Pioneers in Tech: Happy birthday to Ben Hammersley, who coined the term “podcast”
Let’s all send birthday wishes to British journalist-turned-speaker-and-futurist Ben Hammersley, who turned 49 this month and is perhaps most famous for coining the term “podcast” 21 years ago. Learn how the the word came about in this edition of Pioneers...
Tech Time Warp: Funny April Fools’ Day tech pranks you may not know about
Did you survive April Fools’ Day 2025? Or did you sign up for Duolingo’s five-year world cruise? April Fools’ Day is a love-it-or-hate-it tradition in the technology world, with Google leading the charge from 2000 up until the COVID-19 pandemic....
Tech Time Warp: How Hewlett-Packard shook up multiple industries and the modern workplace
Technology innovations typically arise from humble locations, not glassy high-rises. Michael Dell started his company from a dorm room in 1984. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I in a garage in the mid-1970s. Another name we all...
Tech Time Warp: The 10-day takeover of a botnet
In 2009, researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, outsmarted the cybercriminals behind the notorious Torpig botnet. They uncovered critical knowledge about how this type of malware works. Learn how in this edition of Tech Time Warp. Researchers first...
Pioneers in Tech: Margaret Hamilton sends man to the moon
The photo is iconic: A young woman stands next to almost 20 bound books, the stack of books nearly as tall as her (though she appears to have a slight heel in the shoes complementing her very 1960s shift dress)....
Tech Time Warp: The great Michelangelo scare
Thirty years ago, PC users worldwide were left saying “Huh?” after the much-hyped Michelangelo virus turned out to be, well, not much. Learn what the virus’ enduring legacy might say more about the media than about a security risk in...
Tech Time Warp: LISP programmer’s manual published
The artificial intelligence (AI) tools you use today have their roots in a programming language first released to the public 65 years ago. On March 1, 1960, the AI group led by John McCarthy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
Tech Time Warp: An APT programming language
In conjunction with research centers like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the defense industry drove many rapid technological advances post-World War II. That’s where Douglas T. Ross and his team significantly sped up manufacturing with the development of the...
Tech Time Warp: It’s the Storm Worm, not a secret admirer
The FBI had a real Debbie Downer message to deliver in 2008: That unexpected Valentine’s Day e-card was not from a secret admirer. Instead, it was an invitation for the unwitting recipient to join the Storm Worm botnet. Learn all...
Pioneers in Tech: Marian Croak, an “American idol” with 200 patents
Readers of a certain age will remember the frustration of trying to dial in their votes for Kelly Clarkson during the first season of American Idol. The phone lines would become overloaded! Most of us dialing in for Kelly probably...
