Multimedia Professional

Posted on 2006/02/06 14:25:54 (February 2006) by john.

I invented the Internet!

Do you remember the first decent sized piece of software you ever wrote?

I was sitting here thinking that very thought just now. I had dabbled a bit with some rather awful games
- but those aside - the first piece of software I wrote of any real note was my A level project, back
when I was 17, in 1994/1995.

I recall at the time having a little difficulty explaining what exactly my project was. It was this program
which let you create and playback these interactive multimedia presentations. You could create a number
of pages, and in each page you could display a mixture of text, pictures and simple animations. You could
also put on buttons which let you navigate between pages, in a freeform structure - each page had a
name and the button would refer to that.

11 or more years later I find myself working on BML, the Japanese standard for interactive television.
I have spent the day thinking about how to abstract a BML display. Basically it is a number of pages
made up of text, pictures and simple animations, with buttons for navigation.

So you can see my train of thought here - basically I have come full circle haven't I?

Then it occurred to me that my project was in fact a form of hypertext. Lo and behold, I invented the
web! Albeit after it had already been invented by some other guy at that time. Still though, it was before I had ever used the web.

Did it in 1990 in Hong Kong, free local telephone calls no cost to "screw" around for free with WAN's. 5 PC's "linked", MOD employee at the time they got the patent, I got £25.00. I learned my lesson!.

Posted by Dave at 2007/10/02 01:03:57.

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