2008 – Some watched in horror. Others watched thinking it was a joke. Still, Abraham Biggs was a troubled teen. He decided to end it all and do it in front of a live audience. He got on Justin.tv and told people he was taking sleeping pills. After a little while, he went to lie […]

2013 – AOL shocked a lot of geeks when they announced WinAmp.com would be shutting down and the software would be no longer available come December 20th.  The next day rumors surfaced that Microsoft was planning to buy it – which didn’t go further than the inital report. The service did not shut down though. […]

1993 – The Ionizer – Otherwise known as Michael Elanky, recieved 28 months in prison for posting bomb-making instructions on his BBS. There have been other instances of this throughout history, but Elansky was a member of the International Information Retrieval Guild, a computer group very much concerned with freedom of speech and freedom of […]

1894 – The first Sunday Comics section is printed by the New York World. 1985 – 91 years later, Bill Watterson syndicates a comic about a boy and his stuffed Tiger. Calvin and Hobbes will bring laughter to millions for the next ten years. It reached through 2,400 newspapers (at it’s height) and spun off […]

2008 – After battle upon battle between Microsoft, Google and shareholders (including Carl Icahn), Jerry Yang finally announced to all he was stepping down as CEO of Yahoo! The previous days, Steve Ballmer said they are not going forward with any future purchase of Yahoo! Because of this, stock hit it’s lowest share price, $8. […]

1977 – Most of the time, we skip over movie releases, unless it has had a definite impact on the Tech and geek community. That is the case with this movie. Close Encounters of the Third Kind – Directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Richard Dreyfuss, and Teri Garr was released to 272 US theaters. […]

1971 – Intel announced the 4004 microprocessor in an ad in Electronic News Magazine. Intel called it a micro-programmable computer on a chip, this was the first single-chip processor. It was also concidered to be the precursor to the x86 processor. The 4004 was followed with the 8008, 8080 and 8085 processors. Federico Faggin was the […]

During the 80’s and 90’s, there was a little show called COMDEX. It stood for Computer Dealer Exhibition. For a while, there were 2 versions: The Spring COMDEX (Alternating for a while between Altanta and Chicago) and the Fall COMDEX (Las Vegas). The show was attended by many and there were vendors galore. I remember […]

2006 – In February 14, 2005, 3 former Paypal employees started a website that let you upload and share your video. YouTube brought a new idea of putting your creations on the internet. However, their creation got very popular. It cost a lot of money to run and the company couldn’t keep up with costs. Enter: […]

2002 – Gary McKinnon has been in the news ever since his arrest. Back in 2002, he hacked into networks run by NASA, the Pentagon, along with other military bases around the US. He claims he was on a hunt to find evidence that the US has been covering up alien contact.What makes this a […]

2005 – In an effort to curb piracy, record companies began putting copy protection on the CD’s themselves.  The electronic marking would cause CD’s to error out if they tried to copy. Unfortunately this idea was riddled with problems. Some players couldn’t read the disks, other people would find ways around the copy protection, such […]

1983 – Windows 1.o was announced at the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York City. It was one of the most elaborate product introductions to date. Gates says Windows 1.0 will officially release in 1984, yet it didn’t release until June, 1985. 1986 – Back in that day, Comdex was the big computer show. There […]

2004 – Mozilla launches the web browser that would finally give Internet Explorer a run for it’s money. Firefox 1.0 web browser was created by Mozilla, who broke free from the Netscape Navigator browser to develop in Open Source. The Gecko layout engine browser would be available for Windows, Mac and Linux – with it […]

1993 – Microsoft releases the OS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 – which is the last big release before Windows 95. It was built to connect better with Windows NT for businesses. It also had updates to improve stability and system performance. Bubbleboy worm DirectX 9 is released Eric Schmidt bows out of Barak Obama’s search […]

2000 – It was a time that would be known as when the Bubble burst. The event technically happened on March 10, 2000. Since that time,  dot com-ers began losing their sites and livelihood. Although Pets.com had a pretty good run and marketing strategy, they didn’t have the momentum to keep investors on board. The […]

1995 – 3DFX releases the much anticipated Voodoo 3D acceleerator. QuakeGL becomes the first game using the Voodoo 3D. Hi-resolution rendering was it’s advantage. 3Dfx would continue to make the VooDoo until NVidia acquires the rights. 3Dfx would ultimately file for bankruptcy in 2002. Lizzybee.com becomes the 3 millionth domain name The first Walkman Phone […]

1999 – It was over 12 years that we saw Microsoft go through the Department of Justice over Monopoly issues. US district Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued a 207 page Findings of fact on this day. In it, he ruled that Microsoft did have a Monopoly power over the OS in the Intel market. During […]

1984 – Michael Dell launches his new business of IBM compatible PC’s from his dorm in Austin, TX. The idea was to sell a philosophy over a product. The philosophy was to sell direct to customize to the shopper. Of course, Dell’s award winning service throughout the years has shown this to be a good […]

1999 – Real Networks admits to collecting data without telling users with their software program RealJukebox player. When the issue was brought up by a competitor, Real apologized and issued a patch to change the collection process. For any software to collect data, they must inform you and give you an option to opt out. […]

1931 – E.I. DuPont announces to the world they have come up with a new substance that is a Synthetic rubber called DuPrene. Made from Acetylene, salt and rubber, this combination would eventually be renamed NeoPrine in 1937. The announcement was made at the American Chemical Society in Akron, Ohio. 2001 – Microsoft and the […]

Intel announced in 1995 the next generation processor – the Pentium Pro. Unlike the Pentium, the Pentium Pro was a chip designed for 32-bit architecture, so Windows 95 and Windows NT could run true.  The processor ran between 150-200 MHz, with a bus speed of 60 MHz (for 150 or 180 MHz processor) or 66MHz (for […]

The paper was called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” by Satoshi Nakamoto. It was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This was a roadmap to the creation of the crypto-currency, which officially launched on January 3, 2009. The Abstract: A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly […]

1938 – Orson Welles shocks the nation with radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” by H. G. Wells. A large number of listeners who tune into the program ten minutes late (because the singer on the Edgar Bergan show was not that great). Because of this, they didn’t know this was a fictional […]

2013: If you grew up in the 80’s, you knew what an IBM PC was. Even in the 90’s and 00’s, the PC was what you had in the corner of the house to do homework on, surf the internet, work out expenses and more. William C. Lowe was the man that brought that all […]

1955 – William Gates Sr. and Mary Maxwell Gates has a son. William Gates III was born in Seattle, WA. Bill Gates, of course, went on to start Microsoft. Bill was CEO of Microsoft until he retired in 2008. In 2000, he started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Interestingly enough, 30 years later in […]