Originally posted by Wally Bahny on the TechRepublic website.

Network World recently released its list of the 25 geekiest 25th anniversaries. The following items are my 12 favorites from that list.

1.Back to the Future
One of the greatest action/sci-fi franchises of all time, Back to the Future was launched and set (to start with) in 1985. Back to the Future was the highest grossing film of the year and won numerous awards. While it’s still five years away, we have yet to see any evidence of the flying cars that will be available by October 21, 2015. You know I’m waiting for mine. Also, who can’t find a use for a Mr. Fusion?

2.Apple LaserWriter
The first ever laser printer for Macintosh computers, the LaserWriter ran at 8 ppm and printed at a resolution of 300 dpi. This printer cost $6,995 back then; are there any laser printers that cost that much now? I haven’t seen many over $699.50. A printer of this quality would cost about $69.95 today — if you could get one that bad.

3.Amiga 1000
With servers nowadays capable of supporting 256 GB of RAM (and desktops not too far behind), the Commodore Amiga 1000’s 256 KB is almost laughable. However, with a price tag of $1,595, the Amiga was a fairly inexpensive computer at the time. Also, as a veritable media powerhouse (at the time), the Amiga was very popular for video editing and production. It could support as many as 16.8 million colors with a more expensive chipset.

4.Blockbuster Video
Catching on to the booming VHS market, Texas start-up Blockbuster Video has covered the United States and several other countries in the ensuing years, making video rentals easily accessible for nearly everyone. The doors first opened on October 26th, and the first late fee was collected two days later.

5.Buckminsterfullerene C60
Better known as Buckyballs, and named after famous architect Buckminster Fuller, Buckminsterfullerine is a spherical arrangement of 60 carbon atoms. These atoms are arranged in such a way that they directly match the layout of a common soccer ball (pentagons surrounded by hexagons).

6.New Coke
The New Coke sounds great! Well, it wasn’t. Within two days of its April 23rd release, 80% of Americans noticed the change. Many of the most vocal who weren’t happy were in the southeast, where Coke is traditionally created and bottled and is considered a part of the region’s identity. By July, Coca-Cola had returned to the Coke Classic formula.

7.Cray-2
The Cray-2 supercomputer was one of the first supercomputers to use 100% integrated circuits (ICs), packed tightly onto circuit boards, which were then stacked until they were about three inches thick. Since the ICs were so tight, Cray also had to submerse the cards in Fluorinert, an inert fluorocarbon liquid. The Cray-2 was the top supercomputer — capable of 1.9 GFLOPS — for five years until it was bumped off by the ETA-10G in 1990. To compare, a modern ATI Radeon R800 GPU runs at over 3000 GFLOPS.

8.Discovery Channel
One of nearly every geek’s favorite TV channels, the Discovery Channel was launched as a joint venture between BBC and American television investors. What geek would be complete without MythBusters, Storm Chasers, or any of the channel’s other high-quality shows?

9.Dot-com
1985 also marks the very first dot-com registrations. Beginning with Symbolics.com (which is now a personal blog about business, domain names, and life in general and very proud of its status as “first”), several more dot-com domain names were registered that year. Just think: It was more than a year before the dot-com boom officially started.

10.The Jetsons returns
Every kid (or kid-at-heart) in the 80s remembers The Jetsons — it is one of my favorite cartoons of all time. The show’s new production run started in 1985 and yielded about 50 of the show’s 75 total episodes (the other 25 or so were created in the 1960s). For anyone not familiar with The Jetsons, the show is set in the unspecified future, where humans own robot housemaids, drive flying cars, and live in houses on stilts in the sky. We might even see a live-action The Jetsons sometime in the future.

11.Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
While not the first well-accepted game console, the NES literally blew the forerunner, Atari 2600, out of the water when it came out in 1985. With 8-bit graphics and shipping with the all-time favorite Super Mario Brothers, the NES became the best-selling console game system of its time. The NES held nearly the entire market until the early 1990s when Sega Genesis and then the Super Ninendo eclipsed its popularity.

12.Microsoft Windows 1.0
Windows 1.0 was a 16-bit operating environment that was capable of multi-tasking in a graphical user interface. Without Windows 1.01, released in 1985 after a two-year wait (Microsoft never did wring the kinks out of its development cycles), we wouldn’t have such gems as Windows 3.1 (released later that decade), Windows 95, Windows XP, and now Windows 7.

The other 13 geek anniversaries on the list

• The release of Citizen’s AM/FM watch
• AOL
• British Telecom starts phase out of its red telephone kiosks
• Chess’N Math Association
• Richard Stallman publishes his GNU Manifesto and founds the Free Software Foundation
• TV show MacGyver debuts
• MIT Media Lab is founded
• Steve Jobs founds NeXT, Inc.
• Sinclair-C5
• Discovery of the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic
• Unabomber Ted Kaczynski sends four bombs throughout the year
• Broderbund releases Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
• Scientific paper published describing the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica

Missing from the list

One item that I think should have made the list but didn’t is the release of another pinnacle movie in geekdom: The Goonies. The film depicted every kid’s dream: finding a treasure map and chasing after the treasure. Starring some now-well known actors, including Sean Astin (Samwise from The Lord of the Rings) and Josh Brolin (title character from W.), the movie is just as much fun to watch now as it was when I was a kid. And, since these kids are just like many of us were at that age, it’s not hard to imagine that they would have similar careers to you and me.

Geek anniversaries

What do you think of the list? Did Network World get it right, or did they leave off anything significant? Also, what’s your favorite geek anniversary from 1985? Share your thoughts in the discussion.

Wally Bahny is a Network Administrator in the Healthcare industry. He is also interested in many geeky things, including science fiction, gaming, and technology. Read his full bio and profile.

Guest post by Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk of BBR Marketing.

My client base consists primarily of attorneys and accountants. This is not an early adopter group of most new technology, and for good reason. They are saddled with all sorts of regulations that most businesses are not, and have to worry about anything they say being construed as advice.

Also, in their defense, Twitter was not marketed very well as a business tool in its early stages. Twitter is still seen by many as an egocentric medium where people are always posting about what they had for lunch or how great (or horrible) their date was last night.

With that said, it’s time for my lovely professional service providers to quit rolling their eyes every time I mention Twitter in a presentation or meeting. Social media is here to stay, and Twitter is rapidly becoming (or has already become) an important marketing tactic that everyone should have in his or her toolbox.

When I read this article The Pope's Twitter Crusade, I wasn’t sure whether to gape in surprise or be impressed. Either way, when the Pope is on Twitter, and encouraging his priests to reach out to parishioners with tweets, it has definitely hit mainstream.

So, you say, “I just don’t have the time to learn it or to ‘tweet’ all the time.” The beauty is that you don’t have to. First of all, it’s incredibly easy to set up a page and join the Twitter universe. As Geico says, “Even a caveman can do it.”

Just click on “Join the Conversation,” enter your name and password, and you are up and running. Look up people and companies that you are interested in and follow them. Post a “Follow me on Twitter” link on your Website so visitors can easily follow you. Add your Twitter link to your outgoing email signature. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can build a following with little effort.

So now you are up and running, but don’t know what to say. I’m sure you read particular trade publications or Websites that contain information of interest to you and your industry. Post a link to the articles you think your followers would be interested in reading. Post links to your own articles (you are writing articles, right?) to reach an entirely different audience. Re-tweet interesting content from those you are following. You’ll find it’s rather easy to find things to post, and you won’t be stuck with “not sure what 2 say, but going 2 post this anyway” sort of babble.

TIP: Go to www.bitly.com to shorten URLs for posting. It will take up less of your 140-word count, and also show you which articles are the most popular and getting the most readership and re-tweets.

So, now for the main objection, “I don’t have the time!” Admittedly, Twitter can be a serious time-sucker, but if you do it right, you can get the benefits from creating your own online community without it taking hours of your day. To misquote Apple, “There’s a Website for that.” There are many sites – both paid and free – that allow you to schedule your Twitter posts, so you don’t have to be on there all the time. www.hootsuite.com and www.SocialOomph.com are both good ones, and they are free. By using one of these Tweet aggregators, you can dedicate an hour or so a week and get all the benefits of Twitter without spending massive amounts of time on the sites. 

So what are you waiting for? Dip your toe into the Twitter water and see how you like it. You’ll soon be an expert with hundreds of followers, people that you would have never met in any other way. Come on in, the water’s fine!

Oh, and follow me on Twitter, and let me know how you like it.

BBR Marketing is the brainchild of Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk. She has nearly 20 years of marketing experience working with a diverse range of industries and people, most recently as the marketing director for a mid-sized accounting firm in Atlanta. Her creative thinking and distinctive approach allows her to bring unique ideas to her clients that differentiate them from their competition and give them the tools they need to reach their audiences.

Just because you couldn’t venture out to New York for this year’s LegalTech event doesn’t mean you can’t participate!  Here at eMag, we want you to know we’re thinking of you while you’re stuck at your desk, following the #LTNY tweets on Twitter.  It’s not always fun knowing everyone you chat with on Twitter is walking around the exhibit hall, getting nifty give-aways and possibly winning cool prizes.  Well guess what, now eMag is giving you the chance to win a prize straight from the exhibit hall floor, while still comfortably seated at your desk!  We are conducting a Twitter contest that will have an ‘at-home’ winner along with an exhibit hall winner.

To participate, send one of your colleagues in attendance or someone that you chat with via Twitter to our booth.  When they report who sent them, both your name and that of the person you sent will be entered into our Twitter-only contest.  The more people you send, the greater your chances of winning.  On the final day, we will draw the winners of the prize bags.  Each prize bag is chock full of fantastic goodies, including an iPod Shuffle!  So start recruiting your at-show friends for this contest!

Ashley, our resident Barker's Beauty, showcasing some of the goodies.

Guest post by Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk of BBR Marketing.

Most law firms and other professional service firms make every effort possible to acquire and maintain healthy client relationships. Are you giving the same sort of attention to your staff so they will be your ambassadors instead of detractors? Do you really know what your employees are saying about your firm amongst themselves and with your clients? It’s time to find out.

Your employees are a vital part of your service delivery. Since you don’t sell a tangible product, you and your staff are the face of your firm. Everyone on your staff interacts with people every day, and they all make an impression on the people they meet. This is doubly important for professional services firms since your people not only deliver your product, they are your product.

By engaging your staff in a meaningful dialogue about their role in your firm, how it’s managed, and how it could be improved, you will gain valuable knowledge that will help you continue to deliver the best client service possible.

But make sure you do this in a way that will make your employees feel safe about sharing honest feedback; otherwise it’s an exercise in futility. You can do this in a couple of different ways, and a combination of both is usually best.

Surveys
There are many different free or cheap online survey tools that can use. The advantage is they are easy to deliver and return, and can aggregate the answers for you in a way that can keep the names of the respondents confidential. However, make sure you inform your employees about how these surveys are administered and reviewed, otherwise they may suspect that their answers can be tied back to them. Everyone fears repercussions in this process, so allay their fears as much as you can.

Interviews
These can be done in person or on the phone, and will yield more in-depth results. Nearly all of the time, it’s important to have an outside, trusted vendor help with this process, otherwise, your staff will not feel comfortable being truly open with their comments. The advantage of this is not only more honest feedback, but a skilled interviewer can ask follow-up questions that will delve deeper into issues that need to be addressed. The downside is they tend to be a bit more expensive, but the information gleaned usually far outweighs the financial investment.

If you’ve never surveyed your employees, it’s best to start with a personal interview, so you have a baseline from which to judge improvement initiatives. Then you may want to send out surveys on an annual basis after that. I recommend you conduct live interviews ever three years or so to make sure you are still getting frank feedback.

Make sure you ask combination of open- and closed-ended questions, and don’t make it too long. Ultimately, you want to ask your staff a few key questions, so you can uncover valuable information that will help you create a work environment that is healthy and conducive to growth. It’s really an easy process, and one that always uncovers valuable, and sometimes unexpected, information.

BBR Marketing is the brainchild of Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk. She has nearly 20 years of marketing experience working with a diverse range of industries and people, most recently as the marketing director for a mid-sized accounting firm in Atlanta. Her creative thinking and distinctive approach allows her to bring unique ideas to her clients that differentiate them from their competition and give them the tools they need to reach their audiences.