2001 – The computer animated movie “Shrek” hits theaters. The 90 minute movie was produced on a $60 million budget and although it’s first weekend only saw $42 million , the overall theatrical run brought in $487 million. Shrek was the first computer animated film to win an Academy Award (Best Animated Feature).
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 18
1965 – The Campbell soup company, under their Franco-American brand, introduce SpaghettiO’s pasta in a can. The ring-shaped pasta and cheese blend was an easy way (and less messy) to make the kids a meal. Simply open the can and pour into the pan!
The idea was created by Donald Goerke – known as “Daddy-O of SpaghettiO’s”. The company tested out many shapes before they decided the “O” was the least messy to serve and eat.
Jimmie Rodgerssang the famous “Uh-Oh! SpaghettiOs” at the time.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 15
1940 – The first Corporate McDonalds restaurant opened in San Bernardino, CA by Richard and Maurice McDonald. “Speedee” was the mascot back then – a hamburger-chef that was poised upon the McDonalds sign. The “Golden Arches” dawned on the sides of the restaurant.
In 1955, Ray Kroc took notice and partnered up with the brothers. They created the corporate version of McDonalds at that time. He opened the 9th store in Des Plaines, IL and eventually took the headquarters there.
The original McDonalds was demolished in 1976.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 15
2011 – Hackers took down the Sony Playstation network on April 20th, 2011. Around 77 million accounts were comprimised and gamers couldn’t play online for over a month. On May 14, Sony started bringing the services back online on a country-by-country basis. North America was the first, and people could sign-in, play PS3 and PSP games, access rented content, play music already purchased, and use approved 3rd party apps such as Hulu and Netflix. A firmware update 3.61 was also available to update security for the users.
When it was all said and done, Sony had lost $171 million on this outage.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 14
1987 – Version 1.0 of the Turbo C programming language is released. It offers the first integrated edit-compile-run development environment for the C programming language for IBM-compatible personal computers. Turbo C was developed by Bob Jervis as “Wizard C”. It runs on just 384KB of memory and is capable of inline assembly with full access to C symbolic names and structures.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 12
1936 – When typewriters first came out, many different people worked on keyboard layouts to become the standard. QWERTY was a popular system but was not efficient. August Dvorak and William Dealey decided to create and patent an alternative to this style, the end result – the Dvorak keyboard was born.
The keyboard was more efficient, too. Key letters were together so you would “roll” words. T was next to H, N was next to S. The sub-dominant hand would take care of vowels and lesser-used consonants, while the dominant hand took care of most of the consonants. Therefore, a left-hand and right-hand Dvorak keyboard was designed.
More interesting – People would type twice as fast as with a QWERTY style (120 words per minute). However, the people were typing so fast, the hammers on the typewriter would get stuck together. With those two major issues, the Dvorak keyboard did not get accepted.
One can switch to a Dvorak keyboard, though. Simply change the keyboard settings, and don’t look down at your keyboard (because the letters will be all wrong).
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 12
2008 – After months of bid negotiations and Yahoo’s Jerry Yang saying “No”, Microsoft decided to take their $50 billion dollar offer off the table. Although Microsoft pulled the offer, it was not the last time we would hear about it. Carl Icahn would lead a charge to try and re-instate selling or have Yang off the Yahoo board.
On February 1st, 2008, Microsoft offered $45 billion ($31 / share) to purchase Yahoo! Ultimately, in 2009 Carol Bartz sold Yahoo search technology to Microsoft in a 10-year agreement, which (in an updated agreement on April 2015) may be terminated on October 1st, 2015.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 4
2000 – Up until May 1, all GPS signals were scrambled for protection. President Bill Clinton announced they would be turning off the Selective Availability (SA) because it didn’t propose a greater threat. But it also gave geeks something new to play with. But what to do?
Dave Ulmer ultimately started the GeoCaching phenomenon. He hid a bunch of trinkets out in the woods of Portland, Oregon. He then went to the USENET group sci.geo.satellite-nav and stated “If you take something, leave something”.
The Usenet message:
From: Dave ([email protected])
Subject: The Great American GPS Stash Hunt!
Newsgroups: sci.geo.satellite-nav
Date: 2000/05/03
—
The Great American GPS Stash Hunt !!
—
Now that SA is off we can start a worldwide Stash Game!! With
Non-SA accuracy it should be easy to find a stash from waypoint
information. Waypoints of secret stashes could be shared on the
Internet, people could navigate to the stashes and get some
stuff. The only rule for stashes is: Get some Stuff, Leave some
Stuff!! The more valuable the stuff the more stashes will be
started.
I’m thinking of half burying a five gallon plastic bucket with
lid at the stash point. Putting in some stuff. Adding a logbook
and pencil so visitors can record their find. The log should
contain: Date, Time, What you got, and What you put in. Scanning
the log book should give you a quick inventory of the stash.
I’ll look for a place near a road where few people would
normally go… Put in some cash, an old digital camera, and some
antique silverware!! I will come up with a cool name for my
stash and post coordinates soon!!!
Make your own stash in a unique location, put in some stuff and
a log book. Post the location on the Internet. Soon we will have
thousands of stashes all over the world to go searching for.
Have Fun!!
Dave…
He also made a video, which has the container and contents.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 3