Articles
February 17, 2009
# The Stimulus: Washington Betting on Broadband
There is a bet made this week, and the bet is the stimulus: the $787 billion package that President Obama signed on Tuesday. The bet is the largest in American history, and the history is the crisis: the worst recession since the Depression. The bet is the broadband: the $7.2 billion for the rural and underserved, the argument that connectivity is infrastructure. The stimulus is the February 2009 story, and the story is the lesson: the Washington that bet on broadband, the broadband that will be built, the digital economy that will be watched.
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January 7, 2009
# The Block: Bitcoin's First Step
This week, a ghost built the first brick of a new money. On Saturday, January 3, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the genesis block, block zero, of a currency called Bitcoin. The block carried a headline from The Times about the Chancellor on the brink of a second bailout, a protest and a proof. The first fifty coins were created, and the coins had no price. The block is the January 2009 story, and the story is the lesson: the first brick was laid quietly, and almost no one noticed.
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December 29, 2008
The Fall: Tech and the Crash of 2008
The worst market year since the Depression nearly destroyed the technology industry, and in the wreckage the seeds of the next era were planted.
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November 3, 2008
The Cloud: Microsoft Answers Amazon
Ray Ozzie announced Windows Azure at the developer conference, and the software giant finally answered the cloud question.
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October 31, 2008
The Paper: The Birth of Bitcoin
An unknown author published the design for a digital currency that needs no banks, and the paper is the most radical answer to the crisis.
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September 8, 2008
The Browser: Google's Chrome
Google launched its own browser last week, and the search giant took on Microsoft where it lives: the door to the web.
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August 26, 2008
The Hundred Million: Facebook's Milestone
Facebook passed 100 million active users this month, and the four year old network became the largest social platform on the planet.
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July 14, 2008
The Opening: The App Store Goes Live
The App Store opened last week with 500 apps and more than 10 million downloads in the first weekend, and the mobile economy was born.
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June 19, 2008
The Record: Firefox 3's Download Day
Firefox 3 was downloaded eight million times in 24 hours this week, and the open source browser set a world record the giants could not match.
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May 15, 2008
The Services: HP Buys EDS
HP agreed to buy EDS for 13.9 billion dollars on Tuesday, and the hardware giant made the biggest bet in the industry on services.
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