2009 – Intel introduces the Nehalem Core i7 processor, code-named “Lynnfield”. The i7-950 and 975 models are 4-core processors with a speed of 3.06 GHz. The processor ran 64-bit instruction set and could take up to 24 GB of RAM at DDR3 800/1066. Price: $294.00
2003 – Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created a Fork of B2/cafelog. From there, WordPress was born. Since its release, WordPress has taken over Content Management Systems (CMS) with its ease of use and plethora of programmers that have made plugins, themes and other tweaks to the system since. The current version is 3.5.1 which has been downloaded over 18 million times.
1998 – At the beginnings of the AMD / Intel battle, AMD brought out a processor to dual with Pentium II. The AMD K6-2 processor was a Super Socket 7 pin structure, which also was compatible with older Socket 7 motherboards.
With 9.3 million transistors, the K6-2 had a CPU clock rate of 266 to 550 MHz. Of course, these were single-core processors and had front side bus of either 66 or 100 MHz. The K6-2 also featured the MMX and 3DNow! instruction set.
The K6-2+ was added to keep up with Pentium III processors. The processor line only lasted a year and was ultimately replaced with K6 III.
May 24, 1985: Quantum Computer Services was founded (AOL)
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.
2013 – In a $1.1 billion deal, Yahoo acquired the blogging site Tumblr. This caused many concerns for those using the service – especially those who curate blogs with pornographic content. However, Yahoo insisted they will be running Tumblr as a separate company and will not interrupt any account unless it breaks laws (such as child pornography).
Yahoo did de-list a lot of those blogs in their search a couple months later to give others a clean-search experience.
In 2017, Verizon bought Yahoo, and all remaining assets thereof. Tumblr is an “Oath Subsidiary”, meaning it works independent to Verizon. In March, 2019, Tumblr removed any adult content, trying to boost their SEO, and advertising options.
1936 – When typewriters first came out, many different people worked on keyboard layouts to become the standard. QWERTY was a popular system but was not efficient. August Dvorak and William Dealey decided to create and patent an alternative to this style, the end result – the Dvorak keyboard was born.
The keyboard was more efficient, too. Key letters were together so you would “roll” words. T was next to H, N was next to S. The sub-dominant hand would take care of vowels and lesser-used consonants, while the dominant hand took care of most of the consonants. Therefore, a left-hand and right-hand Dvorak keyboard was designed.
More interesting – People would type twice as fast as with a QWERTY style (120 words per minute). However, the people were typing so fast, the hammers on the typewriter would get stuck together. With those two major issues, the Dvorak keyboard did not get accepted.
One can switch to a Dvorak keyboard, though. Simply change the keyboard settings, and don’t look down at your keyboard (because the letters will be all wrong).
2001 – TAT-14, the Transatlantic cable begins commercial service. A dual, bi-directional ring configuration using Dense Wavelength-Division Multiplex (DWDM) – Sixteen wavelengths of STM-64 per fiber pair. It carried 640 Gbps, and connectedGermany, the UK, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands with the US.
Even though there have been a couple failures, TAT-14 is still in service.
1967 – Video game developer Ralph Baer plays the first two-player video game. Fox and Hounds was a game where the fox (a red dot) was chased by the hounds (white dots). The controller were two knobs – horizontal and vertical. You would see how long you could avoid the hounds.
From his own website: 7 May 1967 – Played first two-player video game (I lost!)
This was part of a series of more complex video games including shooting games, handball and Ping Pong. Ultimately leading to the Magnavox Odyssey TV game system in 1972.