recollecting.

Remember when?

The Retro Recall app is simple and beautifully designed. The best part is that you don’t even have to sign up for an account. Simply open the app and you’re presented with a random memory from years past, with the option to get more info, share, or favorite the item.

When you tap “more info”, you’re shown either a Wikipedia page, or in the case of the show “Small Wonder”, you’re shown a YouTube video of the theme song. The app is slick, and doesn’t force you to leave it to enjoy the content.

Swiping your finger from right to left will go through a seemingly endless stream of content, and I was reminded of quite a few pop culture items from the past.

Take the Seinfeld “Puffy Shirt” for example:

You can share the recalled item on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Email. All of these places are ripe for sharing this kind of fun content. Our only concern is that there is indeed an end to the content, and you’ll be stuck with nothing new. Hopefully the company will stay on top of that.

We won’t ruin the app anymore by telling you what gems you’ll find here, but it’s well worth the 99 cents for Retro Recall to bring back some long lost memories.

There is no shame in telling an old joke. You will be surprised at how many people haven’t heard it yet and the people who have heard it will smile as they wait for the punchline, and then laugh all over again.

Wannabe entrepreneurs are often looking for a ‘great idea’ to sink their teeth into. A multi-billion dollar opportunity. Something that is revolutionary and might change the world. Something… new.

Unfortunately the new new thing often won’t be recognized as important. Yahoo didn’t think Google was interesting and declined to buy it for a million bucks. Twitter now has 300 million users but most people disregarded it as a fluke when they first learned about it, including a few high-profile investors.

Besides it being hard to recognize, none of these ‘inventions’ were really new. Twitter was just an iteration of chat or maybe a web based version of texting. Google was just a better way to search, a minor improvement on existing search engines.

When a start-up or entrepreneur says he is onto something new and he has no competition that can only mean two things: his idea sucks or he simply didn’t do his homework.

When you are looking for something to do look at what you can improve. See what worked before and how you could apply it to a new medium or combine it with something else that worked. There were 170 YouTubes before YouTube and they all failed. Until YouTube came along, at the right time, then iterated a bit, executed well, took some chances and voila; success.

Want to build the next 100 billion dollar company? Start with something simple, improve an old idea or combine a few successful ideas into a new one.

Old and Proven is the New New thing.