Posted 02/24/10 at 07:34:15 AM by Paul Lilly

Some belated birthday wishes are in order, as the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) announced the 15th anniversary of the Apache HTTP Web Server on Wednesday.

"A triumph for the all-volunteer Foundation, the Apache HTTP Server reliably delivers petabytes of data across the world’s most demanding uses, including real-time news sources, Fortune 100 enterprise portals, cloud computing clusters, financial services platforms, mission-critical military intelligence applications, aerospace communications networks, and more. The server software can be downloaded, modified and installed by anyone free of charge," the ASF wrote in a blog post.

The Apache Web server was launched on February 23, 1994, and represented ASF's first project. After just 6 months on the scene, it became the world's most popular Web server and has hardly slowed since. Today the Apache HTTP Server powers almost 112 million websites. 

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Posted 02/05/10 at 11:02:15 AM by Paul Lilly

A happy belated birthday goes out to Facebook, the mega-social networking site which turned six years old yesterday. And sure we're a day late in sending along our birthday wishes, but with 400 million users, we probably would have been drowned out in the crowd anyway.

Facebook's rise in popularity during its six-year run is pretty remarkable. In addition to boasting 400 million users, market research firm Hitwise says that the social networking site is a lead news reader, right behind Google, Yahoo, and MSN search. It's no longer just about fun and games.

"Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category," Hitwise noted. "And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space. "

It will be interesting to see what the next six years bring.

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Posted 11/10/09 at 07:07:55 AM by Paul Lilly

Someone cut the cake, and be sure to save a slice for Microsoft, who probably won't be attending Firefox's fifth birthday. That's okay, because plenty of former Internet Explorer users have sent in their RSVP.

It's hard to believe it's been five years already, and in that relatively short time span, the open source browser has come to claim over 330 million users around the globe. It's the second most used browser on the planet, and while Firefox's market share is barely visible in IE's rear view mirror, Mozilla's browser is quickly catching up and is on pace to pull ahead well before another 5 years goes by.

In celebration of Firefox's fifth birthday, Mozilla communities are hosting parties all over the place in a campaign called "Light the World with Firefox." Need more details? Check it out here.

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Posted 09/21/09 at 01:30:56 PM by Paul Lilly

It's a happy belated birthday wish for the Common Business Oriented Language, otherwise known as the COBOL programming language, which turned 50-years-old on Friday.

One of the oldest programming languages, there are an estimated 200 billion lines of COBOL code in existence today, with hundreds more being added every day. Moreover, some 32 percent of enterprises still use COBOL for development or maintenance, says Mike Gilpin, an analyst at Forrester Research.

Yet despite COBOL's continued prominence, a survey conducted by Micro Focus earlier this year revealed that only 18 percent of those pinged had ever head of COBOL.

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Posted 04/02/09 at 10:23:54 AM by Paul Lilly

The launch of a new free email service with the promise of a full gigabyte of storage space was no prank when Gmail was first made available on April 1, 2004, otherwise known as April Fools Day. Five years later, the wildly popular (among techies) webmail continues to benefit with frequent feature enhancements (Mail Goggles, anyone?). And five years later, Gmail is still in beta.

"Google Mail was born out of an experimental project created by a few engineers at Google five years ago," a Google spokesperson said. "From the beginning, we wanted Gmail to be a faster, cleaner, and more intuitive solutin for people's email."

Surprisingly, Gmail has yet to gain mass appeal among the general public, despite having long since abandoned its invite-only system for signing up. Accorded to Hitwise stats, Gmail only claimed 6 percent of the webmail market last year, compared to Yahoo Mail's 55 percent and Microsoft Windows Live at 26 percent. However, Google's Gmail service continues to grow, and to the tune of 43 percent last year according to comScore. 

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Posted 03/16/09 at 02:15:33 PM by Paul Lilly

In the past year, Linux has shown quite a bit of mainstream maturity, finally giving Windows users a viable alternative that is much more user friendly than has been the case in years past. And how appropriate, given that the Linux kernel has just turned 15, taking one step closer to becoming a young adult.

According to this log file, the Linux kernel reached version 1.0 on March 13, 1994, which means this past Friday the 13th officially marked its 15th birthday (some would argue that Linux was born in 1991, as suggested here). It was another two years before Tux the penguin was created, and in November 2000, the first Linux-powered cellphone was announced (IMT-2000 in Korea).

Any predictions on when or if Linux will usurp Windows as the mainstream OS of choice?

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Posted 10/03/08 at 10:21:42 AM by Paul Lilly

Don't own a DeLorean? Not to worry because you can still go back in time. Google turns a decade old this year, and to celebrate its 10th birthday, Google has brought back its oldest available search index.

"We had so much fun searching that we wanted to put this old index online for everyone to play with," blogs Shrin Oskoi, Product Manager. "We thought it'd be even cooler if we could actually see the full versions of the old web pages, so we worked with the Internet Archive to link to their cache of these pages from 2001."

Did you know that InfoGear put out an iPhone long before Apple turned the cellular landscape topsy turvy? And we bet you had no idea Michael Phelps invented a technique that allows imaging of biological processes in the organ systems of living individuals. Of course, that's Michael Phelps the accomplished scientist, not the record breaking Olympic swimmer.

Find anything interesting? Hit the jump and let us know.

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Posted 08/18/08 at 01:26:55 PM by Paul Lilly

What does Debian, one of the most popular and stable Linux operating systems, and myself have in common? We both celebrated a birthday on August 16th! But unlike myself, Debian has proved its maturity at 'only' age 15 and probably doesn't find fart jokes funny anymore. Debian's also been highly influential, as many of the popular GNU/Linux distributions you've read about or played with - including Ubuntu and Knoppix - are based on Debian..

To trace Debian's roots, you'd have to go back to 1993 when Ian Murdock, who is now VP of developer and and community marketing at Sun, first announced the OS. But why call it Debian? Because of a girl, of course! Ian combined the name of his then girlfriend (and now wife), Debora, with his own (Deb+Ian), the union of which gave birth to Debian.

Fun Facts

• All versions of Debian are named after characters from the film Toy Story
• There are always four versions 
• Least stable version of Debian is named after Sid, the emotionally unstable neighbor kid in Toy Story who enjoyed destroying toys

Here's wishing another 15 years!

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