John Sculley

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. There are a few that even speculate that was when the buyout of Yahoo began. Jerry Yang stepped down in 200

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 18

• Happy Phi Day! Phi is the Golden Ration - 1.61803398874989484820458683436564
• 1999 – Palm announces the m100
• 2009 - Jammie Thomas-Rasset was found guilty of copyright infringement and ordered to pay 1.92 million to the RIAA.
• Microsoft announced the Surface Tablet

CTR

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

June 13, 1993: Microsoft and Time-Warner Create Interactive TV

1993 - Microsoft teamed up with Tele-communications and Time Warner to start the revolution known as “Interactive TV”. The ability to buy product right through the set during a show. iTV would give users a Digital Set Top Box in which they would use to browse, go back and watch video. It even connected to a telephone to let you know who is calling and possibly get SMS messages.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 11

• 1983 - Pioneer Crossed Neptune
• 1986 - Activision finalizes the merger with Infocom
• 2003 - 2.4.21 of LINUX kernal released
• 2003 - IE for Mac is shut down
• 2005 - Fedora Core 4 is released
• 2006 - Vincent Ferrari tries to cancel his AOL account, but the agent wouldn’t
• 2007 - Jeffrey Goodin is the first to be sentenced because of the CAN-SPAM act. He was posing as an AOL billing agent

June 11, 1980: Steve Ballmer is hired as Microsoft’s first Business Manager

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

• 

  First Cameraphone picture

  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

June 10, 1998: The Ruputer was released

1998 – Seiko introduces the world’s first wearable PC watch called the Ruputer. It was marketed under the OnHand PC name. The Ruputer had a 3.6 MHz processor and 2 MB of non-volitile storage. The 102×64 monochrome LCD could display data or play games. a joystick with six function buttons were on the Ruputer. This watch could download pictures and had three applications that ran on Windows 95. Ruputer cost $285

1977 – Apple Computer Inc. ships the first Apple II personal computers. The computers feature a MOS Technology 6502 processor, 4 kilobytes of RAM, two game paddles, an RF cable for connection to a standard television, and a 5 1/4-inch floppy disk drive.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 10

• Intel releases the 200 MHz pentium processor
• Microsoft announces they will discontinue MS Money
• IBM and Microsoft sign a joint development agreement

June 7: the first Legoland opens in Denmark

1968, 45 years ago, the first Legoland Park opened in Denmark – called Legoland Billund. This park was right across the street from the Lego factory. It featured expansive cityscapes modeled in Lego bricks. 625,000 will visit the park within the first year.

The rich story of LEGO is a Pixar Video I talked about on Dorkazine

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 7

• Commodore Executive 64 is released
• Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson orders the breakup of Microsoft into two companies

Commodore

1984 – Commodore adds to their line of computers. The Plus/4 – originally called the 264 – was released for $300. The Commodore 16 or TED-16 looked like a Commodore 64 with 16KB of RAM. It was called the “Learning Machine” and sold for $100

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for June 3

• Nintendo sues Lewis Galoob over the Game Genie
• AT&T offers Wi-Fi at Starbucks
• Microsoft releases “Nehalem” Core i7

WordPress

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.

Microsoft Released Windows 286 and Windows 386 on May 27, 1988

1988 – In competition to IBM OS/2, Microsoft releases 2 versions of Windows 2.1x – One version for x286 computers (aka Windows 286) and one for x386 computers (aka Windows 386). Windows 2/x386 introduced the protected code Kernal – applications would run as a virtual 8086 mode, and MS-DOS programs could run in parallel. Windows 2/x386 also provided EMS emulation, which would give Windows memory management features. System RAM beyond 640k could be used, and felt like banked memory. Finally, it has a Presentation Manager mode, to compete with OS/2

Windows updated this software to 2.11. It was finally retired when Windows 3.0 was released in 1990.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 27

Windows 386 Promo Video (Full video)

Windows 386 full video. Linda needs to save the client, so she loads Windows 386 with Presentation Manager

This was the promo video for Windows 386. It starred Victoria Carver (as Linda) as an executive who had to save a client. She was given a task to make a presentation by 5 pm. She decided to load and use Windows 386 to build this presentation. Using the “Mission Impossible” theme throughout, Linda is confronted by a fellow employee – Mike the mainframe guy. He wants to help Linda out, but Linda knows that the mainframe subroutines simply take too long to write. He then spots Windows 386.

“You are not suppose to be running OS/2 – we haven’t finished evaluating it” Said Mike, the mainframe guy.

“It’s not OS/2. It’s Microsoft Windows 386. It has the same interface as the OS/2 Presentation Manager. So, when OS/2 is recommended, I’ll be ahead of the learning curve.”

“As usual. What else does it do, besides look like OS/2?”

At this point, Linda shows Mike the interface. Of course, Linda then creates the presentation and keeps the client. The video is written like a cheesy 80′s soap opera, and goes on for twelve minutes.

Other Events in the Day in Technology History

• Wang introduces: Wang Personal computer
• Batman Debuts in Detective comics #27
• Google gives away 4,000 Android phones at Google I/O

Bill Gates

1995 - Bill Gates sends out a memo to his staff saying that Microsoft needs to “Get back on track” to the Internet. The memo was entitled “The Internet Tidal wave.”  Gates emphasizes that this is as important as IBM was to the personal computer.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 25

• AMD released the K6-2 processor
• Samsung announces the 256 SSD
• Psystar files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

May 24, 1985: Quantum Computer Services was founded (AOL)

1993 - Microsoft unveils at COMDEX a new line of Operating System. Dubbed Windows NT (New Technology) this software would be geared toward businesses. With a NT Server and NT Workstation, Windows could deliver a secure environment while also allowing connections using the Windows 3.11 and later Windows 95 Operating systems. NT would become available on July 27, 1993.

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.

Full Day in Tech History podcast show notes for May 24

• MIDAS II
• Sega introduces a rating system for games
• Microsoft launches Windows NT 3.1