This Day in Geek History: October 28
1998
Microsoft announces that it has signed a US$90 million Internet advertising agreement with First USA Inc., a unit of the Bank One Corporation. Microsoft describes the arrangement as the “biggest cyberspace advertising agreement ever signed.”
SNK releases the NeoGeo Pocket handheld video game system in Japan. The system features a 6 bit TOSHIBA TLCS-900H high performance core CPU. Price: US$68
A statement by an American Online, Inc. (AOL) official is offered as testimony in a suit against Microsoft stating that AOL would be inclined to offer Netscape as their default browser but that they fear retaliation from Microsoft if the switch support away from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
United States President William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton signs the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. The bill criminalizes reverse-engineering any product with the intention of circumventing Copyright protection.
United States Vice President, Al Gore, unveils Pacific Blue, a computer that is capable of making 3.9 trillion calculations per second, the fastest to date. The computer is to be used by the Department of Energy at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. It is developed by International Business Machines (IBM) under a US$96 million research contract. The system consists of 5,800 processors, 25 trillion transistors, and more than five miles of cables and wires.
2002
Palm introduces the Palm Tungsten T handheld computer, featuring a 175MHz Texas Instruments OMAP1510 chip (ARM 925 processor), 16MB RAM, a voice recorder, Bluetooth wireless support, a 320×320 pixel 65,536 color TFT display, a Secure Digital slot, and Palm OS 5.0. Price: US$499
Palm introduces the Palm Tungsten W handheld computer, featuring a 33MHz Dragonball VZ processor, a built-in keyboard, the General Packet Radio Service network, the Palm OS 4.1.1, and a 320×320 screen. Price: US$549
2003
Palm shareholders vote to merge with Handspring, to form a new company called palmOne Worldwide, and to spin off PalmSource as a separate company.
2004
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) releases its new Personal Internet Communicator (PIC) for consumers in developing countries. The device features an 366MHz AMD Geode x86 processor, 128MB DDR memory, a 10GB 3.5-inch hard drive, four USB 1.1 ports, 56kbit/s v.92 Fax/Modem, Microsoft Windows CE, Internet Explorer 6.0, a keyboard, and mouse. Price: US$185 or US$249 with monitor
Yahoo! launches a version of its search engine for mobile users, mobile.yahoo.com. Visit the official Yahoo! Mobile website.
2005
Sun Microsystems releases OpenSolaris Desktop 01 for Linux and Solaris. The system is based on GNOME 2.10. Visit the official OpenSolaris website.
2008
At its Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft releases a pre-beta release of Windows 7 to developers. The company also announces plans to release a full Windows 7 beta in early 2009.
Google announces that it has settled its legal dispute with the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild regarding the use of copyrighted book material in Google’s Book Search for US$125 million. As part of the settlement, the company will pay all related legal fees, launch the Books Rights, Registry, and begin sharing the service’s profits with authors. Announcing the settlement, Google states that it has made seve million books searchable through Google Book Search, including one million books with a “full preview” available through agreements with publishers. Visit the official Google Books website.
JVC, the company that created the VHS videocassette format, produces its last standalone VHS VCR, however, the company will continue to manufacture combination DVD-VCR units.
2009
NASA launches the Ares I-X prototype moon rocket from Cape Canaveral on a suborbital test flight. The prototype was built at a cost of US$445 million.
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