Tech Topics

Internet is invented

Oct 3, 1962

J.C.R. Licklider becomes the first head of the computer research program at ARPA, which he calls the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO).

First cell phone made

Apr 3, 1973

Martin Cooper, an engineer for Motorola, made the first cell phone, He also made the first cell phone call during a presentaion on this day.

Windows 1.0

Nov 20, 1985

Microsoft ships Windows 1.0. Now it is possible to just click through different "windows." There can be many different programs going on at the same time.

World Wide Web Created

Mar 3, 1989

Tim Berners-Lee created HTML, hyper text markup language, and HTTP, hyper text transfer protocall, and is credited with creating the World Wide Web

Microsoft Office Suite is released

Nov 19, 1990

The Microsoft Office Suite currently cotains Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, Publisher, Access, Outlook, and OneNote. Hower, when it was first released it only had Microsoft Word, Excel, and Power Point. These applications make up an office suite of desktop applications for Microsoft Windows and OS X operating systems.

First smartphone was invented

Jul 9, 1992

The first smartphone was invented by IBM. It had touch screen, address book, calender, calculator, and an email service. The phone was nicknamed "Simon," but most people couldn't afford the price of $899

First Text Message Ever Sent to a Cellphone

Dec 3, 1992

A message reading, "Merry Christmas," was sent by British engineer, Neil Papworth, to his friend's Orbitel 901 phone. This was the first text message ever sent.

Invention of WikiWikiWeb

Mar 25, 1995

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki (user-editable website). It was created by Ward Cunningham.

First QWERTY Keyboard on a Mobile Phone

Jul 9, 1996

The QWERTY keyboard first arrived on the Nokia 9000 Communicator. This was later the best-selling PDA.

Google Search is launched

Sep 15, 1997

Google Search is a search engine created by Google Inc. It is the most widely used search engine on the World Wide Web

#1 TiVo is created

Mar 31, 1999

TiVo is a digital video recorder (DVR). This allows people to find and record television shows that match their interests.

Arrival of Salesmforce.com

Jul 5, 1999

This was one of the first milestones of cloud computing. It introduced the idea of delivering enterprise applications through a simple website.

#2 Netflix started its subscription-based digital distribution

Jul 19, 1999

Netflix is a provider of all sorts of movies and television series. These can be viewed by instantly streaming the videos through the internet, or by flat rate DVD-by-mail.

First Camera Phone

Jul 9, 2000

The Sharp J-SH04 was the first commercially avalible camera phone. It had a megapixel resolution of 0.1.

#3 Invention of Pandora Internet Radio

Jul 19, 2000

Pandora is a free radio that is avaible through the internet on computers and moile devices. This radio lets its users choose an artist, song, or genre of music to create different stations. The stations play different music and the users can "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" to the different songs. The radio then "learns" about the users likes and dislikes and plays music accordingly.

#4 Invention of Wikipedia

Jan 15, 2001

Wikipedia is an internet encyclopedia. It has over 77,000 active users and even though it can be editied by anyone, it is still a great source for information.

Development of Amazon Web Services

Jul 5, 2002

Through the Amazon Mechanical Turk, a suite of cloud-based services including storage, computation, and human intelligence was provided.

Web 2.0 is recognized

Jul 8, 2002

Web 2.0 is basically the second generation of the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 allows people to share information and collaborate through the web.

Beginning of Facebook

Feb 4, 2004

Facebook was one of the first Web 2.0 sites to be invented. It was created by Mark Zuckerburg.

#5 Invention of YouTube

Feb 11, 2005

YouTube allows people to watch and post videos. While some of these videos are not benificial at all, many of them are a great source of information.

Amazon launches EC2

Jul 5, 2006

Amazon launched its Elastic Compute cloud as a commercial web service that allows small companies/indiviuals to rent computers on which to run their own computer applications.

#6 Invention of the Wii

Nov 19, 2006

The Wii is a video game console created by Nintendo. The primary wireless controller detects motion in three dimensions.

#7 Beginning of Tumblr

Feb 19, 2007

Tumblr is a social network/microblog website. It was founded by David Karp. On May 20, 2013, Yahoo! paid $1.1 billion in cash to aquire Tumblr.

#8 Invention of iPod Touch

Sep 14, 2007

Not only does the Apple iPod Touch let its users carry basically as many songs as they want to, it can also wirelessly connect to the internet, including Apple's App Store, so that users can choose from a selection of over 900,000 apps to download.

Google Chrome is released

Sep 2, 2008

Google Chrome is a web browser creating by Google. It can now be used on mobile devices as well as computers

Google Play store is released

Oct 23, 2008

Google Play is an applications store for Android. Until March 6, 2012, Google Play was known as "Android Market", but the name was changed to show that Google was changing its digital distribution stategy.

#9 Invention of iPad

Apr 3, 2010

The iPad is a line of tablet computers made by Apple Inc. This was a great invention because the iPad is basically an even-ore portable version of a computer.

#10 Release of Google Drive

Apr 24, 2012

Google Drive (developed by Google Inc.) is a file storage and synchronization service. It allows its users to use cloud computing, share files, and collaboratively edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and so much more.

Vine is released

Jan 24, 2013

Vine is a mobile app that allowa its users to post 6 second video clips and share them with each other. This is another example of a Web 2.0 site. It is owned by Twitter and was founded by Dom Hofmann and Rus Yusupov.