The Great Geek Manual

1990
President George Bush presents Jack St. Clair Kilby and nine others the National Medal of Technology for the “well-being of the nation through the development or application of technology.” Kilby was recognized, “For his invention and contributions to the commercialization of the integrated circuit and the silicon thermal print-head; for his contributions to the development of the first computer using integrated circuits; and for the invention of the hand-held calculator, and gate array.” Visit the National Medal of Technology website.

The world’s first webpage is created and published online by Tim Berners-Lee. The page contains Berners-Lee’s notes, specifications for HTML, HTTP, and URI, along with other information related to his World Wide Web project. Visit Tim Berners-Lee’s official website.

1992
Sony Pictures Entertainment releases the horror film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves, Winona Ryder, Sadie Frost, Richard E Grant, and Anthony Hopkins, to 2,491 U.S. theaters. Produced on a budget of US$40 million, it will gross US$30,521,679 domestically in its opening weekend. IMDB listing (MPAA Rating: R) Running Time: 2 hrs 7 mins

1995
The Comdex Fall ’95 trade show is held, over five days in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event features 1,950 exhibitors, with 207,000 visitors in attendance.

1996
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) begins limited shipments of its K6 processor with MMX instructions, at speeds of 166 to 200MHz.

The website of Länsstyrelserna is hacked anonymously. View an archived version of the defaced website.

The website of Telia is hacked by the “Swedish Internet Terrorism Enterprise (S.I.T.E)”. View an archived version of the defaced website.

1998
The discovery of the one thousandth pulsar in our galaxy is announced by the Jodrell Bank Observatory at the University of Manchester. The pulsar was discovered using the sixty-four meter Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

The theatrical trailer for Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace premieres with the film Meet Joe Black, starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, and Claire Forlani. Many hardcore Star Wars fans pay full admission to see Meet Joe Black only to leave after the trailer runs. Several months later, another trailer for the film appear before the science fiction flop Wing Commander. The second appearance of the trailer will cause a great deal more media hype because it will be screened at the ShoWest Convention in Las Vegas and will be aired on the television news programs Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight.

2000
Intel releases the 733 and 766MHz Celeron processors. Price: US$112 and US$170 in 1,000-unit quantities

Yahoo! launches the Yahoo! Movies short film directory. Visit the website.

2001
Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Sponsor Matches.

2002
The Star Trek: Enterprise episode “The Communicator” first airs. (No. 208) In it, after a short trip by Archer and Malcolm on a planet, Reed discovers he lost his communicator on the pre-warp planet and is captured while trying to retrieve it. Memory Alpha entry

2003
Genomics pioneer Craig Venter announces that his research group has successfully created an artificial virus by creating a synthetic genome and implanting it into a cell. The project is funded by the Department of Energy, which hopes to create microbes that could convert carbon dioxide to hydrogen.

2004
The first public version of the IceBB open source bulletin board system (BBS), Alpha 1, is released. Visit the software’s official website.

2006
Google completes the acquisition of Youtube for US$1.65 billion in stock, roughly one year after the site’s official launch. Though the company will reportedly run YouTube at a loss for the first year, in June 2008, Forbes magazine will project the service’s revenue at US$200 million. Visit the official YouTube website.

Sun Microsystems announces that it will begin licensing its Java programming language under the GNU General Public License along with HotSpot and the Java Compiler. Visit the official Java website.

Version 2.0 of the Linux Mint operating system is released. Linux Mint is based on the popular Ubuntu distribution with integrated media codecs. Visit the system’s official website. Code-name: Barbara

2007
Microsoft releases the Zune 80 portable media player.

The New York Times shifts from online pay content to ad-supported content.

2008
Blizzard Entertainment releases Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to its popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft. The expansion adds the continent of Northrend and a new hero character class. It will sell 2.8 million units within twenty-four hours, making it the fastest selling game in history, breaking the 2.4 million units record held by the first World of Warcraft expansion, The Burning Crusade. Visit the Official Wrath of the Lich King website. ESRB: T (Teen)

In the journal Science, a team of astronomers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory publish the first photographs of a planet outside the solar system (exoplanet) to be captured in the visual spectrum using direct imaging. The photos, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, are of Fomalhaut b, a planet with roughly three times Jupiter’s mass in orbit around the star Fomalhaut in the constellation Piscis Australis. In a second study published in the same issue, a team lead by Christian Marois of the National Research Council of Canada’s Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics announces having successfully photographed exoplanets in infrared with the Gemini and Keck telescopes in Hawaii, employing adaptive optics. These photographs reveal three planets around star HR 8799 in the Pegasus constellation. Prior to the discoveries, 322 extrasolar planets had been discovered using shifts in gravity. Read more at CNN.com.

2009
NASA announces that it has discovered a “significant amount” of frozen water found on the Moon. The agency hails the discover as a significant step towards one day establishing a permanent lunar base. Read more at the Bangkok Post.

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