Archive for July, 2012

In 1951 – Bell Labs held a press conference announcing the invention of the junction transistor. Dr. William Shockley was featured at the conference.

In 1956 – The five-year-old MIT computer Whirlwind added the ability to input data directly with a keyboard. Programmers began to enjoy independence from punch cards.

In 1996 – Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith launched a free web email service called HoTMaiL, a play on HTML. Microsoft bought it a year later, but still calls it Hotmail.

Tom Merritt, Iyaz Akhtar and Jason Howell

RIM says crazy stuff and delays things, Microsoft makes upgrades cheap, Twitter goes transparent, and more.

Guest: Nilay Patel

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Running time: 50:40

Tom Merritt, Iyaz Akhtar and Jason Howell

Sony climbs into the cloud, Mozilla’s making a phone OS, the Internet declares freedom, and more.

Guest: Cali Lewis

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Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show.

Running time: 49:07

1886, Karl Benz drove his Patent Motor Wagen on Mannheim’s Ringstraße, reaching a top speed of 16 km/h (10 mph) powered by a 0.75-hp one-cylinder four-stroke gasoline engine. It was the first public drive of what is considered the first purpose-built automobile.

In 1998 – Danielle Bunten Berry died of lung cancer. She was a pioneering game designer most famous for creating the multiplayer game M.U.L.E. in 1983.

In 1999 – At the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire, Billy Mitchell became the first ever to achieve a perfect score on Pac-Man.

Hosts: Brian Brushwood and Tom Merritt

Dish drops AMC, Valve open-sources machinima, Hulu lands HBO… in Japan, and more.

Guest: Scott Wilkinson

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Running time: 1:04:50

1897 – 23-year-old Guglielmo Marconi received a patent in England for his wireless telegraphy which we now call radio. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. Ltd. was formed a few weeks later.

In 1928 W3XK, owned by the Jenkins Television Corporation, went on the air becoming the first television broadcasting station in the US.

In 2001 – Bram Cohen first revealed BitTorrent on a Yahoo group called decentralization.

Hosts: Iyaz Akhtar and Jason Howell

RIM’s running out of options, Google+ invites everyone to everything, the world’s ending, and more.

Guest: Darren Kitchen and Randall Bennett

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Running time: 56:20

In 1979 – Sony introduced the Sony Walkman TPS-L2. It weighed 14 ounces, was blue and silver, and had a second earphone jack. It was originally marketed in the US as the Sound-About and in the UK as the Stowaway.

In 1991 – Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri made the world’s first GSM call over a privately operated network to Vice Mayor Kaarina Suonio in Tampere. The Prime Minister used Nokia gear on GSM’s original 900MHz band.

In 2008 – Bill Gates retired as an employee of Microsoft, to focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He remained Chairman pf the Board.