Social Media

April 30th, 1993
At the urging of Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web protocol, the directors of CERN release the source code of World Wide Web into the public domain, making it freely available to anyone, without licensing fees. The decision to make the World Wide Web software and protocols freely available is considered by some as possibly the single most important moment in the history of the Internet. In fact, some historians mark this as the birth of the Web. ... See more

April 29, 2004
The Sasser worm is released into the wild, infecting over 1 million Windows computers worldwide.

Sometimes you just get lucky

April 28, 2003
Apple Computer launches the iTunes Music Store. The store sells music for 99¢ a song for use with the Apple iPod and iTunes software. It is not the first service to sell digital music, but it will become the first to gain widespread popularity. The service will be an instant success, selling over one million songs in its first week and going on to change the music industry forever. The iTunes Music Store is now the #1 music retailer in the United States, surpassing Wal-Mart in 2008. ... See more

April 27, 1981
Xerox introduces the Xerox 8010 Star Information System, the first commercial system utilizing a computer mouse, among other now commonplace technologies. The 8010 was geared towards business and was not a commercial success, therefore the mouse remained in relative obscurity until the Apple Lisa, but more prominently the Apple Macintosh, brought the mouse into the mainstream. ... See more

April 26, 1999
The first known virus to target the flash BIOS of a PC, the CIH/Chernobyl Virus trigers on this day, erasing hard drives and disabling PCs primarily in Asia and Europe. One of the most destructive viruses in history, Turkey and South Korea alone report 300,000 infected systems. ... See more

April 25, 1990
The crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery deploys the US$2.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope. There will be initial difficulties caused by a flaw in the design of the telescopes mirror. Image correction software will keep the telescope useful until corrective optics are installed on December 25, 1993. ... See more

April 24, 1984
On the same day in 1984, Apple introduces the Apple IIc computer, announces Mac sales numbers, and discontinues the Apple III line.
The Apple IIc was Apple’s first attempt at a portable computer. Dealers place orders for more than 52,000 units on the first day. Apple also announces that over 60,000 Macs have been sold since their introduction in January that year. In contrast, the Apple III line only sold an estimated 120,000 units in the four years since it was introduced, losing Apple about $60 million dollars. ... See more

April 23, 2005
The first video uploaded to YouTube, “Me at the zoo,” is posted on April 23, 2005 at 8:27 PM by co-founder Jawed Karim. For now being a piece of history, the video is actually pretty dumb.
Note to future entrepreneurs: what you do may be for posterity. Choose wisely. ... See more

April 22, 1993
Version 1.0 of the web browser Mosaic is released by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. It’s the first software to provide a graphical user interface for the emerging World Wide Web, including the ability to display inline graphics. The lead Mosaic developer is Marc Andreesen, one of the future founders of Netscape.
My first experience with the World Wide Web was in 1993 using Mosaic on a Mac in my dorm’s computer lab. I had no idea what I had discovered until a few months later. ... See more