Category Archives: Information Technology

The World’s Oldest dot.com Address is 30 Years Old

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Peter Lobner

We’ve come a long way since the first Internet dot-com address, symbolics.com, was registered on 15 March 1985 by Massachusetts-based computer company Symbolics, which  was one of the original makers of computer workstations. The Lisp computer language that Symbolics developed eventually faded in popularity. Symbolics  filed for bankruptcy in 1993, but the company and its symbolics.com website continue to exist today. Read more at the following link:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/13/technology/symbolics-com-oldest-dot-com/

It wasn’t until 1989 that the basis for the world-wide web was created by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in a proposal that originally was meant to create a more effective  communication system at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use hypertext “to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will.” Berners-Lee built and tested the first website around 20 December 1990 and reported about the project on the newsgroup alt.hypertext on 7 August 1991.

First www site

You can read more about Berners-Lee’s first website, and several other early web sites, at the following link:

http://money.cnn.com/gallery/technology/innovation/2014/03/09/website-pioneers/index.html

35 Years Since the Introduction of Personal Computers With Word Processing and Spreadsheet Apps

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Peter Lobner

It’s hard to remember how we did our jobs before the introduction of the personal computer and several “killer apps” in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It’s now 35 years since the introduction of personal computers with word processing and spreadsheet functionality; and that was just the beginning.

In June 1979, MicroPro International began selling its CP/M word processing product, WordStar. Its competitors at the time were proprietary word processing systems from IBM, Xerox and Wang Laboratories. WordStar was the first microcomputer word processor to offer WYSIWYG functionality.

wordstar1

On 17 Oct 1979, VisiCalc was released for the Apple II, marking the birth of the spreadsheet for personal computers. In the past 35 years, the spreadsheet has become the now-ubiquitous tool used to compile everything from grocery lists to Fortune 500 company accounts. VisiCalc is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool, and is considered the Apple II’s killer app.

Visicalc

Other “killer apps” that changed our lives since personal computers became an indispensible office fixture are briefly described on the website: “Peter Coffees 25 Killer Apps of All Time”. Check it out at the following link:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Peter-Coffees-25-Killer-Apps-of-All-Time/1

How does your “top 25” list compare?