George Lucas

Star Wars I: the Phantom Menace

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May 19, 1999: Star Wars Episode I Released

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Star Wars I: the Phantom Menace
Star Wars I: the Phantom Menace

1999 – Sixteen years after “Return of the Jedi”, George Lucas finally moves his vision forward with “Star Wars: Episode I – the Phantom Menace”. The story of young Anakin Skywalker and how Obi-Wan Kenobi brought him in, trained him, and ultimately lost him to the dark side.

Episode I grossed over $924.3 million worldwide and became one of the highest-grossing films of 1999. The 2nd set trilogy would continue with Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

The movie was received with warm reviews. The general consensus was the character development lacked while the scenes, characters, and landscapes were breathtaking. Even Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars.


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  • Star Wars Episode I
  • Apple opens the first Apple Stores
  • Intel debuts the pineview Atom chip
Playstation 3

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May 14, 2011: The Return of Sony Playstation Network

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Playstation 3
Playstation 3

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.

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  • Texas Instruments starts to compete with IBM
  • ZDTV (TechTV, G4) Channel begins operation
  • Google suffers a 1 hour outage
  • George Lucas Birthday
wordperfect office

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May 25, 1999: Corel WordPerfect Office 2000

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wordperfect office
wordperfect office

1999 – A program first developed by Brigham young University for Data General minicomputers, WordPerfect was the word processing application for anyone using a computer in the 80’s and 90’s. I remember writing reports and papers using this software growing up, along with Quattro Pro for bookkeeping and printing daily reports at work. However, in 1994, WordPerfect started to gain some major competition when computers turned to GUI, and DOS was getting put on the back burner.

Corel, the owners of WordPerfect since 1996, wanted to ramp up production of not only the word processor, but also their other products in Quattro Pro, Presentations, Paradox and Corel Central. They company always said they wanted to be the “Pepsi version of MS Word (Coke)”.

Therefore, WordPerfect Office 2000 was released. It was not their first attempt of a suite (first rel. 1993), but was the first version released by Corel, and a path to their current version of the WordPerfect Office X7.

Like MS Office, WordPerfect Office can be purchased in Home and Student, Standard and Pro versions.  Other features in the pack are Corel WinZip, Nuance Paperport, and NaturallySpeaking 3.

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  • Phillips electronics released the Laservision
  • CERN holds the first World Wide Web conference
  • Google Street view is launched in the US
  • A signed Steve Wozniak Apple I sells for $671,000
wordperfect office

/

May 25, 1999: Corel WordPerfect Office 2000

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0 Comments

Play

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wordperfect office
wordperfect office

1999 – A program first developed by Brigham young University for Data General minicomputers, WordPerfect was the word processing application for anyone using a computer in the 80’s and 90’s. I remember writing reports and papers using this software growing up, along with Quattro Pro for bookkeeping and printing daily reports at work. However, in 1994, WordPerfect started to gain some major competition when computers turned to GUI, and DOS was getting put on the back burner.

Corel, the owners of WordPerfect since 1996, wanted to ramp up production of not only the word processor, but also their other products in Quattro Pro, Presentations, Paradox and Corel Central. They company always said they wanted to be the “Pepsi version of MS Word (Coke)”.

Therefore, WordPerfect Office 2000 was released. It was not their first attempt of a suite (first rel. 1993), but was the first version released by Corel, and a path to their current version of the WordPerfect Office X7.

Like MS Office, WordPerfect Office can be purchased in Home and Student, Standard and Pro versions.  Other features in the pack are Corel WinZip, Nuance Paperport, and NaturallySpeaking 3.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 25

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  • Phillips electronics released the Laservision
  • CERN holds the first World Wide Web conference
  • Google Street view is launched in the US
  • A signed Steve Wozniak Apple I sells for $671,000
Star Wars I: the Phantom Menace

/

May 19, 1999: Star Wars Episode I

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0 Comments

Play

Subscribe! Spotify | RSS | More

Star Wars I: the Phantom Menace
Star Wars I: the Phantom Menace

1999 – Sixteen years after “Return of the Jedi”, George Lucas finally moves his vision forward with “Star Wars: Episode I – the Phantom Menace”. The story of young Anakin Skywalker and how Obi-Wan Kenobi brought him in, trained him, and ultimately lost him to the dark side.

Episode I grossed over $924.3 million worldwide and became one of the highest-grossing films of 1999. The 2nd set trilogy would continue with Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.

The movie was received with warm reviews. The general consensus was the character development lacked while the scenes, characters, and landscapes were breathtaking. Even Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 19

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  • Star Wars Episode I
  • Apple opens the first Apple Stores
  • Intel debuts the pineview Atom chip
Playstation 3

/

May 14, 2011: Sony Playstation Network Goes Back Online

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0 Comments

Play

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Playstation 3
Playstation 3

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

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  • Texas Instruments starts to compete with IBM
  • ZDTV (TechTV, G4) Channel begins operation
  • Google suffers a 1 hour outage
  • George Lucas Birthday
Star Wars

/

May 25, 1977: Star Wars – Episode IV Released

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Star Wars
Star Wars

1977 – in a theater not too far away…

Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) was first released to theaters. Opening weekend sees $6 million of the $11 million budget in return, however, the longevity of the movie has grossed over $797 million (for Ep. IV only). This surpassed Jaws as the nominal highest-grossing film and remained that way until being surpassed by E.T. the Extra Terrestrial in 1983. Add to that, George Lucas was the first movie maker to keep the rights of the toy creation – netting billi0ns in revenue. The film starred Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, and Alec Guinness, among others.

Star Wars: A New Hope was followed by Empire Strikes Back, then in 1983, the Third (technically 6th) movie in the series – Return of the Jedi – was released. That had a budget of $32 million and netted $23 million opening weekend and $656 million worldwide.

Of course, George Lucas also released Episode I: the Phantom Menace (1999), Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Happy 35th anniversary to a historic franchise!

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 25

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  • Phillips electronics released the Laservision
  • CERN holds the first World Wide Web conference
  • Google Street view is launched in the US
  • A signed Steve Wozniak Apple I sells for $671,000
George Lucas

/

May 14, 1944: Happy 70th Birthday George Lucas

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George Lucas
George Lucas

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

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  • Texas Instruments starts to compete with IBM
  • ZDTV (TechTV, G4) Channel begins operation
  • Google suffers a 1 hour outage
  • Sony Playstation relaunched after being offline for weeks
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