2011 – Jeff Bezos announces a new line of Kindle products including the Kindle Fire. This 10 inch tablet was Amazon’s rival to the iPad. It ran a version of Android that connected with Amazon store. The Fire would cost $199 and came with 30 days of Amazon Prime.
2008 – British Secret Service admitted they have been looking for the next agents. They mention that they have been looking far and wide for spies. That is why they went to Facebook. MI6 placed 3 ads on Facebook to look for people seeking career change.. ability to shake a good martini is preferred.
2013: Google put on a “Secret Town Hall” meeting. Nobody knew what was going on, although some speculated it had to do with the TV. In their major announcement, Google introduced Chromecast – the HDMI-based set top box that was small enough to plug into the TV and not see it. The 2.83 inch dongle could stream YouTube or Netflix (at the time), along with a feature that turned your Android or iOS device into the remote.
The video would push to the TV while the mobile device could continue on searching, playing games, and more.
Chromecast debuted at $35 with 3 free months of Netflix.
It’s whats known as “Data Pass”. You went up to Orbitz, Buy.com, Fandango, Shutterfly, Priceline or Continental Airlines and purchase something. You are then asked if you want to be a part of the loyalty program. If you say yes, the credit card would be passed to a 3rd party affiliate, like WebLoyalty, Vertue and Affinion. They would then continue to bill your card. This issue broke lose in 2009 and the US Senate commerce Committee started looking into the issue.On Aug 10, 2010, Affinion (parent company to Data Pass) agreed to pay 8 million in damages. An additional $2 million would be paid between 5 – 3rd party companies that included Classmates.com and FTD. A small amount to the millions they swindled for years…
2014 – Trying to be the first provider of over-the-air channels, Aereo was told to shut down completely after a supreme court decision went against the company.
The idea was simple – take the over-the-air network channels and offer them on the Internet. Based in New York, the company opened services in 24 different cities. You could only watch the programming of your area on your PC, Mac or Linux. There were around 28 channels you could choose from and pricing was simply $1 a day.
Aereo was faced with many legal issues, including the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition act. The rebroadcast through the service undermined cable re-transmission fees.
It was also a wake-up call as after the fact, many cable providers started offering live streaming options.
1984 – Apple announced they would split up the Cupertino based company into three divisions – Apple II (handling all Apple III computers as well), the Apple 32 division (Lisa, and new Macintosh line of computers) and Accessory Products (Printers, keyboards, etc).
Delbert Yocam led the Apple II group which Steve Jobs would take care of Apple 32. Michael Muller would lead the accessories.
Apple did a lot of reorganizing, including Michael Spindler to VP of the European group and William Campbell to VP of sales in the US.
In 1984, they also introduced the Macintosh, with a groundbreaking Superbowl ad. At this time, Sculley and Jobs were co-working on a better Apple computer, but that would turn sour where Jobs resigned in 1985 to start NeXT Computers.
1948 – At IBM world headquarters, IBM dedicated the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC). The machine – otherwise known as Poppa – was the first computer to combine electronic computation with stored instruction. The 13,500 vacuum tube computer contained 21,000 relays.
The 1,800 square foot computer room had a large glass window so the public could see the building of Poppa. IBM created a raised floor for this computer so cables could run underneath and would not be tripped on. This was all in promotion to compete with the ENIAC computer.
The first calculations were of the positions of the Moon and planets. This would eventually be used by NASA to plot the course of the 1969 Apollo flight.
1896 – Although he was not the only person to be working on the technology and not the first X-ray, Wilhelm Roentgen gave the first public lecture and demonstration of his device. He photographed Dr. Albert von Kolliker’s hand at the Wurzburg Physical Medical Society.
The first X-ray he ever took was of his wife’s hand (with wedding ring on). The practice is also known as Röntgen rays.
1994 – Apple computer released a new line of MacIntosh computers in the Power Macintosh 6100. With a 60-66 MHz PowerPC 601 RISC processor – the first time Apple used this processor line – up to 32 MB of RAM, and options such as a composite and S-Video input/output, along with full 48 kHz 16-bit DAT resolution sound processing, this was the computer for the mulitmedia professional. The basic Power Macintosh 6100 was priced at $2,209
Apple also introduced the Power Macintosh 7100 for $3,379 and the 8100 with a 68LC040 emulation ROM for $4,869
1996 – Even though Pluto was first seen in 1930, we didn’t have the ability to take a decent picture of the furthest planet… er… dwarf planet… er… (dang you Neil deGrasse Tyson!!!). The Hubble telescope finally was powerful enough to take photos of Pluto’s surface. They spent over 6 days taking snapshots and learning all about this distant neighbor.
Astronomers found that Pluto had a complex surface, just like Earth. Many basins and craters were discovered during that six day photo session.