Thursday, March 31, 2011

JavaScript

Netscape Communications programmer Brendan Eich invents LiveScript in 1995. After a partnership is established between Netscape and Sun, LiveScript is renamed JavaScript, to match Sun's Java language. The object-oriented scripting language becomes an international standard allowing web developers to produce dynamic HTML that works on almost all web browsers.
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Bob

A few months after its highly successful release of Windows 95, Microsoft releases Bob, a suite of user-friendly programs intended to work with Windows 95. Bob's cartoonish appearance and pseudo-friendliness become the worst flop in Microsoft's history. The company reportedly destroys all copies of the software and attempts to erase the entire episode from its public record.
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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

REXX

The first specification for the REXX programming language is published in March 1979. REXX is a powerful macro language developed by Mike Cowlishaw of IBM. It grows out of the basic scripting statements used with IBM’s Virtual Machine/370 operating system. The popularity of Cowlishaw's macro language compels IBM to begin shipping it as a commercial product in 1982.
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Monday, March 28, 2011

Kings Quest

Kings Quest is released in 1984. The game is the first to support the EGA graphics color card and is touted as one of the greatest adventure games in the computer industry. So good that IBM selects the game as a showpiece for its PCjr. The game's object: you are sent on a quest by the King of Daventry to return three lost treasures in return for the throne.
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Sunday, March 27, 2011

Atari

Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney form Atari in 1972 and begin work on a video game called Pong. Based on the tabletop ping-pong game, the home version of Pong becomes a huge success in 1974. Three years later, the company introduces its video game console, the Atari 2600, and scores another huge success. Atari is subsequently sold to Warner Communications in 1976.
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Saturday, March 26, 2011

"Blue screen of death"

The "blue screen of death" is the popular phrase for the screen displayed by Microsoft's Windows operating system when it cannot recover from a system error. The phrase is an extension of the "black screen of death" which occurred during the early 1990s on Windows 3.1 systems when a DOS application failed to execute properly.
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Friday, March 25, 2011

IBM's Magnetic Tape/Selectric

IBM introduces the Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter in 1964. The MT/ST combines the features of the Selectric Typewriter with a magnetic tape drive. For the first time, typed material can be edited without having to retype the whole text. On the tape, information can be stored, replayed, corrected and reprinted as many times as needed, and then erased and reused for other projects.
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