Tech History

• Today in Tech History: January 20

  Today in Tech History: Apple's infamous Lemmings commercial airs during Super Bowl XIX on January 20, 1985. The Lemmings ad was for Apple's Macintosh Office. As you can see above, it featured a line of blindfolded business men and women whistling "Heigh-Ho" from Snow White and walking off a cliff to their doom until finally the last guy left takes off his blindfold. Then you hear a voice tell you that you can look into Macintosh Office or go on with business as usual. The ad was called the 'Lemmings' ad because of an urban legend that lemmings commit mass suicide. Unfortunately, the ad was widely considered insulting to customers and was even referred to as "the Super Bowl ad that almost killed Apple" by Forbes. The ad followed Apple's well liked 1984 Super Bowl XVIII commercial, which introduced the Apple Macintosh the year before. Following the failure of Lemmings, Apple did not air another Super Bowl commercial again until 1999. On a side note, the winner of Super Bowl XIX just happens to be our local (and awesome) San Francisco 49ers! Unfortunately, they just narrowly missed a chance to go to this season's Super Bowl. Maybe next year...go Niners! Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted January 20, 2014 by Robyn Norgan      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 19

  Today in Tech History: Brain, the first computer virus to attack MS-DOS, is released on January 19, 1986. Brain, is considered to be the first computer virus to attack PC computers by affecting its Microsoft Disk Operating Systems (MS-DOS). Brain replaced the boot sector of a floppy disk with a copy of the virus. The virus would change the disk label to ©Brain and the following text can be seen with a binary editor in infected computers: "Welcome to the Dungeon © 1986 Basit & Amjad (pvt) Ltd. BRAIN COMPUTER SERVICES 730 NIZAB BLOCK ALLAMA IQBAL TOWN LAHORE-PAKISTAN PHONE :430791,443248,280530. Beware of this VIRUS.... Contact us for vaccination............ $#@%$@!!" Brain was written by two brothers, Basit Farooq Alvi and Amjad Farooq Alvi, from Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. The brothers told TIME magazine they had written it to protect their medical software from piracy and that it was supposed to target only copyright infringers who tried to illegally copy their medical software. Someone else came along and copied that virus and it spread faster than a runaway train. Learn the simple steps and precautions you can take to protect yourself from cyber viruses by visiting our previous blog: Common Viruses and How You Can Avoid Them. Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted: January 19, 2014 by Justin Narayan      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 18

  Today in Tech History: The Internet fights back against Congress's anti-piracy bills, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), in a coordinated protest on January 18, 2012. SOPA was introduced as a way to combat copyright infringement and online trafficking of counterfeit goods. Basically, the law would allow copyright holders to use the court system to try and stop copyright infringement on websites. Unfortunately, what the law actually did was open up the door for community sites like YouTube to be completely shut down just because of one complaint about one user. PIPA was similar and attempted to give the US government and copyright holders more tools to combat copyright infringement, especially on website outside the US. Both bills were at least partially aimed at pirated music and movies. On January 18, 2012 websites including Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, Imgur, Mozilla, WordPress, and many more participated in a coordinated protest against SOPA and PIPA. Some websites, including the English language version of Wikipedia seen above, were completely blacked out with only information about SOPA and PIPA accessible. Others, like Google seen below, were still usable, but featured links to petitions against SOPA and PIPA. As you can see Google censored their page and the only thing really visible is the link to their petition, which 4.5 million people ended up signing that day. In case you were wondering, Dynadot was, is, and always has been against SOPA and PIPA. We participated in this protest by posting a link to Google's petition. Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted January 18, 2014 by Robyn Norgan      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 17

  Today in Tech History: On January 17, 1996, Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy announce to the American Astronomical Society that they had discovered two new planets using an unconventional computer technique to analyze the movement of stars. Butler and Marcy let computers analyze spectrographic images of stars for eight years, looking for shifts in the light that would imply the stars are being pulled by the gravity of a planet. Then, on January 17, 1996, Paul Butler and Geoffrey Marcy announced to the American Astronomical Society that they had discovered two new planets using their unconventional computer technique to analyze the movement of stars.The newly discovered Jupiter-sized planets lie within about 35 light years of Earth and are said to support temperatures that could harbor water in liquid form. The two met at San Francisco State University in the mid-1980s, where Marcy was teaching and Butler was finishing a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s in astrophysics. Together they are famous for discovering more extrasolar planets than anyone else. Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted Friday, January 17, 2014 by Kathleen Borg      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 16

  Today in Tech History: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meets for the first time on January 16, 1986. The IETF's mission is "to make the Internet work better by producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design, use, and manage the Internet." IETF is part of the Internet Society (ISOC), a non-profit organization that is "dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world." It is overseen by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), which oversees a number of tasks forces, the most important of which are the IETF and the IRTF or Internet Research Task Force. Basically, the IETF is associated with a bunch of groups with awesome acronyms including ETSI, IEEE, IESG, W3C, RFC, IANA, ICANN, and probably many, many more. Check out internetsociety.org for more info on what each of these acronyms actually mean. The Internet Engineering Task Force consists of a large international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers. The actual technical work of the IETF is done by working groups that are grouped by area and lead by an area director (AD - man, this task force loves acronyms!). Anyone can join the IETF, so if you're interested (and you too love acronyms) you can JTFT (join the force today - okay, so this isn't a real one, but you have to admit the IETF should totally start using it!). Check out the video below for more info about the Internet Engineering Task Force: I don't know why, but the IETF makes me think of the Elite Liberating Flight Squad (ELFS) from the movie The Santa Clause... Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted January 16, 2014 by Robyn Norgan      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 15

  Today in Tech History: Wikipedia, everyone's favorite free encyclopedia, goes online on January 15, 2001. Wikipedia gets its name from the word wiki, a type of collaborative website from the Hawaiian word meaning "quick", and the word encyclopedia. It was started by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, who were originally involved with a project called Nupedia, which was a free encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts. Wikipedia, of course, is a departure from this more traditional type of encyclopedia. This has caused some to question its accuracy and I know, personally, I had many professors ban the use of Wikipedia as a resource (even though it was always the best place to find information and still is). Today Wikipedia has over 30 million articles in 287 languages. It is very popular around world and has an estimated 365 million readers. In 2006, Time Magazine recognized Wikipedia's participation in the rapid growth of online collaboration. Do you use Wikipedia? Help keep it free by donating to the non-profit Wikimedia that supports it. Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted January 15, 2014 by Robyn Norgan      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 14

  Today in Tech History: On January 14, 2005, The Huygens space probe lands on Saturn's moon Titan in the first landing ever accomplished in the outer solar system. The Huygens probe was named after the 17th century Dutch astronomer, Christiaan Huygens. It was designed to gather data from Titan with its fully instrumental robotic laboratory. The probe was built to land on either land or ocean, though it ended up touching down on land near Titan's Xanadu region. After its landing, it sent back data for a full 90 minutes even though it was only expected to send data back for 30 minutes or less due to its short battery life. One thing Huygens sent back was the image you see to the left, which is the only image from the surface of a planetary body in the outer Solar System. Because the Huygens space probe was too small to transmit data to Earth, it had to use the nearby Cassini orbiter to relay its data. The Cassini orbiter had been launched with the Huygens space probe aboard the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft on October 15, 1997 and the two separated on December 25, 2004. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft as well as the Cassini probe and Huygens space probe were all built and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted January 14, 2014 by Robyn Norgan      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 13

  Today in Tech History: The "Friday the 13th" virus makes headlines for striking hundreds of IBM computers in Britain on Friday, January 13, 1989. The Friday the 13th virus is also called the Jerusalem virus because it was thought to have originated there (though it is now thought to have come from Italy). The virus activates every Friday the 13th and slows down the user's computer and deletes any program that it runs on that day. Although the virus had been around since 1987, on this day in 1989 it became one of the most famous early examples of a computer virus making headlines. Extra, extra, read all about it! The Friday the 13th virus was a common virus at the time and it spawned a large number of variants, including one that attacked computers on Sunday instead of Friday. Luckily, today the virus and its variants are considered obsolete (though of course there are plenty of newer viruses to contend with). Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted January 13, 2014 by Robyn Norgan      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 12

  Today in Tech History: On January 12, 1967 James Bedford, a University of California psychology professor, becomes the first person whose body was cryonically frozen after death. Bedford was chosen to be frozen free of charge by the Life Extension Socity, who was offering to freeze the first person in need of cryonic preservation for free. At the time he had kidney cancer that was untreatable, so a few hours after his death on January 12, 1967 his body was frozen by Robert Prehoda, author of the book Suspended Animation, Dr. Dante Brunol, a physician and biophysicist, and Robert Nelson, President of the Cryonics Society of California. January 12 is considered "Bedford Day" by some. Who knows maybe someday Bedford will be the first person to come back to life after being cryonically frozen and there will be a second Bedford Day! Maybe he'll even get unfrozen in the 31st century and become a delivery boy for an interplanetary delivery company named Planet Express - eh, Futurama fans ;) Comedy Central Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted January 12, 2014 by Robyn Norgan      Tweet

• Today in Tech History: January 11

  Today in Tech History: William Herschel, the astronomer who discovered the planet Uranus, discovers two of its major moons, Titania and Oberon on January 11, 1787. Although Herschel discovered the two moons, his son actually named them in 1847 and 1852, several years after his father's death in 1822. Herschel also did not name Uranus despite the fact that he was its discoverer. His original name of 'Georgian Star' didn't stick because it was named after the King George III of England, which the French didn't like. They referred to it as 'Herschel' until it was officially named Uranus (which today gives us lots of great jokes, see image at left). Herschel also discovered two moons of Saturn and he was the first person to discover the existence of infrared radiation. He also got his sister Caroline Herschel involved in astronomy and she discovered eight comets and eleven nebulae, among other great accomplishments. Image is courtesy of Zazzle.com, where you can totally buy this awesome t-shirt by the way! Want more Tech History? Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ where we'll be posting daily with the hashtag #TechHistory Posted January 11, 2014 by Robyn Norgan      Tweet

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