Archive for the ‘WITH - Week in Tech History’ Category

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It was an interesting week of poising as Yahoo and Carl Icahn butted heads over the impending proxy battle for sale of Yahoo to Microsoft. Yahoo was doing everything in it’s power while Icahn made some general statements about CEO Jerry Yang. As the week went on, the mud started to fly.

Yahoo started the volley – but not by Yahoo’s choice. A court document was unsealed in where it outlined the plans for Yahoo to create a plan to pay workers if a takeover happens. Yahoo was going to provide “100 percent equity acceleration for everyone.” A claim that Yahoo might not be able to cover, depending on how the proceedings went.

In the meantime, Carl Icahn stepped up his campaign by making public his plans for Yahoo. It included a reorganization of the Board of Directors, but up until then, it was just a general statement. This week he basically said that CEO Jerry Yang needed to step down.

Yahoo made a statement later in the day and set their Shareholders’ meeting for August 1st, 2008. This would give both parties to wheel and deal for a happy medium.

This was one of many events in the Week in Tech history. Check out all the events in the podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:36 — 14.5MB)

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May 29th 2008 – Comcast had a different type of attack. This one opened the eyes to how our records in ICANN were being handled. The infamous “Comcast Hack” was where hackers did not attack the servers themselves, but they found a way into Network Solutions and changed the DNS of the webpage. Once the DNS is changed, the homepage would then redirect to servers of their choosing.

Other historical notes – The Woodstock of the web. We also heard about the first computer patent and the Dell computer fraud. This is all on the Podcast

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May 24, 2008: they claim it was meant as a joke, but people didn’t take it with a grain of salt. The couple put their baby up for auction. 1 euro was the price, which at the time was about $1.57 US.

eBay – who already had a policy of no sale of human beings – took down the listing and suspended the account. What was worse was the child was taken and the parents were investigated for child cruelty. Eventually the charges were dropped and the parents got their little bundle of “Buy it now” back on July 4th.

Other events of WITH: T. Boone Pickens puts in a ton of money into Yahoo after Carl Icahn issues a proxy battle. We also found out about the first idea of a moving sidewalk. Abbyword was released. Apple and CBS were sued over “Mighty Mouse”, AOL buys Bebe and the infamous 5 cent email tax.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:52 — 13.7MB)

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On May 15th, 2008 – Carl Icahn stepped up to the plate and officially announced his bid to proxy Yahoo so he could work with Microsoft on getting a deal out.  A couple days prior, Eric Jackson decided to pull his bid for proxy and the rumor started to fly that Carl Icahn was going to take over the fight.

Of course we saw how that went – Icahn got a seat on the Yahoo board, and Yahoo stayed with Yahoo.

Other items of note – ZDTV starts, HP and EDS acquisition and the Ethernet Standard is formed. Of course there is a lot more in the podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:03 — 13.8MB)

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Torrents can be really helpful, however, they can also be used for passing of copyrighted material. MP3’s movies, programs, all plague torrent sites. Some with keygens to break the program keys. Others with malware installed to steal data from your computer.

Some say to fight this, Torrents need to be shut down. Others say that controlled torrents are needed for open source documents. It’s a big battle back and forth.

One way to combat is to go after the Torrents themselves. Pirate Bay, for example. However, if a Torrent lives in another country, the legal battle gets harder.

TorrentSpy was a bittorrent indexing service. They showed people where the .torrent files lived. the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed a $110 million dollar lawsuit for infringement of files. US District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper agreed with the MPAA and Torrentspy was ordered to pay up, along with a perminant injunction on the site.

There is a lot of good that can come from a torrent site. If we could curb the illegal action and make safe areas so you can download copyright free or Creative Commons no-deriv music, movies and documents, the torrent would be better embraced.

There is a lot more on the Week in Tech History – Check out the Podcast!

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April 28th 2003. With 200,000 songs and a eye on the music market, Apple launched the iTunes Store. At that time, the Windows version was not out yet (had to wait until October 17th of that year), but the first week alone they had over a million sales.

Other items of note – the first computer mouse and the first Windows mouse. We also saw the Sasser Worm come up and Google’s IPO.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:56 — 12.8MB)

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Apr. 25th, 1996 was the day that Yahoo started putting ads on TV. They ran a spot on David Letterman, Saturday Night Live and episodes of Star Trek asking one question – Do you Yahoo?

The successful ad campaign spawned many a version of that commercial. Ultimately they dropped the question and just had the Yodel “Yahoo!” on the commercials run.

Other items of note: Windows XP64 and Windows server 2003 were released. Dell says they’ll put on XP after the June 30th cut off date and Gateway 2000 drops the ‘2000′. Lots more on the Quickcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:50 — 12.3MB)

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Psystar came on the scene with a very interesting proposition: Get a PC with Mac OS X. Can it be done?

Ever since the switch from PowerPC to Intel, Mac software has been attempted and successfully installed on PC’s with Intel and AMD processors. So the next step would be to have someone package it up, right?

Well, no. Apples’ End User License Agreement states that the OSX software can only be run on Mac approved hardware. Therefore, Psystar breeches the agreement.

Psystar still continued on. Only hours after the websites caught on about this company, the website went down. People started speculating more about this “Publicity stunt”. The company “PowerPay” ended their contract with Psystar because they were not honoring the Service Agreement.

Psystar said “That’s OK. We’ll use Paypal”.

A year later, they’re still around fighting the good fight. Or is it a good fight? Maybe Psystar is the true “PC Hunter”. After all, they show you that you can have your cake and eat it, too.

Mmmm. Cake.

In the podcast we also talk about the Blockbuster – Circuit City bid, the debut of the Apple II, a $14,000 Apple I and The Osbourne and Osbourne II.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:04 — 17.4MB)

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I can see it now – Grampa sits jr on his knee and tells a story of how he was the third partner in the Apple franchise. He then proceeds to tell his sons’ son that he decided it was too risky and pulls out of the company 11 days after it was founded. At the time he was concerned over Jobs and Wozniaks’ work ethic and felt the company would not last – let alone make any money. Guess he should’ve listened to Forrest Gump.

By the way, that person’s name is Ronald Wayne.

In other Tech History, we see the Microsoft – Yahoo bid war heat up as not only Yahoo works deals with Google, but also tries to merge the internet operations with AOL. In the meantime, Microsoft talks with NewsCorp to do a “Joint acquisition”. That, the first SPAM, the DNA database and a whole lot more on todays Quickcast

*This podcast was recorded off the Blue Snowball Mic

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:58 — 11.9MB)

In 1993, Chris Clark purchased Pizza.com. He figured it would be a great domain to have. Boy was he right, but it took him 15 years to realize it.

After a couple attempts he decided to squat on the domain for a while – That is until last year. Chris decided after he heard Business.com was sold for 7 Million to try auctioning off his domain. He contracted the domain selling site Sedo.com to help out.

The end result: Chris sold the domain for $2.6 Million.

Other items on the Quickcast: Week in Tech History include Netscape forming, Netscape forming the Open Source initiative called “Mozilla”. Gmail goes into beta and also incorporates Google Calendar. All this and a lot more tech history in the Podcast.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:27 — 9.9MB)

The Amiga has been sort of an enigma in the computer industry. It started in 1982 as the Amiga corporation, then Commodore purchased the line to put in their family of computers. The computer was held high for video production – with a video toaster, the system could do as much as a mac or PC, but for less price.

Commodore of course folded up, but the Amiga line still tried to thrive. On March 27th 1997, Gateway 2000 decided to take over the reigns and be the home to this great machine. We have since seen Gateway come and go.

Other historical notes for this week – the EU lands a fine on Microsoft, Microsoft splits into 5 while Motorola splits into 2. Seagate gets bought by Veritas and Kevin Mitnik pleads guilty to wire fraud. Finally we see Excel 4.0 introduced, as well as Mac OS X.

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