The Great Geek Manual

1993
Sixteen years and over five million units after releasing the original Apple II, Apple Computer discontinues the last model in the line, the Apple IIe. The company will continue to offer some Apple II technologies for the Macintosh LC and Macintosh Performa as an expansion card.

1994
Hayes Microcomputer, a major U.S. manufacturer of modems, files for Chapter 11 protection. The company will emerge from Bankruptcy in April of 1996, after resisting acquisition attempts by both Diamond Multimedia and U.S. Robotics.

1995
Christopher Pile, known by the web handle “Black Baron,” becomes the first person to be jailed for distributing a computer virus when he is sentenced to an eighteen months in prison. [2]

1996
At the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington, over five days, three thousand participants rate fifty-seven video games. Their top pick is Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64.

1997
The website of China’s Agricultural University is hacked and deface with a message condemning China’s recent nuclear tests.

1998
Version 2.0.36 of the Linux operating system. Visit the official Linux kernal website.

1999
At the Fall COMDEX trade show, Corel releases version 1.0 of the Corel Linux operating system. Price: Free (website download), US$59.95 (standard edition), US$89.95 (deluxe edition)

Everex announces it has abandoned plans for the Freestyle 540 handheld computer and is discontinuing its monochrome palm-size computer.

The Marshall Islands issues a postage stamp depicting personal computers as part of a series on commemorating events of the twentieth century.

Nobuyuki Idei, president and co-chief executive of Sony Corporation, gives the keynote address at the COMDEX trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Other speakers at the event include George Lucas who discusses new digital camera technologies and Phil Harrison of Sony Computer Entertainment America who discusses the PlayStation 2. In his presentation, Harrison promises that 250 PlayStation 2 titles will be available when the system is launched.

The virtual pets website Neopets is founded by Adam Powell and Donna Williams. On June 20, 2005, Viacom will buy Neopets, Inc. for US$160 million. Visit the website.

The website of the Cartoon Network cable channel is cracked by the Varna Hacking Group.

2000
Apple releases version 1.2.1 of the Darwin operating system.

The Southern Cross Cable goes into operation, connecting Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand, and the west coast of the U.S., a distance of 30,500km. It carries 120 Gbps to Australia and 160 Gbps from Hawaii to California. The last cable segment from Hawaii to California won’t be launched until February 28, 2001. Visit the connection’s official website.

2001
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) introduces the 1.2 MHz Duron processor, featuring a 192KB on-chip cache and a 200MHz front-side bus. Price: US$103 in 1,000-unit quantities

Dutch SURFnet and the Internet2 Abilene Network connect via gigabit ethernet.

Microsoft releases the Xbox video game console featuring a 733MHz Intel processor, an 8GB hard drive, 250MHz NVidia XGP graphics processor, 64MB RAM, four controller ports, one controller, 3D audio support, and an Ethernet port. Games for the system come on dual-layer DVD-ROM discs that can store 9GB of data. The system can play DVD movies, but requires an optional remote control device to do so. To kick off the release, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates signs the first Xbox to be sold at 12:01am in New York’s Time Square, to Edward Glucksman. The system will be launched in Japan on February 22, 2000 and in Europe on March 14, 2002. Price: US$299

Microsoft Game Studios releases the first-person shooter Halo: Combat Evolved for the Xbox in North America. The game will prove to be the Xbox gaming console’s killer application. Visit the game’s official website. ESRB: M (Mature)

2003
Google begins to introduce semantic elements into its search engine results. The changes mark a significant improvement in search relevancy. Visit the official Google Corporate website.

2004
The European Space Agency (ESA) ion propulsion spacecraft SMART-1 enters into a lunar orbit, fourteen months after its launch.

A server at the University of Georgia is hacked, exposing thirty-two thousand students’ credit card numbers.

2005
Google announces the launch of Google Base, an online database service that allows users to upload “all types of online and offline information and images,” including information describing online or offline content, products, or services, that will be searchable on Google Base and, depending on their relevance, on Google Search, Froogle and Google Local. Google began publicly testing the service October 26th. Visit the official Google Base website.

Sony BMG issues a recall of all unsold compact discs equipped with its controversial copyright protection software, Extended Copy Protection (XCP). The software has been widely criticized in the media for its use of a rootkit to incorporate itself into computer system in such a way as to make it undetectable and extremely difficult to uninstall. In addition, the company announces that anyone who purchased one of the CDs can exchange it. The recall comes on the same day that independent security researcher Dan Kaminsky announces that Sony’s rootkit may already have infected as many as half a million computers around the globe.

2006
Scientists publish the results from the first successful partial reconstruction of nuclear DNA from a Neanderthal fossil bone in the journals Nature and Science. The fossil is estimated to be about 38,000 years old.

2007
Netscape Communications releases the Netscape Messenger 9.0a1 standalone e-mail and news client. Visit the application’s official website.

2009
Egypt’s information technology minister Tarek Kamel announces that Egypt is applying for the first non-Latin character Internet domain. The domain, pronounced “.masr,” is Arabic for “.Egypt.” The announcement is made at the Internet Governance Forum, a conference held to discuss improving internet access in emerging nations. The domain is made possible by a decision on the part of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to develop a mechanism for domain names in languages such as Chinese, Korean, Arabic and others that do not use the Latin alphabet. At the conference, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang announced that Yahoo will offer its mail and messenger services in Arabic in the next year. Yang reports that, while there are over more than a million Arabic speakers in the world, fewer than one percent of the content online is availbale in Arabic.

Google adds the state of Hawaii to Google Street View. Visit the official Google Maps website.

2010
Facebook announced on Monday that it would launch a new messaging platform under which users will be provided with an email address using “@facebook.com.” The new system combines multiple forms of communication including SMS, IMs, email, and chat messages from Facebook and other platforms and delivers them in real-time to the device of the user’s choosing. In the course of announcing the new service, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called email “slow,” saying “we don’t think modern messaging system will be email.” He also predicts that “next generation” messaging will be seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal, and short. [1]

Pages: 1 2