13 geeky 13th anniversaries for Friday the 13th

13.11.2009
2009 marks the 13th anniversary for a slew of seminal tech industry events, so here on Friday the 13th, is a brief look back at developments both lucky and unlucky. (For our annual )

1. Motorola introduces the , the smallest and lightest mobile phone at the time at 3.1 ounces. 

2. IBM's for the first time, though Kasparov came back to win the best of the 6-game match.

3.  – the first overhaul of telecom law in 62 years -- threatened to introduce competition in the local loop, improving upon the original breakup of AT&T. , as a slew of venture backed competitive local exchange carriers largely took a beating by the established Bells, who mostly wound up merging with each other. Of course, years later technologies such as VoIP and wireless took the market in an entirely different direction.

4. Speaking of the Bells, SBC Communications and Pacific Telesis Group merged in a $16.7 billion cash/stock deal back in 1996, one in a string of deals that essentially led to most of the in one way or another.

5. is born, resulting in a routing and switching company that has proven to be a thorn in Cisco's side. Juniper was reborn this year, introducing the concept of " which involves the further opening up of the JUNOS operating system, among other things.