1995 – Bill Gates sends out a memo to his staff saying that Microsoft needs to “Get back on track” to the Internet. The memo was entitled “The Internet Tidal wave.” Gates emphasizes that this is as important as IBM was to the personal computer.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 25
1993 – Microsoft unveils at COMDEX a new line of Operating System. Dubbed Windows NT (New Technology) this software would be geared toward businesses. With a NT Server and NT Workstation, Windows could deliver a secure environment while also allowing connections using the Windows 3.11 and later Windows 95 Operating systems. NT would become available on July 27, 1993.
1985– Quantum Computer Services was founded. Technically, it was a reorganization of Control Video Corporation, a company that started in 1983. The company was selling online service “Gameline” to Atari 2600 users. You would pay $49.95 for the modem and also a one-time $15 setup fee. With the reorganization, Jim Kimsey became Chief Executive Officer and Marc Seriff took the CTO role. Ninety employees quit, ten remained. The company changed to sell Quantum Link for Commodore 64 and 128 consoles. Eventually, they would get into AppleLink and PC Link. Quantum Computer Services eventually (October 1989) changed their name to America Online (AOL).
Jim Kimsey left AOL in 1995, where he stayed under the limelight. He was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by President George W. Bush.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 24
2003– Caldera International finished the acquisition of the Server Software and Services divisions of Santa Cruz Operation. They turned around and officially renamed to the SCO group. The focus was more to the UNIX platform. The SCO group was in a major lawsuit with Novell until Masrch 2010 when the courts ruled that Novell had the proper rights to the SCO properties in the Linux OS.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 21
2009 – Craigslist was under fire for their erotic services. Reports of prostitution and other illegal activities were being conducted in the category. Craigslist revamped their site to remove the erotic services and add an “Adult” section – with more moderation. However, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster was given an injunction for threatening executives of Craigslist with criminal prosecution for aiding prostitution in the state.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 20
1991– Tim Berners-Lee sets up HyperText Markup language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) at CERN. He put the protocol on a NeXTStep machine. The server was then launched onto the word wide web, effectively making this the first day you could get a website that could support more than text.
That is when CERN and Berners-Lee release the World Wide Web standard. However, there was a long way to go. It wasn’t until August 6th, that Berners-Lee put up the first webpage.
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 17
George Lucas was born on May 14th, 1944. Of course, George went on to create one of the biggest franchises in geek history. Lots of geek news this last year as George Lucas sold Lucasfilm and Star Wars to Disney. Happy birthday to George.
Although May 4th is Star Wars day, I still have to say: May the fourteenth be with you!
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 14
2013 – Jeff Bezos announced Amazon has started their own internal currency called “Amazon Coin”. The virtual currency will be available for Kindle Fire tablet users and as a gift Amazon gave all Fire owners 500 coin – or $5 in credit. Coin could be redeemed in the Amazon app store.
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
1996 – IBM and Sears and Roebuck lose Prodigy due to takeover. They sell their interests to a group of investors – led by Prodigy Management: founders of Boston Technology and International Wireless. Ed Bennett, CEO of Prodigy takes the lead in this acquisition. Carlos Slim Helu – Owner of Telmex – then provided Internet access for Mexico and Latin America.Ultimately, Prodigy went public in 1999 and stayed that way until bought out by SBC (AT&T).
Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 12