Lesson plan

General Magic

General Magic was an American software and early smart phone electronics company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat. Based in Mountain View, California, the company developed precursors to USB, software modems, small touchscreens, touchscreen controller Integrated circuits, ASICs, multimedia email, networked games, streaming TV, and early e-commerce notions. The company's main product was Magic Cap, the operating system used in 1994 by Sony's Magic Link and the Motorola Envoy PDAs. It also introduced the programming language Telescript. After announcing it would cease operations in 2002, it was liquidated in 2004 with Paul Allen purchasing many of its patents.

Back to article

Article summary

General Magic was an American software and early smart phone electronics company co-founded by Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld, and Marc Porat. Based in Mountain View, California, the company developed precursors to USB, software modems, small touchscreens, touchscreen controller Integrated circuits, ASICs, multimedia email, networked games, streaming TV, and early e-commerce notions. The company's main product was Magic Cap, the operating system used in 1994 by Sony's Magic Link and the Motorola Envoy PDAs. It also introduced the programming language Telescript. After announcing it would cease operations in 2002, it was liquidated in 2004 with Paul Allen purchasing many of its patents.

Key claims

  1. employees: 100 employees — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
  2. release date: 1996 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the employees is "100 employees". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. The record states that the release date is "1996". What evidence would count against this claim?
  4. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  5. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1377767505

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.