Today in Tech History – July 4, 2014

20140404-073853.jpgIn 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, and called it Hotmail for years, but it’s now Outlook.com.

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DTNS 2270 – Round Table edition

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comVarious attendees at Nerdtacular help comment on the headlines of the day.

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Show Notes

Today in Tech History – July 3, 2014

20140404-073853.jpgIn 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.

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Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

DTNS 2269 – DTNS, Interrupted

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comScott Johnson is on the show to chat about Google’s acquisition of Songza and what this means for how we listen to music. Also get a preview of Nerdtacular!

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Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today in Tech History – July 2, 2014

20140404-073853.jpgIn 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.

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Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.

DTNS 2268 – Community Demands: Yahoo Answers

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comJustin Robert Young is racing from the airport, so his part will be played by Veronica Belmont and eventually we’ll all talk about Yahoo picking up Community and what this means for the future of television.

MP3

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

Please SUBSCRIBE HERE.

A special thanks to all our Patreon supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you enjoy the show, please consider supporting the show here at the low, low cost of a nickel a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes

Today’s guest: Veronica Belmont & maybe, just maybe JuRY

Headlines

GigaOM reports Samsung announced the Galaxy S5 Mini Tuesday. The smaller version of the S5 has a 4.5-inch AMOLED screen that’s 720p capable, 1.4GHz quad-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM and a microSD card slot. Those specs are a touch below the bigger S5 but the mini also comes with the waterproofing, heart rate monitor, fingerprint scanner and Galaxy Gear compatibility just like the big version. It goes on sale in 4 colors starting in Russia in July and will expand to global markets afterwards.

TechCrunch reports Microsoft has increased security for OneDrive and Outlook.com. Outlook.com now supports TLS which keeps email encrypted as long as the receiving email service also supports TLS. Both Outlook.com and OneDrive now support Perfect Forward Secrecy encryption as well which helps mitigate damage if a secret key is compromised.

Engadget reports GE is taking on the smartphone-controlled light bulb dominance of Philips with some new bulbs called Link. The bulbs require a $30 hub to operate, but then the bulbs themselves are only $15-$25 each. Lifx bulbs run $100, Philips new Lux bulbs are $40 and even Insteon costs $30. Link bulbs are controlled through the Wink app made by Quirky and should last 23 years or so. Home Depot is taking pre-orders for the bulbs today and they’ll ship this autumn.

Computerworld passes along that DARPA has set the date for the final stage of its three-phase Robotics Challenge to be held June 5 and 6, 2015, in Pomona, Calif. 11 teams will compete for a $2 million prize, though DARPA expects the number of entrants to increase. The first two phases involved demonstrating software for autonomous etasks like walking, using tools, climbing and driving. In the finals, the robots will face a full-scale disaster situation, and have to use a series of ladders, doors, cars and valves to handle the situation.

TechCrunch The US National Archives and Record Administration has made its ongoing efforts to upload content to Wikimedia Commons a core part of its purpose. NARA uploaded 100,000 images in 2012 as a test. 4,000 Wikipedia articles featuring NARA records received more than one billion page views in 2013. The uploads range from mundane federal agency records to World War II photos and presidential portraits.

News From You

MacBytes posted the Verge article giving a few more details on Keurig’s Coffee pod DRM scheme. Key patents on Keurig’s pods expired in 2012 leading to third-party pods. Keurig makes most of its money selling pods not machines. The new brewer going on sale this autumn, scans pods for special markings, based on anti-conterfeiting technology used by the US Mint. Its essentially DRM for coffee. It’s also going to make your old Keurig machine much more valuable.

robodashy has the Mashable story that the United States Food and Drug Administration has approved ReWalk Robotics’ personal exoskeleton for marketing in the U.S. The 46-pound robotic legs support their own weight plus a 220-pound user who wears a 5-pound backpack. A wrist-device with physical buttons controls the device. The battery is designed to support a full day of intermittent walking, but if the wearer walks non-stop, the battery will last three to four hours. Users have to be between 5-foot-3 and 6-foot-3. The device costs $69,500 and is not covered by insurance in the US.

spsheridan submitted the Ars Technica story about No-IP.com going down after Microsoft seized 22 domain names it claimed were being abused in malware-related crimes. Millions of legitimate servers relied on No-IP for dynamic domain name services, including AlphaGeekRadio.Microsoft claimed No-IP domains were used 93 percent of the time by Bladabindi and Jenxcus malware and its operator, Defendant Vitalwerks did not take sufficient steps to address the abuse.

And tjburbank sent in the story from Daily Dot about Paypal freezing the account of crowdfunded ProtonMail. The ProtonMail project wants to make an easy email encryption tool. A Paypal representative said it was not sure if ProtonMail was legal. Apparently Paypal figured it out as the account was restored late this morning. Paypal in a following statement claimed “a technical problem this week resulted in PayPal applying restrictions to the account.” Right. ProtonMail says it will not rely on Paypal for donations until its assured there will not be a repeat of this.

Discussion Section: 

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/30/community-will-get-its-sixth-season-on-yahoo/?ncid=rss

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/community-sixth-season-yahoo/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/community-returning-sixth-season-yahoo-715857

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1682555/ken-marino-shows-how-to-parody-the-already-ridiculous-with-burning-love

Pick of the Day: SNL Archives on Yahoo Screen

Jennie’s pick of the day is the SNL archive on Yahoo Screen. Disclaimer: Jennie worked for Yahoo’s video department not too long ago. And then that ended. Yet she STILL wants to recommend the incredibly deep bench of archival Saturday Night Live clips that you can find on Yahoo Screen, including ones you don’t often see online due to music rights, like Will Ferrell’s gut-busting ‘Cowbell’ sketch as well as Chris Farley & Patrick Swazye’s legendary dance-off in the “Chippendales” sketch. The archive also includes older, deeply subversive clips like Buck Henry’s “Uncle Roy” and the legendary face-off between Chevy Chase & Richard Pryor known as “Word Association.” Enjoy the rest of your day, people.

Wednesday’s Guest: Scott Johnson with a Nerdtacular’14 preview.

Today in Tech History – July 1, 2014

20140404-073853.jpgIn 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 1984 – The book Neuromancer by William Gibson was published. The cyberpunk novel would go on to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards. The book is credited with popularizing the term cyberspace and laying out a blueprint for what the World Wide Web would become.

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Subscribe to the podcast. Like Tech History? Get Tom Merritt’s Chronology of Tech History at Merritt’s Books site.