Category: Tech Insight
Tech Time Warp: The multifaceted road to multifactor authentication
In the recent edition of “Oh Behave!,” the annual cybersecurity survey conducted by the National Cybersecurity Alliance, an alarming 44 percent of respondents said they had experienced cybercrime leading to the loss of data or money. This next statistic may...
Pioneers in Tech: Honoring John Atanasoff, inventor of the digital computer
Born Oct. 4, 1903, John Vincent Atanasoff is not just the inventor of the electronic digital computer—he’s the legally proclaimed inventor of the digital computer. On March 19, 1972, in the case Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, a judge ruled that...
Tech Time Warp: Two decades of Cybersecurity Awareness Month—but there’s still work to do
If you’re reading this blog, you probably observe cybersecurity awareness year-round, not just during the annual observance of Cybersecurity Awareness Month each October. But, as a managed service provider (MSP), you also likely appreciate any opportunity to draw attention to...
Tech Time Warp: Debugging a technology origin story
We’ve all been there: Our computer crashes, and we say there are “gremlins inside,” that the machine “geeked out,” or that it must have been “a bug.” And, often, simply rebooting solves the problem. But where the term “computer bug”...
Tech Time Warp: Meet ERMA, the machine that automated check processing
When did you last write a check? In July 2024, Target became the latest retailer to stop accepting checks, citing “extremely low volumes” of customers paying by check. Use of checks — already declining before the COVID-19 pandemic — took...
Pioneers in Tech: Dennis Ritchie left us many tech riches, including the C language and UNIX
The October 2011 passing of Dennis Ritchie—creator of the C programming language and co-creator of the UNIX operating system—was largely overshadowed by Steve Jobs’ death the week prior. Yet Ritchie’s quiet genius laid the foundation for much of modern computing....
Tech Time Warp: Star Trek was not the final frontier for many tech ideas
As ubiquitous as Star Trek is—spawning so many spin-offs and movies that only a true Trekkie could list them all off the top of their head—it’s a fun bit of trivia that the original series (known as “TOS” to fans)...
Tech Time Warp: The lovable and luggable Compaq Portable
August 27 marked the 32nd anniversary of the release of the Compaq Presario. This was a family of PCs that included a monitor, a modem, and, for many, their first America Online CD-ROM. Learn more in this edition of Tech...
Tech Time Warp: The history of the Computer History Museum
It might seem a bit meta (not Meta!) for a technology history blog series to cover the history of the Computer History Museum, but the Silicon Valley institution is the mothership, and we certainly rely on its incredible web presence....
Tech Time Warp: Welchia—when the remedy was as bad as the malady
August 2003 was already challenging for network administrators. They were busy fending off the Blaster worm, whose payload caused computers to reboot every 60 seconds, so initially they may have reacted positively to news of the Welkin worm. Welkin was...
