Day in Tech History

November 16, 2018

November 17, 2008: Jerry Yang Steps down as Yahoo! CEO

2008 – After battle upon battle between Microsoft, Google and shareholders (including Carl Icahn), Jerry Yang finally announced to all he was stepping down as CEO of Yahoo! The previous days, Steve Ballmer said they are not going forward with any future purchase of Yahoo! Because of this, stock hit it’s lowest share price, $8. That, the failed Google affiliation (due to antitrust issues), and a very despondent group of investors, Jerry felt it best to step back in his roll. This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for November 17 USB 3.0 Specification is released Apple vs. Carl Sagan...

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Day in Tech History / Geek

November 15, 2018

November 16, 1977: Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind Debuts

1977 – Most of the time, we skip over movie releases, unless it has had a definite impact on the Tech and geek community. That is the case with this movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind – Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Richard Dreyfuss, and Teri Garr was released to 272 US theaters. It was produced on a budget of US$20 million, amd would gross US $5,379,460 in the opening weekend.It also changed the way I ate mashed potatoes. This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for November 16 3Dfx Interactive unveils the Voodoo ICANN selects 7 top...

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Day in Tech History / Intel

November 14, 2018

November 15, 1971: Intel 4004 Microprocessor

1971 – Intel announced the 4004 microprocessor in an ad in Electronic News Magazine. Intel called it a micro-programmable computer on a chip, this was the first single-chip processor. It was also concidered to be the precursor to the x86 processor. The 4004 was followed with the 8008, 8080 and 8085 processors. Federico Faggin was the chip lead designer. He holds 2 of the chip’s patents.The 4004 could run 60,000 interactions per second (0.06 MIP). The clock rate on the chip was 108 KHz and was accompanied by the Intel RAM chip. It only cost $200. The chip made it’s debut on...

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Day in Tech History / Microsoft

November 13, 2018

November 14: Computer Dealer Exhibition – COMDEX

During the 80’s and 90’s, there was a little show called COMDEX. It stood for Computer Dealer Exhibition. For a while, there were 2 versions: The Spring COMDEX (Alternating for a while between Altanta and Chicago) and the Fall COMDEX (Las Vegas). The show was attended by many and there were vendors galore. I remember seeing Bill Gates at the 1998 Comdex for the Blue screen error when they plugged in a scanner. I also saw President William Clinton give a keynote.COMDEX finally fell in 2003. Nonetheless, a lot of History falls between this time and about April from the...

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Day in Tech History / Google

November 12, 2018

November 13, 2006: Google Completes YouTube Acquisition

2006 – In February 14, 2005, 3 former Paypal employees started a website that let you upload and share your video. YouTube brought a new idea of putting your creations on the internet. However, their creation got very popular. It cost a lot of money to run and the company couldn’t keep up with costs. Enter: Google. They purchased the site from the founders for $1.65 billion on October 9. Today marked the completion of this acquisition. This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for November 13 2007 – New York Times tears down their Walled Garden for Ad- supported content....

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Day in Tech History / Geek

November 11, 2018

November 12, 2002: Gary McKinnon Indicted

2002 – Gary McKinnon has been in the news ever since his arrest. Back in 2002, he hacked into networks run by NASA, the Pentagon, along with other military bases around the US. He claims he was on a hunt to find evidence that the US has been covering up alien contact.What makes this a tough case is that McKinnon lives in the UK. Since the arrest, he has been waging a war against being extradited to the United States. He has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome – a form of Autism. BTW – this is the largest military hack...

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Day in Tech History / Geek

November 10, 2018

November 11, 2005: Sony suspended CD copy protection

2005 – In an effort to curb piracy, record companies began putting copy protection on the CD’s themselves. The electronic marking would cause CD’s to error out if they tried to copy. Unfortunately this idea was riddled with problems. Some players couldn’t read the disks, other people would find ways around the copy protection, such as different brand drives. However, it was found that the XCP copy protection standard became a backdoor for hackers as viruses could be introduced through the software. The announcement came ten days after Sony had secretly put this system on the shelves. 2008 – A bill...

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Apple / Day in Tech History / IBM

November 9, 2018

November 10, 1983: Microsoft Windows 1.0

1983 – Windows 1.o was announced at the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York City. It was one of the most elaborate product introductions to date. Gates says Windows 1.0 will officially release in 1984, yet it didn’t release until June, 1985. 1986 – Back in that day, Comdex was the big computer show. There were two versions: one that was held in Chicago in the spring and the other in Las Vegas mid-November. At this time, Atari was the big dog on the block. Jack Tramiel was putting all efforts in this years Comdex after seeing a small dip...

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Day in Tech History / Mozilla

November 8, 2018

November 9, 2004: Mozilla Firefox 1.0 Released

2004 – Mozilla launches the web browser that would finally give Internet Explorer a run for it’s money. Firefox 1.0 web browser was created by Mozilla, who broke free from the Netscape Navigator browser to develop in Open Source. The Gecko layout engine browser would be available for Windows, Mac and Linux – with it being the standard browser in current flavors of Ubuntu. Last year on it’s 3.5 release, it set a new worlds record download. Firefox currently takes 1/5 of the market browser share. This Day in Tech History podcast show notes for November 9 Blizzard settles a lawsuit...

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