…2002: After Amazon, the Internet auction house Ebay now also offers the opportunity to offer used goods at a fixed price; So far only auctions could be held here. “With the new fixed-price format, we accommodate all those users who prefer quick trading at a fixed price. After the great success of the “Buy Now” option, it is only logical to now also offer a pure fixed-price format,” says Philipp Justus , CEO of Ebay Germany. It's hard to believe that the fixed price format on Ebay has been around for so many years.
…2003: Hardware-accelerated physics, but without an expensive additional card, is intended to be created by a collaboration between engine developer Havok and chip manufacturer Nvidia: The new Havok FX software is intended to be able to handle physics calculations via graphics processors that support Shader Model 3.0 (Geforce series 6 and 7). A first presentation is planned for the Game Developers Conference industry trade fair; The finished product is scheduled to appear in the summer. The Flagship Studios are relying on the new technology in Hellgate London: “With Havok FX we can venture into new types of visual effects that make Hellgate: London look more believable.” Looking back, this didn't help the Hellgate development studio, which had to close its doors, nor the market, because Havok was taken over by Intel and Nvidia swallowed Ageia in order to push Physx as a GPU-accelerated physics engine, among other things.
…2006: According to official Twitter-Blog became that day first tweet deposed by Twitter boss Jack Dorsey. Tweets are status messages from the Twitter service that are limited to SMS-like text lengths – English for chirping. Same You can also watch it from PC games hardware if you feel like it.
…2007: Apple's multimedia box Apple TV is being delivered in Germany. The entertainment center for 299 euros supports content in MPEG4 format, iTunes AAC and MP3 files as well as all common image formats and transmits them to the television via HDMI as a 720p HDTV signal. Using the fast Airport (W-LAN) with up to 108 MBit/s, Apple TV can automatically synchronize with a computer or wirelessly transmit the content of up to five additional computers to the television. The data is temporarily stored on the integrated 40GB hard drive. The program offering in Germany is initially very limited. Series and films in particular are only available in the USA at launch.