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
2000 – Apple concluded their iMac trade dress infringement against Daewoo and eMachines. The two companies made machines too similar to the iconic iMac look – the eMachines eOne computer and the Daewoo E-Power.
Apple was granted an injunction for the two machines. Daewoo didn’t even get their unibody computer form out to the public. eMachines took out all color, making it a single grey computer, which allowed them to continue with sales.
Apple changed the look of the iMac with the introduction of a flat panel in the iMac G4, ultimately discontinuing the G3 CRT computer in March of 2003.
2001– Jan de Wit – a.k.a. “OnTheFly” sends out an email stating that it is a picture of the famous tennis player. Of course it turned out to be a a Worm that takes down tens of thousands of computers. Most companies will shut off their email to the world just to prevent from getting it. De Wit would then be arrested two days later and sentenced to 150 hours community service.
February 11 – AT&T asks for an injunction against Samsung
2012 – Apple began the lawsuits in the US of Samsung made Galaxy Nexus citing patent violations back in April 15, 2011. This would span across the Nexus S, Epic 4G, Galaxy S 4G and Galaxy Tab. A lawsuit that has gone back and forth between the two companies. The patents in question were for data tapping, a Siri search method, a slide-to-unlock patent and a word completion patent. On this day, Apple officially asks for a preliminary injunction for Samsung sales in the US .
1966 – The Johnniac Open Shop System (JOSS) was taken down by the RAND Corporation. JOSS was set up to relive bottlenecks in programming batches, but more and newer work pretty much took the JOSS to the limit and ultimately became a bottleneck. Therefore, JOSS was taken offline indefinitely.JOSS began operation in 1953.
1977 – The “My First Computer” was an add-on to the Atari 2600. This device would turn the game console into a full computer. For $90 you could get 8K of RAM (expandable to 32K), 16K ROM and 8K BASIC.
The My First Computer was to tap into the Video Console System (VCS) in which over 10 million have been sold. The keyboard would attach to the top of the console – using the cartridge slot. The rubber chicklet keypad would allow you to type using the QWERTY style.
1996 – It was the single largest online event at the time. 24 Hours in cyberspace was coordinated by Rick Smolan to capture photos representing a day in the life of the internet user. Photos would be handed in from around the world and put out on Cyber24 dot com. The website is no longer in service and there is no good Internet Archive to the site.
1948 – At IBM world headquarters, IBM dedicated the Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator (SSEC). The machine – otherwise known as Poppa – was the first computer to combine electronic computation with stored instruction. The 13,500 vacuum tube computer contained 21,000 relays.
The 1,800 square foot computer room had a large glass window so the public could see the building of Poppa. IBM created a raised floor for this computer so cables could run underneath and would not be tripped on. This was all in promotion to compete with the ENIAC computer.
The first calculations were of the positions of the Moon and planets. This would eventually be used by NASA to plot the course of the 1969 Apollo flight.
2012 – Yahoo! had some turbulent times from 2007 when founder Jerry Yang was CEO. Of course the big debacle being the Microsoft bid, which took over 9 months to settle with Carl Icahn being a major instigator.
Add to that the 2007 incident of the arrest of Shi Tao and Yahoo’s stance. Tao was arrested for divulging trade secrets and Yang put out a statement saying “We have to comply with Chinese Law”.
During this whole time, Yahoo shares were declining. Yang was replaced in 2009 by Carol Bartz, but remained on the board until 2012 when Yang fully resigned from all positions in the company.