Kate Johanns

All posts by Kate Johanns

Kate Johanns is a communications professional and freelance writer with more than 13 years of experience in publishing and marketing.

Linux
Tech Time Warp: Linus Torvalds Introduces Linux

Tech Time Warp: Linus Torvalds Introduces Linux

They say hindsight is 20/20, which is why Linus Torvalds’ Aug. 25, 1991, message to a MINIX newsgroup is so humorous now: “I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) … it...

/ August 25, 2017
Tech Time Warp: When Internet Explorer Was Cool

Tech Time Warp: When Internet Explorer Was Cool

Let’s time-travel back to August 1995, when Bill Gates and his company introduced the world to Internet Explorer 1.0. Making its debut on August 16, 1995, this wasn’t the IE you later spurned for Chrome and Firefox. No, this was...

/ August 18, 2017
Spam
Tech Time Warp: The story behind five everyday tech terms

Tech Time Warp: The story behind five everyday tech terms

Given technology’s fast pace, it’s easy to forget someone in 1995 would look at you like you were from Mars if you mentioned your Bluetooth. Turns out the stories behind commonly used tech terms are fairly fascinating. For instance, thank...

/ August 11, 2017
Koobface Worm
Tech Time Warp: Koobface worm begins to spread

Tech Time Warp: Koobface worm begins to spread

Back in August 2008—when you were still juggling Facebook and MySpace profiles—unsuspecting social networkers found their machines infected by Koobface, a particularly nasty computer worm. Koobface (an anagram for Facebook) caught its victims by tempting them with tantalizing Facebook links...

/ August 4, 2017
Apple's Lisa computer
Tech Time Warp: Apple begins work on the Lisa

Tech Time Warp: Apple begins work on the Lisa

While everyone else was at the beach during the summer of 1979, Steve Jobs began work on—you guessed it—another product that would change the world. The Lisa, introduced to the marketplace in 1983, was Apple’s first foray into personal computers...

/ July 28, 2017
Email outage chaos
Tech Time Warp: Email Outage Chaos

Tech Time Warp: Email Outage Chaos

The Internet makes life so much easier … except when it doesn’t. Just like a bad cold makes you appreciate breathing through your nose, an Internet outage makes you realize your reliance on email and texts and streaming services. The...

/ July 21, 2017
Tech Time Warp: The First Case of Ransomware

Tech Time Warp: The First Case of Ransomware

The WannaCry ransomware attack once again brings the need for backup and security solutions into focus, but ransomware is nothing new. The first case of ransomware, chock-full of “truth is stranger than fiction” details, occurred in 1989. The PC Cyborg...

/ May 19, 2017