http://www.microsoft.com/devnews/andy14.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996) |
Too intense. Far too intense.
The good doctor has sugarplums dancing in his head, along with URLs and ActiveX interfaces and PowerPoint slides and press conferences and HTML tags.
Moscone Center is a vast buzzing hive of activity, and Dr. GUI's synapses are overloaded by a flood of Internet development information, industry partnerships, product and technology demos, hallway conversations, and flights of digital imagination propelled by a double-caffeine, double-tall, double-fat, triple-whipped-cream, nutmeg-topped coffee confection from the Starbucks on the first floor of the San Francisco Hilton.
After a failed attempt to grab a few hours of sleep last night, your peripatetic practitioner propelled himself out of bed at just after seven in a barely successful attempt to catch the first event of the day under the Moscone big top: Bill Gates' keynote speech, in which Microsoft's chairman announced that the company was opening a string of digital bowling alley franchises on the Internet.
No? OK, so that was a lie. The Doc just wanted to see if you were paying attention. As far as Dr. GUI knows, Bill has never owned a bowling alley in his life.
Gates noted what he called the "Internet Gold Rush," characterized by high levels of investment and intense competition. "In these early days of gold-rush fever," he said, "the eventual winners are unclear, but there is a great set of opportunities for developers to create innovative software.
"We've got a number of challenges," Gates said. "We need to figure out the best business models for delivering content across the Internet, we need to understand the proper role of government, and we need to establish the principle of broad accessibility to the Internet. Then we need to establish the software and communications standards required, and make sure the bandwidth is there for continued explosive growth."
"The server also needs to be integrated with the Internet," Gates added. "We need to provide unified server management for the Web, for file sharing, for messaging, and for databases. We need to give you a single administrative interface for all those services, and we need to build distributed COM into the operating system."
Gates brought Steve Case, president and CEO of America Online (AOL), onto the stage to talk about Tuesday's announcement of a new partnership between Microsoft and AOL. "This is a major step forward for our relationship with Microsoft," said Case, "and it's based on our recognition that Microsoft has some very interesting new technologies for the Internet that we want to take advantage of."
Case noted that AOL access will be included as a standard part of Windows in the future, and that Microsoft's Internet Explorer will be the standard integrated Web browser for AOL. "America Online intends to take full advantage of ActiveX Technologies in its own software in the future," Case said. "This means that we will soon begin to seamlessly integrate the Internet Explorer for all of AOL's five million customers."
Finally, Case announced that AOL is setting up a "Software Greenhouse" for Internet developers. "The Greenhouse will provide support, capital, information, and collaboration to developers who are building AOL-based solutions and content to be delivered over AOL," said Case.
Dr. GUI, at the breaktime, staggered out into the foyer and tenuously made his way through the waves of developers besieging the coffee and snack tables. He cast a bleary and longing glance at the 50-gallon urns of coffee and the mountains of sugar-coated pastries lovingly displayed on long tables at the foot of the escalators, then shook his head regretfully. Instead, he filled the pockets of his lab coat with bananas, pears, and crunchy granola bars, and he headed up into the sunshine on his way to back to the keyboard in his hotel room.