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Thinking About: AI in Big Tech Earning Reports: the Race is On

By billpetro / May 11, 2023 /

AI in Big Tech Earning Reports: the Race is On The hottest tech topic of late has been Artificial Intelligence. You can’t read a news article on tech that doesn’t discuss AI. For example: Two weeks ago, the Big Tech companies reported their financial results: Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), and Apple reported strong sales.  …

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World Backup Day

History of World Backup Day

By billpetro / March 31, 2023 /

HISTORY OF WORLD BACKUP DAY There isn’t much history, as the first celebration of this geek holiday was in 2011. World Backup Day is barely a decade old. But the need is genuine, now more than ever before. Especially in light of this salient fact: April Fools’ Day. March 31, the day before, is an…

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Happy Birthday Lisa

History of Apple Lisa, part 2: Meet Its Creators

By billpetro / February 2, 2023 /

HISTORY OF APPLE LISA, PART 2: MEET ITS CREATORS This week at the Computer History Museum’s “Happy 40th Birthday Lisa” event, Katie Hafner, former Computerworld writer, interviewed several of the creators of the Apple Lisa. Many more of the original development team were in the audience. This article follows my previous article on the History…

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Apple Lisa Computer

History of Apple Lisa at 40: The Flop that Influenced Macintosh

By billpetro / February 2, 2023 /

HISTORY OF APPLE LISA AT 40: THE FLOP THAT INFLUENCED MACINTOSH Forty years ago, on January 19, 1983, Apple Computer introduced Lisa. It has well been called Apple’s biggest flop, but it’s accurate to say that without the Lisa computer, there would have been no Macintosh, and it is likely Microsoft Windows would not look…

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Macintosh

History of Macintosh: a 39-Year Love Affair

By billpetro / January 24, 2023 /

HISTORY OF MACINTOSH: A 39-YEAR LOVE AFFAIR The now-famous Macintosh computer turns 39. When Apple President Steve Jobs launched this computer at the Flint Center on the De Anza College campus on January 24, 1984, to the theme from the movie Chariots of Fire, he called it “insanely great!”   Macintosh Launch The $1.5M “1984”…

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Twitter

Whither Twitter: What’s Next for the Social Platform?

By billpetro / November 10, 2022 /

Whither Twitter: What’s Next for the Social Platform? I wrote about Twitter several years ago because many people I knew “didn’t get it.” Endeavoring to explain what it was, how it worked, and what made it different from other social technologies like the better-known Facebook, I talked about Twitter’s history and its use at the…

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Hedy Lamarr

History of Hedy Lamarr: Technology Inventor

By billpetro / November 9, 2022 /

HISTORY OF HEDY LAMARR: TECHNOLOGY INVENTOR Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian-American actress and Hollywood legend known as “the most beautiful woman in the world,” is remembered today, November 9, on the anniversary of her birthday for her pioneering work on the technology that would become the basis for today’s WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth communications systems. What?…

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Information Reformation

Information Reformation

By billpetro / October 31, 2022 /

Historical parallels between the what Martin Luther did with the moveable type printing price that was the spark that ignited the Reformation and the advent of modern technologies that similarly transformed the Internet into the World Wide Web.

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Internet

History of the Internet: Over 50 Years Ago

By billpetro / October 28, 2022 /

HISTORY OF THE INTERNET: OVER 50 YEARS AGO On October 29, 1969, at 10:30 PM, a computer grad student at U.C.L.A. named Charley Kline sent a message to S.R.I. (Stanford Research Institute.) It was the first connection between computer networks. The Internet began!   We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys…

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IBM PC

History of the IBM PC: 41 Years Ago – Why It Was So Important

By billpetro / August 12, 2022 /

HISTORY OF THE IBM PC: 41 YEARS AGO Forty-one years ago, the IBM PC was released. On August 12, 1981, IBM announced its first “personal computer,” though it had previously been famous for its IBM System/370 mainframe computer. I operated one of these mainframes in a raised-floor data center in the early ’80s.

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2020

History of 2020: It Wasn’t the Beginning of the New Decade?

By billpetro / December 31, 2020 /

2020: IT WASN’T THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW DECADE? With the beginning of the 2020 New Year, you saw articles everywhere that discussed the end of the decade or declared that 2020 was the beginning of the new decade. But 2021 is the beginning of the new decade.   Q: Isn’t 2020 the beginning of…

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Vaccines

History of Vaccines: What This Means For Coronavirus

By billpetro / November 20, 2020 /

HISTORY OF VACCINES: WHAT THIS MEANS FOR CORONAVIRUS Today, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that they are submitting their Coronavirus vaccine to the Food and Drug Administration for Emergency Use Approval. What are vaccines, when were they first developed, and what is the road to an approved vaccine in today’s world? “Vaca” in the word vaccine sounds…

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