July 29

Podcast Episode

Day in Tech History: July 29th

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1982

In Tokyo, Japan, Fujitsu announces the development of 100-nanosecond 64kbit DRAM chips that are fifteen percent smaller than current 64kbit chips.

1985

Bill Gates of Microsoft sends John Scully of Apple a memo suggesting the licensing of the Mac OS and prospective companies who might create Mac clones.

1993

A federal court jury in San Francisco decides Atari Games infringed a Nintendo patent for the security system in the Nintendo Entertainment System. Atari Games immediately announces that it will appeal the decision.

1996

Microsoft releases Windows NT 4.0 to manufacturing.

Prodigy Services Company is renamed after being formally taken over by the investor group led by Greg Carr. Paul DeLacey is named Chief Executive Officer of Prodigy, Inc. Former Prodigy president, Ed Bennett, becomes the chairman of the new firm, known as Prodigy Ventures, Inc.

1997

Yahoo!announces its first stock split, a 3-for-2 common stock split.

1998

Two Cloverdale, California boys, both sixteen, plead guilty to charges that they hacked into government and military computers to extract unauthorized passwords and other information. Bill Zane, owner of Netdex, the Santa Rosa Internet Service that the boys used to launch their attacks, expressed the opinion that the punishment to ban unsupervised access to the Internet until the age 21 is not strong enough.

A United States Federal Judge orders Microsoft to hand over the source code for Windows ‘95 and other operating systems related to a pending lawsuit filed by Caldera, a small software company based in Utah.

1999

Ideallab! announces plans to ship an additional twenty thousand free personal computers to qualified applicants. Founder Bill Gross, attributes the overwhelming response from previous recipients and the initial feedback from advertisers for the decision to expand their base. Recipients also agree to use FreePCNet for Internet access which forces them to be exposed to offers and advertising.

2002

Version 3.05 of the O’Caml programming language is released.

2003

Version 2.3 of the Python programming language is released.

Version 2.00 of the Apple Public Source License is released. The Apple Public Source License is the open source and free software license under which Apple’s Darwin operating system was released. Read the text of the license.

2005

Webcomics Nation, a webcomic hosting and automation service for online cartoonists, is launched. The site is an ad-supported site offering cartoonists unlimited web space for US$7 a month. Visit the official Webcomics Nation website.

2008

Sirius and XM close their merger and become one company.

‘Scrabulous' disappears from Facebook after Hasbro suit. In the same day, the newly created Scrabble Facebook App takes a crash.

Microsoft launches the “Mojave” experiment – a series of commercials that try to promote Microsoft Vista.

T-Boone Pickens chooses to relinquish all his Yahoo stock

A 5.4 magnitude earthquake strikes California. The phones go down, but Twitter doesn’t. Might be another reason why they got nominated for a Nobel peace prize.

Amazon launches Checkout and Amazon Simple Pay to compete with Google Checkout and eBay's PayPal. 

2009

AOL appoints Stephane Panier to President of Bebo

Clothing store “The Gap” moved from Windows and Linux systems to Red Hat

Yahoo sells it’s search assets to Microsoft for 10 years. Microsoft will power the search engine, while Yahoo! will become the worldwide sales force for premium search advertisers.

2011

Google acquires over 1,000 IBM patents