2008 – The free peer-to-peer file sharing program who was under major fire decided to set up a fully legal DRM music store. With over 500,000 MP3’s from artists who are not on any major labels, the store allowed you to get lossless versions of this music. They planned a party at SXSW 2008 .
Downloads were on a pay-per-track pricing – from 30 cents (on up) per song. There were no mention of how much an artist could get from those prices. The RIAA was still going after the software itself at this point.
Ultimately on October 2010, an injunction was placed on the software and on May 13, 2011, Limewire settled for $105 million. Hence, the music service was also taken down.
1989 – Antic Software publishes the first issue of Amiga Plus Magazine. It was the April/May edition and included an AMIGA Plus disk, which included the graphic programs created. Articles included everything from creating graphics, to your 1988 Federal Income Tax, Lattice C++ review to a Tetris review and more.
Nat Friedland was the Editor and Arnie Cachelin the assistant editor. The Magazine had a short life – closing its doors in 1991.
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
2007 – The Energy Policy Act of 2005 ammended Daylight savings time 3 weeks . The theory was to move clocks forward 1 hour 3 weeks earlier than usual and Fall back in the first week of November (instead of last week in October). From a previous study, it was concluded this change would save households 1% of energy each day of DST.
The history of Daylight Savings Time dates back to Benjamin Franklin. He noticed people had their shutters closed to keep out the morning sun, then burned more candles in the evening. Through time he convinced others to change the times so people would get up earlier and enjoy the summer sunlight.
With more energy efficient devices, some have debated that Daylight Savings Time is not needed anymore. However, reports state that when we spring forward, our energy bill reduces 2-4%.
2003 – The Sony Clié PEG-NR70 and PEG-NR70V handheld computers were released. These were 66 MHz PDA units running the Motorola Dragonball SuperVZ processor with a 16-bit color screen and running Palm OS 4.1.
The devices would go on sale on April 13, 2002 for $600
2008 – SXSW Interactive keynote, Mark Zuckerberg was being interviewed by journalist Sarah Lacy. There was a lot of anticipation for the event, but things went south quickly (no pun intended). During the interview, Lacy starts talking about these books Zuckerberg writes into but never formally asked him about it. She gets a little befuddled because Mark was not picking up the ball.
She verbally notes the stall, which Zuckerberg replies “You have to ask a question.” That brought the audience into the conversation with a standing ovation. Trying to continue, Lacy finally made a question out of this story with Mark giving a 2 minute answer and not divulging that he “burned those books”.
Lacy then went to the audience for affirmation of the book burning. However, she instead got the comment “Talk about something interesting!”
Sarah responded with “Try to do what I do for a living. It’s not as easy as it looks…” That brought the audience into the conversation.
After that, people took to Twitter, wondering why Lacy wasn’t asking questions.
Finally, they ended the keynote with Lacy saying “I’m sorry to torture you for an hour.” The comment was not well-received.
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.
1981 – The successor to the Sinclair ZX80, Britain’s most popular home computer – the Sinclair ZX81 was launched by Sinclair Research – a Timex Corporation. It was a popular computer mostly because of the price – £69.95 ($99) or £49.95 in kit form.
The cheap computer had only a fraction of components that an Apple II did. Yet the Apple II was around £699. The Sinclair ZX81 only had 1 kB RAM with option to upgrade to 16 kB. The graphics were only in monochrome and the Z80 CPU ran at 3.25 MHz – 8-bit. This was actually faster than the Apple II processor (1.08 MHz) and only outbested by the IBM PC (4.77 MHz at 16-bit). The TI99/4A procesor was a 3Mhz 16-bit chip.
You could get a tape drive and printer, bringing the system up to about £160 ($250). The computer was succeeded by the ZX Spectrum.