Tech Time Warp: The 411 on the 404 page
For this week’s Tech Time Warp, we’re talking about the origin story of the 404 Page Not Found error code. This error code is about as frustrating as actually reaching a 404 page. For years, a neat story has circulated...
Pioneers in Tech: Ajay Bhatt, co-inventor of USB technology
For this week’s Pioneers in Tech, we’re looking into the story of the USB. Like so many now-ubiquitous innovations, USB technology has a fascinating origin story you probably don’t know—and it might make you think twice about the “old” USB...
Tech Time Warp: The Love Bug Bites
One might say more than 3 million computer users had a bad date on May 4, 2000. In this week’s edition of Tech Time Warp, we’re going back to the day those users downloaded the ILOVEYOU virus, a Visual Basic...
Tech Time Warp: The Sasser worm teaches a lesson
In this week’s edition of Tech Time Warp, we’re traveling back to early May 2004, when computer users worldwide learned a hard lesson: Don’t procrastinate when it comes to installing a security patch. Users at the Taiwanese post office, the...
Tech Time Warp: Tandy heats up PC clone wars
In this week’s Tech Time Warp, we’re going back to the early days of the Tandy Corporation. Tandy became a player in personal computers with the 1977 introduction of its TRS-80 at RadioShack stores—but that was far from Tandy’s only...
Tech Time Warp: On the hunt for technology easter eggs
Have you ever typed “answer to life, the universe, and everything” into Google? In a nod to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Google returns “42” as a calculator result. Or perhaps you’ve explored the police call box on the...
Pioneers in Tech: John Roach and the story of the TRS-80
In this week’s edition of Pioneers in Tech, we’re highlighting legendary business executive John Roach. On March 20, 83-year-old John Roach died in his beloved Fort Worth, Texas, where he was a titan of the community. His legacy goes far...
Tech Time Warp: The End of Google Pranks on April Fools’ Day?
Out of respect for those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Google abstained from its traditional April Fools’ Day tomfoolery during 2020 and 2021. Now in 2022, it appears the pandemic has ended a 20-year streak of online pranks. For this...
Tech Time Warp: Jean Sammet changes her opinion of computers
In this week’s Tech Time Warp, we’re going back to programming in the 50’s. Introduced in 1959, the programming language COBOL—common, business-oriented language—is still heavily in use today, with an estimated 200 billion lines of code relied upon by government...
Tech Time Warp: First domain name registered in 1985
File this away for your next pub quiz: The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com, registered on March 15, 1985, by Symbolics Computer Corporation, a company that specialized in single-user machines running the LISP programming language. For this week’s...