1997
3DO agrees to sell its hardware systems business to Samsung Electronics, for US$20 million.
Virtual i/o closes down following a February bankruptcy filing. Former Virtual i/o CEO Greg Amadon claims that the company was only about eighteen months from producing technology that would appeal to consumers. The company was best known for their Virtual Reality (VR) headgear, which initially sold for US$799 and was eventually reduced to US$399. Retailers blame poor resolution and a lack of compelling applications for the failure of the headgear-based gaming market.
1999
Bleem, LLC begins shipping their PC-based PlayStation“>PlayStation emulation software, BLEEM! from their offices in Los Angeles, California.
Sega Enterprises, Ltd. publicly reveals that their new forecasts includes a significant annual loss and that their intentions to take back a sizable market share from Sony may have been overly ambitious. Blaming delays in overall development and production as well as fierce competition, Sega estimates a net loss of 45 billion yen (US$378 million) for the fiscal year ending March 31. In an effort to restore profit potential, Sega plans to cut twenty-five percent of their work force and close one hundred amusement facilities.
2000
Intel reveals plans to remove processor-IDs as a tracking technology embedded in Pentium III processors. The decision ends a year-long controversy among privacy advocates.
The United States government urges a federal judge to break Microsoft Corporation into two separate companies. One company to develop and manufacture the popular Windows operating system, the other company to develop and manufacture the remaining applications, such as Microsoft Office. Further development of Internet Explorer would fall under the applications company’s jurisdiction. Under the proposal, Bill Gates“>Bill Gates would be prohibited from owning shares in both companies, and the two companies would be prohibited from merging back together within a ten year period. Gates, however, promises to fight any such plan to break up the company. Analysts predict that, if the court accepts embraces the plan, the process could take years to resolve.
United States District Court Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York rules that MP3.com, Inc. of San Diego, California violated copyright law by creating a database of over eighty thousand copyrighted albums and permitting its users to access it over the Internet. Record companies, including BMG, Seagram Company’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Time Warner Inc’s music group filed a lawsuit in January against MP3.com, Inc.
2003
Apple Computer launches the iTunes Music Store. The service will sell one million songs in its first week. Visit the official iTunes website.
Corel releases version 8.0 of Paint Shop Pro (PSP) for Windows. Visit the official Paint Shop Pro website.
A culture verifies that a group of small (1mm) adult roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans), survived the atmospheric re-entry and crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1st. The roundworms, which were living in petri dishes enclosed in aluminum canisters, were recovered weeks after the disaster. They had been intended for use in an experiment designed to study the effect of weightlessness on physiology.
2004
The Apple Lossless Encoder is introduced as a component of QuickTime 6.5.1 and iTunes 4.5. The audio codec is also used in the AirPort Express’s AirTunes implementation.
2005
Version 2 (v5.0 update 3) of the Java programming language is released.
2006
Despite increased revenues, Microsoft announces that its Home and Entertainment division is posting a third quarter loss of US$388 million, largely due to the delays and costs of getting the company’s Xbox 360 video game system to market.
2007
Almost two years after his death, approximately seven grams of the cremation ashes of Canadian actor James Montgomery are launched into space as requested in his will. Montgomery is best known for his role as “Scotty” on the original Star Trek series. His ashes, along with those of Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and more than one hundred seventy other individuals are launched on SpaceX’s second Falcon 1 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California along with the Pentagon communications satellite TacSat1.
2008
Sanford Wallace, aka the Spam King – was sued by MySpace. Wallace sent email to MySpace users trying to phish information from the users. On the court date, Sanford didn’t show up, therefore MySpace wins by default.
2009
Microsoft ads Open Document Format support to Office 2007. They also add PDF files.
Yahoo! Releases Zimbra Desktop 1.0
2011
Google Chrome 11 launches with speech to text option