geek history

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1993 – After a 10 year run and new focus on Politics – along with a failed promise to catch up to the PC market – John Sculley was removed of his CEO role at Apple by the board of directors. They immediately hire Michael Spindler, who was instrumental in the introduction of the PowerPC. However, he eventually would get ousted and replaced by Gil Amileo, which would get ousted and replaced by Steve Jobs. 2007 – Terry Semel was under pressure  by the board because of dissatisfaction of his compensation. Terry was brought in to create a partnership with Hollywood, which really didn’t happen. He handed the reigns over to Jerry Yang, who started promising revitalized talks with Microsoft. ...

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2008 – Mozilla takes a new marketing step as they announce they want to break the Guinness world records for downloads in a 24 hour period of release. A grand idea, however, it was slightly hampered by the fact that the servers didn’t come up at 10 AM. The bug was fixed and they got the record of 7 million downloads. It was expected to be around 10 million if the bugs did not creep up, for some downloaded 3.0 from other sites. Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 17 Linus Torvolds announces he will leave Transmetta to work for the Open Source Development Labs Flickr co-founders leave the company Compaq announces the Armada line of computers Podcast: Play ...

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1977 – Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates incorporate Software Development Laboratories (SDL). Of course, SDL’s big program was Oracle. It was a codename for a CIA funded project. Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 16 1657 - The first Pendulum Clock 1884 – Coney Island’s first gravity powered Roller Coaster 1988 – Intel releases the i386DX 1999 - Windows 98 SP1 is released 2008 – Google Docs gets PDF Support 2009 -iPhone OS 3.0 Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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1911 – The Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR) is incorporated. It was built between the Computing Scale Company of America, The Tabulating Machine Company and The International Time Recording Company of New York. Later, this company would be renamed to International Business Machines (IBM) Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 15 1752 – Benjamin Franklin flies a Kite 1983 – Microsoft eXtended Basic (MSX) 1982 – Arcades and the First Amendment 2006 – Bill Gates announces he is stepping down from CEO of Microsoft Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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1951 – It was the first commercial general-use computer. The UNIVAC I was unveiled in Washington DC. It was developed for the US census bureau. It stood 8 foot high and used magnetic tape at 10,000 characters a second.UNIVAC is an acronym for the Universal Automatic Computer. The computer itself was delivered to the United States Census Bureau on March 31st, 1951. UNIVAC I was also used to predict the result of the 1952 Presidential election. UNIVAC I cost around 1.2 million to build, which was a lot larger than their estimated price of $159,000. 46 units were built and delivered. 5,200 vacuum tubes were used to run UNIVAC I. It performed 1,905 operations per second. Want more info on UNIVAC? Check ...

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2009 – After much planning and a couple set backs, the Digital TV transition is completed in the US. Stations will Non-profit status or emergency bands could broadcast using analog signal. 2.8 million users were still not ready for the conversion.  Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 11 Swiss Army Knife is patented Mr. Wizzard passes away First 500,000 watt power radio station – W8XAR – begins tests Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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1980 – Otherwise known as “The 24th Man” (to join Microsoft, that is), Steve Ballmer came on as Microsoft’s first Business Manager. He made only $50k and stock options. Of course 30 years later, Steve succeeded Bill Gates as CEO of the Redmond based software company. Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 11 Speak and Spell debuts Compaq purchases DEC for $9 million The first cameraphone photo – Philippe Kahn taking a picture of his newborn daughter Apple releases Safari for Windows 1st generation iPhone gets put on the Obsolete list Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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