May 21, 2003: Caldera International becomes the SCO Group

2003- Caldera International finished the acquisition of the Server Software and Services divisions of Santa Cruz Operation. They turned around and officially renamed to the SCO group. The focus was more to the UNIX platform. The SCO group was in a major lawsuit with Novell until Masrch 2010 when the courts ruled that Novell had the proper rights to the SCO properties in the Linux OS.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 21

• The IBM 701 is announced
• Atari stock splits 2-for-1
• Apple releases Mac OS X Server

Craigslist

2009 - Craigslist was under fire for their erotic services. Reports of prostitution and other illegal activities were being conducted in the category. Craigslist revamped their site to remove the erotic services and add an “Adult” section – with more moderation. However, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster was given an injunction for threatening executives of Craigslist with criminal prosecution for aiding prostitution in the state.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 20

• AppleLink is created
• Microsoft and Intuit discontinue their merger due to Antitrust issues
• Intel makes the Pentium processor available

May 17, 1991: Tim Berners-Lee sets up HTML

1991- Tim Berners-Lee sets up HyperText Markup language (HTML) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) at CERN. He put the protocol on a NeXTStep machine. The server was then launched onto the word wide web, effectively making this the first day you could get a website that could support more than text.

That is when CERN and Berners-Lee release the World Wide Web standard. However, there was a long way to go. It wasn’t until August 6th, that Berners-Lee put up the first webpage.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 17

• Ars Technica sold to Conde Nast
• Lawrence Welk passes away
• Intel Introduced the Pentium III 55o

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.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 14

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

May 13, 1987: Turbo-C Programming Language Released

1987 – Version 1.0 of the Turbo C programming language is released. It offers the first integrated edit-compile-run development environment for the C programming language for IBM-compatible personal computers. Turbo C was developed by Bob Jervis as “Wizard C”. It runs on just 384KB of memory and is capable of inline assembly with full access to C symbolic names and structures.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 12

• Digital Equipment, Intel, and Xerox jointly announce the Ethernet network specification.
• HP Acquires EDS
• Iranian police close down more than four hundred Internet Cafes

May 12, 1996: Prodigy is taken over by Prodigy Management

1996 – IBM and Sears and Roebuck lose Prodigy due to takeover. They sell their interests to a group of investors – led by Prodigy Management: founders of Boston Technology and International Wireless.  Ed Bennett, CEO of Prodigy takes the lead in this acquisition. Carlos Slim Helu – Owner of Telmex – then provided Internet access for Mexico and Latin America.Ultimately, Prodigy went public in 1999 and stayed that way until bought out by SBC (AT&T).

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 12

• MITS receives a retraining order for Microsoft on the 8080 BASIC
• XBOX360 is unveiled
• France passes the Three Strikes rule

Google Chromebook

2011 – Eric Schmidt shows off the new Google Chrome OS but with an added feature as he introduced Google Chromebook – a personal computer with the Google Chrome OS built-in. The device loads straight to the browser where you can install applications for functionality on your Chromebook. The first Chromebook would begin selling on June 15, 2011.

1979 – Daniel Bricklin and Robert Frankston demonstrate the spreadsheet program “Visicalc”. Of course, it will become the “killer app” for PC’s. 100 cells could be calculated in 20 seconds. By the first year, sales will hit on hundred thousand and seven hundred thousand in six years. VisiCalc will fall to clones and ultimately to products like Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 11

Other Events in the Day in Technology History

• Sega begins shipping the Saturn system
• AOL launches free webmail
• Verizon sells part of Alltel to AT&T

May 10, 2001: TAT-14 Begins Service

2011 – Microsoft goes underneath Google and Facebook and puts in a $8.56 billion dollar deal for Skype. It was Microsoft’s biggest purchase to date and competed with their own Windows Live Messenger – which in 2013 they retired in the US.

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.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 10

• BFS preview is released
• Atari and MCA sign a joint venture

May 3, 1978: The first SPAM email

1978 - DEC Marketing manager Gary Thuerk is known as the first e-mail spammer and he didn’t even do it himself. Carl Gartley sent out the first spam mail message on the ARPAnet. Standard practice was to send an email, but Thuerk wanted to do something faster and easier. So he sent the one message and everyone saw it. Of course, the recipients were not happy.  The full message can be found at Templetons.com; but went like this:

DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T. THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEM AND THE DECSYSTEM-10
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE. BOTH THE DECSYSTEM-2060T AND 2020T OFFER FULL ARPANET SUPPORT UNDER THE TOPS-20 OPERATING SYSTEM. THE DECSYSTEM-2060 IS AN UPWARD EXTENSION OF THE CURRENT DECSYSTEM 2040 AND 2050 FAMILY. THE DECSYSTEM-2020 IS A NEW LOW END MEMBER OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AND FULLY SOFTWARE COMPATIBLE WITH ALL OF THE OTHER DECSYSTEM-20 MODELS.

WE INVITE YOU TO COME SEE THE 2020 AND HEAR ABOUT THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY AT THE TWO PRODUCT PRESENTATIONS WE WILL BE GIVING IN CALIFORNIA THIS MONTH.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 3
[dithsponsorq12]

• Dell Computer is founded
• Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich produce a list of 335,000 Internet users who shared the band’s songs on Napster.
• Happy birthday to GeoCaching

May 1, 2011: Twitter reports Bin Laden death hours before President Obama

2011 – The first tweets on the raid came from Sohaib Athar, a.k.a. @ReallyVirtual. At the time he didn’t know what he was tweeting about, just there was a helicopter hovering over Abbottabad at 1AM. Shortly after, Twitter went a buzz because inside that bunker was Osama Bin Laden. However, it was determined the first tweet actually came from  @keithurbahn (aka Keith Urbahn, Chief of Staff for Donald Rumsfeld).

So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.

— Keith Urbahn (@keithurbahn) May 2, 2011

This caused Twitter to explode and soon after, 14.8 million tweets were posted even before President Obama could take the podium to address the nation.

1964- John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz run the first BASIC program at 4 AM in Darthmouth. The duo used a General Electric 225 mainframe computer and ran a simple compiler program.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 1

• AMD is founded
• Tamagotchi is released in the US
• Lenovo takes over IBM desktop and notebook divisions for $655 million in cash and $600 million in stock.