Stories about: VisiCalc

Pity the innovators -- always hounded by the jealous hordes who clamor for a sliver of their success. And so it goes with Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, though exactly who's the innovator in this scenario is a matter of some debate.

Long adept at staving off targeted threats to its core revenue streams, by 2013 Microsoft finally fell prey to the micromarket effect. Linux on increasingly popular UMPCs (ultramobile PCs), the rise of OpenOffice in developing nations, and the customized productivity app marketplace borne of Google's App Engine application-hosting service and its Salesforce and eBay acquisitions -- all chipped deeply enough into Microsoft's core customer base that the company finally had to loosen its grip on the computing industry's once-best legal license to print money, its Office and Windows software business.

Memories of your first computer can be priceless.

A look at the greatest all time Data Center controversies in the history of the networking industry.

Twenty-five years ago this week, IBM began selling its version of a new business tool called the PC, ushering in a new era of personal computing.

Within minutes of the official Microsoft announcement Thursday that Ray Ozzie has stepped into the role of chief software architect, his official biography at the company Web site was updated to reflect this latest development in what was already an illustrious IT career.

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates plans to move away from overseeing his company's day-to-day operations in July 2008 to spend more time working with his foundation.

Google's test release Tuesday of an online spreadsheet application is the highest-profile challenge yet to Microsoft's dominant Office software franchise. But it's hardly the first.

One question I'm asked fairly often is: what's the next killer app? The concept of the killer app has a powerful hold on our collective psychology. We want to believe that the entire market can be propelled forward by the next must-have technology that spawns a new generation of industry leaders and reshapes our lives. The spreadsheet, LANs, mobile phones, e-mail, the Web and so on. Absent the next killer app, the market stagnates.

In its first preview at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference last year, Windows XP successor Longhorn was shown running a 20-year-old copy of Visicalc. Ancient DOS software won't be the lone occupant of the Longhorn compatibility box. Win32, the Web, and even WinForms -- the .Net era's first GUI framework -- are all legacy APIs from Longhorn's perspective. Their replacements, Microsoft says, will jointly deliver "the best of Windows and the best of the Web."

A panel of programmers famous for applications such as VisiCalc and Excel and the Apple Computer Macintosh operating system mused on where programming has been and where it is going during a panel session at the Software Development Conference & Expo West 2004 event in Santa Clara, California this week.