07.01
All right. Technology Bytes has been here for sixteen years, and, as the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. So what has Technology Bytes had to contend with over the years? 1995? Is that the year? We’ve got Internet Explorer 1.0, the birth of Ebay and Hotmail, Java and Javascript, Windows 95 and PHP, as well as the introduction of the venerable ATX motherboard form factor from ATX.
Netgear was founded in 1996, known for more than a decade for their blue metal boxes. This is the year that personal computing power hit an all-time high as Intel released their 200MHz P6 chip. Duke Nukem 3D hits the shelves and the domain name myspace.com is registered. HTTP/1.0 becomes a standard and the IMDB makes the hop from Usenet to the web. Google also gets is start in 96, and Creative Labs drops the first dedicated gaming graphics card, the 3D Blaster.
Dr. Thomas Pabst creates the website, (any guesses?) Tom’s Hardware.com and Apple stock hits a ten year low at a valuation of $18.00 a share.
In 97, the Internet2 Consortium is established, AOL gets sued by subscribers with connectivity issues, the Intel Pentium II ups the processor ante, and CD-RW drives and readable/writable media are introduced, heralding the death of the mix tape. Bill Gates becomes the world’s riches businessman and steps in to save Apple with a $150 million dollar bailout investment on August 6.
Internet Explorer 4 and Microsoft Office 97 are released shortly before Windows 98 is announced. This is also the year that WiFi arrives. Slashdot comes online, as does Hotmail. At this point in History, both sites are Linux related… 😉
In 1998, online web journals or Blogs start to hit the web and congress, much to the dismay of technologists everywhere, passes the Digital Millenia Copyright Act. This is the year that Bill Gates is hit in the face with a cream pie and people across the world start to donate their spare processing power to help in the search for extraterrestrial life with Seti@Home. Windows 98 is Released on June 25 in *1998*, and MS IE passes Netscape in Internet Browser Market Share less than 20 days later. Funny how bundling a browser along with an Operating System will put you ahead like that. This is also the year that Microsoft goes to court over anti-trust concerns.
On the Open Source Side, MySQL is released. And on the non-free side, Paypal comes into existance, as does Rockstar Games. Hot Coffee, anyone?
In 1999, RIM realses the Blackberry and a Victoria’s Secret fashion show becomes the first major webcast on the web with over 1.5 million viewers. Wiki’s hit the web this year, and the Relational datbase management program Access becomes MS Access. And gamers rejoice as Nvidia introduces the GPU. Naptster is sued by the RIAA and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is named Time Person of the Year.
In 2000, the world trudged on after the very uneventful Y2K event. Twitter.com comes online this year, and EA releases the SIMS. Win2K hits and ATI introduces the Radeon line of graphics cards. And only two short years after legal proceedings began against Microsoft, Judge Thomas Penfield announces that Microsoft be split into two companies. Of course, this didn’t happen, but it was a nice gesture, all the same.
In 2001, Wikipedia starts ammassing user created content, and we start to lose the first of our living computer history with the passing of William Hewlett at 87 and Claude Elwood Shannon. Shannon is known for his work in the 40s at Bell Labs as he laid the foundation for modern information theory. He was 85. With the old guard gone, the Code Red worm also starts wriggling through the world wide web and Dell continues to thrive, becoming the world’s largest PC maker during a fifteen year low in computer sales. Apple’s OS 10.1 comes out. Does anyone remember the codename? Puma. Serial ATA and USB 2.0 are introduced and Microsoft decides to kill off Clippy shortly before the release of Windows XP. I still pour out a sip for the Clip every time I drink and work with MS Office docs… I hope you do, too. And after producing the last fireball, Qantum sells off its hard drive business to Maxtor. This was also the first year you could stumble upon stumbleupon.com. Oh, and one more thing. The iPod. Yep.
In 2002, Dean Kamen unveils the Segway. Have we ever had any Segway support calls? I guess George Bush wasn’t a fan of the show at the time. PCI Express is approved as a standard and Roxio picks up the Napster name at a bankruptcy auction.
In 2003, The Smaller worm does it’s thing and becomes the fastest spreading work in history after infecting hundreds of thousands of computers in it’s first three hours of life. SCO becomes the target of everyone’s ire as it sues IBM for its alleged contributions to the Linux kernel. Apple opens the iTunes store, and LinkedIn launches. This is the year that Skype goes public, and Apple releases OS X 10.3. Panther.
In 2004, the Official MySpace site launches, though still managing to hold onto a look that predates it’s domain name registration. Mark Zuckerberg launches TheFaceBook, which is later shortened to just FaceBook. And on April 1st, Google announces the creation of GMail, which many percieved as a joke. Sorry, Hotmail. And modern warfare truly enters the information age as the first five human beings are killed by an unmanned ariel vehicle or UAV in South Waziristan on June 18. OK, that’s definitely a bummer, but something insanely great did happen that year, the release of OS X 10.4 (codenamed? Anyone? Tiger!) just ten days later at the World Wide Developers Conference. Ubuntu 1.0 is released, as is the game World of Warcraft. In terms of the balance of good and evil, this one’s a wash. This is also the year that the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 enter our collective consciousness.
In 2005, we all become a little less lost, as Google Maps is introduced. And we’re all given a video voice as YouTube comes online. Does anyone remember the title of the first video uploaded? Me at the zoo. And speaking of 800 pound gorillas, Apple announces that it will leave IBM for Intel as the main supplier of chips for its personal computing line. Microsoft swaps the name Longhorn Windows Vista and IBM halts sales and support of it’s own Operating System OS/2.
In 2005, the XBox 360 hits store shelves, ushering in a new era of Internet connected gaming consoles. And while everyone else is out buying XBox games, Yahoo buys Flickr, News Corporation buys MySpace, eBay buys Skype, Adobe buys Macromedia, Yahoo! buys del.icio.us and Seagate buys Maxtor.
Blu-Ray brings in 2006 as Wikipedia publishes its millionth article. Toshiba releases the first HD DVD player as Apple announces BootCamp. Twitter is officially launched, lengthening its name from Twttr, though still restricting users to 140 characters. Cloud computing comes of age as Amazon Web Services fire up for the first time. Nintendo launches the Wii as Sony releases the Playstation 3. And Time Magazine names *Me* as the Person of The Year. Well, actually, it was you. But me just sounds better.
In 2007, Apple announces that it will drop the “Computer” from it’s name, as it becomes a company that deals with more than just computers. Apple then announces that it intends to stick the letter “i” in front of every common word Steve Jobs could write down in the 24 hours before the release the first iPhone at the Macworld Conference and Expo. Things get twice as nice this year, as Intel drops the Core2 Duo. Of course the cpu-hungry Microsoft Vista and Office 2007 are there to eat up any spare cycles you may have left over from the extra proc. And Google shows us what we look like from a smart car as Google Street View is folded into Google Maps. Google continues to have a big year with the release of Android, and Amazon starts to change the publishing game as it starts to sell the Kindle along side its books in print. Aplpe releases OS X 10.5. Codename? Leopard.
In 2008, the Blu-Ray HD DVD wars come to an end as HD DVD throws in the towel. Hopefully not the towel they got from the industry that helped push Blu-Ray into the winner’s circle…
In 2009, Google produced a shiny new browser, Chrome, and Microsoft hits back with the release of Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft announces the Bing Search Engine and Google announces the morphing of Grand Central into Google Voice. Microsoft inks a ten year deal to replace Yahoo! search with Bing and after 5 years, Gmail finally gets out of Beta. And not to be outdone by anyone, Steve Jobs is named CEO of the Decade by Fortune Magazine. Oh yeah, and Barnes & Nobles release the Nook.
In 2010, Apple produces the iPad and Google gives us Buzz. And in contrast to our military milestone, the first all-robotic surgery is performed in Montreal.
And in 2011, Watson beats the two highest ranked Jeopardy players, thus replacing the holy grail beating human chess players with that of beating game show contestants.
And here we are. Duke Nukem still looks like Duke Nukem, we still live in a world without Clippy, and I still don’t have my flying car. Maybe in another 16 years IBM will produce a computer that’s really good at Monopoly. Or dodgeball.
That’s (about/been) it for the Bed music and that’s that for BarretTime.
Of course, we still need to talk about the Geek Gathering. It creeps me out a little to do BarretTime without the BarretTime Bed Music. I feel like it’s kinda up to me to keep the baseline going…
