1998– In 3 years since it’s inception, eBay grew to be a powerful auction site. Therefore, eBay decided to go public. They offered 9 million shares on NASDAQ starting at $18 a share. When all is said and done, they closed the day at $47.375.
1999 – an ebay user (litterally) puts 500 pounds of Marijuana on the auction block. The auction itself hits up to 10 million dollars. eBay finds out and pulls down the auction, but it does say something for the power of illegal drugs over the internet.
1995 – The online auction site eBay officially was founded on this day by Pierre Omidyar, but it was known back then as “AuctionWeb“. The first auction was for a broken laser pointer. It was sold for $14.83.Makes me wonder how much that laser pointer would be worth if it went back up on the auction block.
The hobby became a business real quick when his server fees increased dramatically. He decided to take AuctionWeb to the next level and hire an employee – Chris Agarpao. Soon, eBay got their first president in 1996 when Jeffrey Skoll took the reins.
Since then the company has grown to a juggernaut in the online Auction business. They even have an ebay slot machine. Just like the auction site, I personally didn’t do too well in profiting from it…
1995 – Sega launches the Saturn video game console in the US. The 32-bit Cartridge loading system contained the 2 x Hitachi SH-2 32-bit RISC (28.6 MHz). It was launched in Japan and Europe earlier in the year, but didn’t hit the US until this date.
“Happy Independence Day. In return, we are going to give you a great new way to get email. It’s called “Hotmail“. Be free from your internet service provider!”
That was the call to action on 1996. Hotmail launched their email service as “HoTMaiL” (HTML is upper-case). It is the first web-based email that was later named MSN Hotmail, then Windows Live Hotmail.
Hotmail had many features since its start. Unlimited storage was one big feature. In 1997, Microsoft purchased Hotmail for $400 million, and changed the name to MSN Hotmail. They paired with the Microsoft Instant Messanger, then built items like the calendar, SkyDrive, and more.
After getting stiff competition from Google in 2004, Microsoft changed the service to Live Hotmail. The service continues on with many updates to compete with Google and Yahoo mail.
1993 – The National Center for Supercomputing Applications releases version 1.0 (RTM) of the Mosaic Web Browser. It was the first browser with a Graphical user interface for content. Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark were the lead developers. The browser would take the internet by storm and continue to lead until 1998 when IE and Netscape came on the scene.
Connectix stops shipping the Virtual Game Station for Mac
eBay sues Craigslist over “Diluting of Share”Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,comp.infosystems
**Date: Sat, 23 Jan 93 07:21:17 -0800
From: ma…@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
By the power vested in me by nobody in particular, alpha/beta version
0.5 of NCSA’s Motif-based networked information systems and World
WidWeb browser, X Mosaic, is hereby released:
location removed
This release of X Mosaic is known to compile on the following
platforms:
SGI (IRIX 4.0.2)
IBM (AIX 3.2)
Sun 4 (SunOS 4.1.2 with stock X11R4 and Motif 1.1).
Binaries for these platforms are available on ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in
/Web/xmosaic/binaries-0.5. More binaries will be supplied as I am
able to find other Motif-configured platforms to use (DEC MIPS
probably within the next half hour).
Although this is alpha/beta software, I’m looking more for feedback on design and functionality than bug reports right now — down the road
the bulk of the program will be rewritten in C++ anyway, so don’t
take the current code too seriously. But bug reports are welcome too.
New releases will probably come out about every 7-14 days until 1.0
arrives.
A list of current and future capabilities of X Mosaic follows this
message.
Cheers,
Marc
—
Marc Andreessen
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
ma…@ncsa.uiuc.edu
April 10, 2003: The first Sony Blu Ray Player hit store shelves
2003 – Sony Blu-Ray players hit store shelves for the first time. The BDZ-S77 was the first model, but didn’t sell too well because of the $3800 price tag attached to it. Add to it no movies available in the Blu-Ray format just yet. In fact, the first Blu-Ray movies didn’t hit shelves until June 20, 2006. 50 First Dates, the Fifth Element, Hitch, Terminator and Charlies Angels: Full Throttle were the first titles to be released.
0924, 3 years, aggregator, auction site, broadcom, compuserve, ebay, inception, IPO, nasdaq, patents, Podcast, technology history, this day in tech history, uss enterprise
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