Americas

  • United States
pmcnamara
News Editor

Palm Pilot turns 10

Opinion
Mar 30, 20061 min
Data Center

USA Today columnist Kevin Maney chronicles the birth of the Palm Pilot — 10 years old this week — through the recollections of its early principals, Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinsky. Central to the tale is a little white lie — OK, a whopper — that snowed a venture capitalist and eventually created a technological sea change.

The column was gaining wide circulation here in the office today because in it Dubinsky offers a tip of the cap to one of Network World’s flagship events, DEMO: “They first showed their Pilot at the February 1996 DEMO conference, where it stole the show. That was, Dubinsky says, ‘The moment I felt like, wow, this is going to work. People are going to buy it.’ “

Regular DEMO attendees will tell you they’ve seen many such moments there.

pmcnamara
News Editor

In addition to my editing duties, I have written Buzzblog since January, 2006 and wrote the 'Net Buzz column in Network World's dearly departed print edition for 13 years. Feel free to e-mail me at pmcnamara@nww.com.