Podcasts about softkey

Kevin O'Leary Kevin O'Leary was born to a middle class family in 1954. The combination of Kevin's mother's family heritage as merchants and his father's Irish charisma truly meant that O'Leary was born for business. Kevin learned most of his business intuition from his mother. She taught him key business and financial insights from an early age. These became Kevin's core philosophies, and the pillars upon which he would one day build his empire. After getting his MBA, he founded Special Event Television, an independent production company producing such original sports programming as The Original Six, Don Cherry's Grapevine and Bobby Orr and the Hockey Legends. In 1986, O'Leary founded SoftKey Software Products (later called The Learning Company), the first software company to apply the principles of consumer goods marketing to the software industry. SoftKey grew quickly as the price of personal computers declined, and millions of American families began to buy software for education and entertainment. In 2003, O'Leary co-founded Storage Now, a leading developer of climate controlled storage facilities. Today, O'Leary leads the O'Leary Financial Group – a group of companies that includes O'Shares ETFs, O'Leary Publishing and a continually growing roster of other businesses. He is also the founder and Chief Sommelier of O'Leary Fine Wines, an award-winning wine label, as well as a member of Boston's 107-year old Hamilton Trust. In addition to Shark Tank, O'Leary co-hosted Discovery Channel's Project Earth television series that explored the financial implications of global climate change, and he is a regular contributor on CNBC. Kevin is an avid guitarist, photographer and author. He has written three bestselling books, including Cold Hard Truth on Men, Women and Money, and most recently, Cold Hard Truth on Family, Kids and Money. Screen Heat Miami Screen Heat Miami (SHM) is hosted by veteran Miami based producers Kevin Sharpley and JL Martinez and each week covers the latest trends in the film, tv, and entertainment industry, including interviews with global and local industry leaders, all told from a "Miami" point of view.

We've covered Xerox PARC a few times - and one aspect that's come up has been the development of the Bravo word processor from Butler Lampson, Charles Simonyi, and team. Simonyi went on to work at Microsoft and spearheaded the development of Microsoft Word. But Bravo was the first WYSIWYG tool for creating documents, which we now refer to as a word processor. That was 1974.  Something else we've covered happened in 1974, the release of the Altair 8800. One aspect of the Altair we didn't cover is that Michael Shrayer was a tinkerer who bought an Alatir and wrote a program that allowed him to write manuals. This became the Electric Pencil. It was text based though and not a WYSIWYG like Bravo was. It ran in 8k of memory and would be ported to Intel 8080, Zylog Z-80, and other processors over the years leading into the 80s. But let's step back to the 70s for a bit. Because bell bottoms.  The Altair inspired a clone called the IMSAI 8080 in 1975. The direct of marketing, Seymour Rubenstein started tinkering with the idea of a word processor. He left IMSAI and by 1978, put together $8,500 and started a company called MicroPro International. He convinced Rob Barnaby, the head programmer at IMSAI, to join him. They did market research into the tools being used by IBM and Xerox. They made a list of what was needed and got to work. The word processor grew. They released their word processor, which they called WordStar, for CP/M running on the Intel 8080. By then it was 1979 and CP/M was a couple years old but already a pretty dominant operating system for microcomputers. Software was a bit more expensive at the time and WordStar sold for $495. At the time, you had to port your software to each OS running on each hardware build. And the code was in assembly so not the easiest thing in the world. This meant they wanted to keep the feature set slim so WordStar could run on as many platforms as possible. They ran on the Osborne 1 portable and with CP/M support they became the standard. They could wrap words automatically to the next line.  Imagine that.  They ported the software to other platforms. It was clear there was a new OS that they needed to run on. So they brought in Jim Fox, who ported WordStar to run on DOS in 1981. They were on top of the world. Sure, there was Apple Write, Word, WordPerfect, and Samna, but WordStar was it. Arthur C Clarke met Rubenstein and Barnaby and said they "made me a born-again writer, having announced my retirement in 1978, I now have six books in the works, all through WordStar." He would actually write dozens more works.  They released the third version in 1982 and quickly grew into the most popular, dominant word processor on the market. The code base was getting a little stale and so they brought in Peter Mierau to overhaul it for WordStar 4. The refactor didn't come at the best of times. In software, you're the market leader until… You thought I was going to say Microsoft moved into town? Nope, although Word would eventually dominate word processing. But there was one more step before computing got there.  Next, along with the release of the IBM PC, WordPerfect took the market by storm. They had more features and while WordStar was popular, it was the most pirated piece of software at the time. This meant less money to build features. Like using the MS-DOS keyboard to provide more productivity tools. This isn't to say they weren't making money. They'd grown to $72M in revenue by 1984. When they filed for their initial public offering, or IPO, they had a huge share of the word processing market and accounted for one out of every ten dollars spent on software.  WordStar 5 came in 1989 and as we moved into the 90s, it was clear that WordStar 2000 had gone nowhere so WordStar 6 shipped in 1990 and 7 in 1991. The buying tornado had slowed and while revenues were great, copy-protecting disks were slowing the spread of the software.  Rubinstein is commonly credited with creating the first end-user software licensing agreement, common with nearly every piece of proprietary software today. Everyone was pirating back then so if you couldn't use WordStar, move on to something you could steal. You know, like WordPerfect. MultiMate, AmiPro, Word, and so many other tools. Sales were falling. New features weren't shipping.  One pretty big one was support for Windows. By the time Windows support shipped, Microsoft had released Word, which had a solid two years to become the new de facto standard. SoftKey would acquire the company in 1994, and go on to acquire a number of other companies until 2002 when they were acquired. But by then WordStar was so far forgotten that no one was sure who actually owned the WordStar brand.  I can still remember using WordStar. And I remember doing work when I was a consultant for a couple of authors to help them recover documents, which were pure ASCII files or computers that had files in WordStar originally but moved to the WSD extension later. And I can remember actually restoring a BAK file while working at the computer labs at the University of Georgia, common in the DOS days. It was a joy to use until I realized there was something better. Rubinstein went on to buy another piece of software, a spreadsheet. He worked with another team, got a little help from Barnaby and and Fox and eventually called it Surpass, which was acquired by Borland, who would rename it to Quattro Pro. That spreadsheet borrowed the concept of multiple sheets in tabs from Boeing Calc, now a standard metaphor. Amidst lawsuits with Lotus on whether you could patent how software functions, or the UX of software, Borland sold Lotus to Novell during a time when Novell was building a suite of products to compete with Microsoft. We can thank WordStar for so much. Inspiring content creators and creative new features for word processing. But we also have to remember that early successes are always going to inspire additional competition. Any company that grows large enough to file an initial public offering is going to face barbarian software vendors at their gates. When those vendors have no technical debt, they can out-deliver features. But as many a software company has learned, expanding to additional products by becoming a portfolio company is one buffer for this. As is excellent execution.  The market was WordStar's to lose. And there's a chance that it was lost the second Microsoft pulled in Charles Simonyi, one of the original visionaries behind Bravo from Xerox PARC. But when you have 10% of all PC software sales it seems like maybe you got outmaneuvered in the market. But ultimately the industry was so small and so rapidly changing in the early 1980s that it was ripe for disruption on an almost annual basis. That is, until Microsoft slowly took the operating system and productivity suite markets and .doc, .xls, and .ppt files became the format all other programs needed to support.  And we can thank Rubinstein and team for pioneering what we now call the software industry. He started on an IBM 1620 and ended his career with WebSleuth, helping to usher in the search engine era. Many of the practices he put in place to promote WordStar are now common in the industry. These days I talk to a dozen serial entrepreneurs a week. They could all wish to some day be as influential as he. 

This week, the boys are taking a look at CF's latest works with Anthology Editions...but talking new CF means talking old CF, and talking old CF means talking legacy, impact, the whole deal. Then things take a turn...for the randy!

Kevin O'Leary is the Chairman of O’Shares ETFs and Beanstox Inc. He co-founded the technology firm SoftKey – which was later acquired for more than $4 billion dollars. He has since launched O’Leary Funds (an investment fund company), O’Leary Fine Wines, and Beanstox Inc.Beanstox: https://beanstox.com/Twitter: @KevinOlearyTV Instagram: @KevinOlearyTV

The Oregon Trail is a 2100 plus mile wagon route that stretched from the Missouri River to settleable lands in Oregon. Along the way it cuts through Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Idaho as well. After parts were charted by Lewis and Clark from 1804 to 1806, it was begun by fur traders in 1811 but fin the 1830s Americans began to journey across the trail to settle the wild lands of the Pacific Northwest. And today, Interstates 80 and 84 follow parts of it. But the game is about the grueling journey that people made from 1824 and on, which saw streams of wagons flow over the route in the 1840s. And over the next hundred years it became a thing talked about in textbooks but difficult to relate to in a land of increasing abundance.  So flash forward to 1971. America is a very different place than those wagonloads of humans would have encountered in Fort Boise or on the Boeman Trail, both of which now have large cities named after them. Instead, in 1971, NPR produced their first broadcast. Amtrak was created in the US. Greenpeace was founded. Fred Smith created Federal Express. A Clockwork Orange was released. And Don Rawitch wrote The Oregon Trail while he was a senior at Carleton College to help teach an 8th grade history class in Northfield, Minnesota.  It's hard to imagine these days, but this game was cutting edge at the time. Another event in 1971: the Intel 4004 microprocessor comes along, which will change everything in computing in just 10 short years. In 1971, when Apollo 14 landed on the moon, the computer was made of hand-crafted coils and chips and a 10 key pad was used to punch in code. When Ray Tomlinson invented email that year, computers weren't interactive. When IBM invented the floppy disk that year, no one would have guessed they would some day be used to give school children dissentary all across the world. When he first wrote OREGON, as the game was originally known, Don was using a time shared HP 2100 minicomputer at Pillsbury (yes, the Pillsbury of doughboy fame who makes those lovely, flaky biscuits). THE HP WAS running Time-Share BASIC and Don roped in his roommates, Paul Dillenberger and Bill Heinemann to help out. Back then, the computer wrote output to teletype and took data in using tape terminals. But the kids loved it. They would take a wagon from Independence, Missouri to Willamette Valley, Oregon - making a grueling journey in a covered wagon in 1848. And they might die of dissentary, starvation, mountain fever or any other ailment Rawitch could think of.  Gaming on paper tape was awkward, but the kids were inspired. They learned about computers and the history of how the West was settled at the same time. When the class was over, Don printed the code for the game, probably not thinking much would happen with it after that. But then he got hired by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium, or MECC, in 1974. Back in the 60s and 70s, Minnesota was a huge hub of computing. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves had offices in the state, and early pioneers of mainframes like Honeywell, Unisys, ERA (and so Control Data Corporation and Cray from there), and IBM, all did a lot of work in the state. The state had funded MECC to build educational software for classrooms following the successes at TIES, or the Total Information for Educational Systems which had brought a time-sharing service on a HP 2000 along with training, and software (which they still do) to Minnesota schools. From there, the state created MECC to create software for schools.  Don dug that code from 1971 back up and typed it back into the time sharing computers at MECC. He tweaked it a little and made it available on the CDC Cyber 70 at MECC and before you knew it, thousands of people were playing his game. By 1978 he'd publish the source code in Creative Computing magazine as the Oregon Trail. And then JP O'Malley would modify the basic programming to run on an Apple II and the Apple Pugetsound Program Library Exchange would post the game on their user group.  The Oregon Trail 2 would come along that year as well and by 1980, MECC would release it along with better graphics as a part of an Elementary Series of educational titles - but the graphics got better with a full release as a standalone game in 1985. Along the way it had gotten ported for the Atari in 1983 and the Commodore 64 in 1984. But the 1985 version is the one we played in my school. We loved getting to play on the computers in school. The teachers seemed to mostly love getting a break as we were all silent while playing, until we lost one of our party - and then we'd laugh and squeal at the same time! We'd buy oxen, an extra yoke for our wagon, food, bullets, and then we'd set off on our journey to places many of us had never heard of. We'd get diseases, break limbs, get robbed, and watch early versions of cut scenes in 8-bit graphics. And along the way, we learned.   We learned about a city called Independence, Missouri. And that life was very different in 1848. We learned about history. We learned about game mechanics. We started with $800.  We learned about bartering and how carpenters were better at fixing wagon wheels than bankers were. We tried to keep our party alive and we learned that it's a good idea to save a little money to ferry across rivers. We learned the rudimentariness of shooting in games, as we tried to kill a bear here and there. We learned that rabbits didn't give us much meat. We learned to type BANG and WHAM fast so we could shoot animals and later we learned to aim with arrow keys and fire with a space bar. The bison moved slow and gave more meat than the 100 pounds you could carry back to your wagon. So we shot them. We learned carpenters could fix wheels and to conserve enough money to ferry your wagon so you didn't sink or have one of your party drown.  We learned that you got double the points for playing the carpenter and triple for playing the farmer. We wanted to keep our family alive not only because we got to name them (often making fun of our friends in class) but also because they gave us more points. As did the possessions we were able to keep.  By 1990 with a changing tide, the game came to DOS and by 1991 it was ported to the Mac. Mouse support was added in 1992 and it came to Windows 3 in 1993. Softkey released The Oregon Trail: Classic Edition. And  by 1995 The Oregon Trail made up a third of the MECC budget, raking in $30 million per year, and helped fund other titles. Oregon Trail II came in 95, 3 in 97, 4 in 99, and 5 made it into the new millennia in 2001. All being released for Windows and Mac. And 10 years later it would come to the modern era of console gaming, making it to the Wii and 3DS.  And you can learn all of what we learned by playing the game on Archive.org ( https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990 ). The Internet Archive page shows the 1990 version that was ported and made available for the Apple II, Macintosh, Windows, and DOS. The Internet Archive page alone has had nearly 7.2 million views. But the game has sold over 65 million copies as well.  The Oregon Trail is beloved by many. I see shirts with You Have Died of DIssentary and card versions of the game in stores. I've played in Facebook games and mobile versions. It's even been turned into plays and parodied in TV shows. That wagon is one of the better known symbols of all time in gaming lore. And we still use many of the game mechanics introduced then, in games from Dragon Warrior to the trading and inventory system inspiring the World of Warcraft.  We can thank The Oregon Trail for giving our teachers a beak from teaching us in school and giving us a break from learning. Although I suspect we learned plenty. And we can thank MECC for continuing the fine tradition of computer science in Minnesota. And we can thank Don for inspiring millions, many of which went on to create their own games. And thank you, listener, for tuning in to this episode of The History of Computing Podcast. We are so so so lucky to have you. Have a great day! And keep in mind, a steady pace will get you to the end of the trail before the snows come in, with plenty of time to take ferries across the rivers. Rest when you need it. And no, you probably aren't likely to beat my high score. 

http://aboutJorge.com - Welcome to Expect Success at georgebalek.com!Now, in addition to listening to our podcast, you can also view the video format on youtube at: http://georgetube.comSubscribe to my YouTube: http://georgebalek.com/youtube Here is My Podcast Page: http://buzzsprout.com/112740Kevin O'Leary is a Canadian businessman, author and television personality. He co-founded O'Leary Funds and SoftKey. From 2004 to 2014, he appeared on various Canadian television shows, including the business news programmes SqueezePlay and The Lang and O'Leary Exchange, as well as the reality television shows Dragons Den and Redemption Inc. In 2008, he appeared on Discovery Channel's Project Earth. Since 2009, he has appeared on Shark Tank, the American equivalent of Dragons Den. Today Kevin shares with you a philosophy I personally believe 100% in regarding why early retirement does NOT work. Listen to Kevin.For more from Kevin O'Leary, simply search youtube and go to his website kevinoleary.com. His best selling book Cold Hard Truth On Men, Women, and Money, is available at his website and/or amazon.com.Cold Hard Truth On Men, Women, and Money: https://amzn.to/2VZl5ApAs the late great Jim Rohn use to say, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Today you have been hanging out with Kevin O'Leary. Keep up the momentum and subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss another episode. Newsletter: http://georgebalek.com/newsletterIf you enjoyed this episode please share it on social media and send it to someone that could use extra motivation in their life. Do you have any thoughts or comments? Please visit: http://GeorgeBalek.comPlease take 60 seconds to leave an HONEST review for the Expect Success Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely important for me to make this show better. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/george-baleks-podcast/id1261439218Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes so that you get updates and new episodes downloaded to your phone automatically. Subscribe via iTunes: https://tinyurl.com/ydb4qgxtSubscribe via Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=147988&refid=stpr Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed) http://www.buzzsprout.com/112740.rssWant to find out more about how I make a full-time internet income from home and how you can too. Visit: http://aboutJorge.comStart your blog: http://georgebalek.com/startablog ( Help Included ) Read my blog: http://aboutJorge.com Follow me on Facebook: http://georgebalek.com/facebook Follow me on Twitter: http://georgebalek.com/twitter Subscribe to me on YouTube: http://georgebalek.com/youtubeGears I use to film my videos Movavi&

Giants, Ram Castillo here. This is episode #68! Today’s guest is a Canadian businessman, author and TV personality from Shark Tank USA. He co-founded the technology firm SoftKey – which was later acquired for more than $4 billion dollars. He has since launched O’Leary Funds (an investment fund company), O’Leary Fine Wines – and a best-selling book series on financial literacy which covers everything you need to know about making, saving, and growing money. He’s even stepped his foot into the world of politics (which we briefly talk about).   He has a current investment portfolio of 29 companies (possibly more from when I interviewed him 2 months ago to now). He first learnt about entrepreneurship at a young age after his step-father advised him to not become a full-time photographer – a story I won’t spoil as our guest delivers it so well. And now he is on a mission to educate the next generation of entrepreneurs to truly succeed. Some of the topics we spoke about include: The common mistakes he sees people aged 20 - 35 make with their money His advice for going ‘all in’ professionally in your creative craft The best and worst investments he has made The three common attributes all successful pitches have on Shark Tank   So if you’re thinking about making a success out of your creative craft – or are looking for ways to grow your financial freedom through running a business, then this is for you – as we uncover what truly makes an entrepreneur successful. I present to you … the brutally honest, relentless and generous … Kevin O’Leary!     More on Kevin can be found via the links below: KevinOleary.com LinkedIn: Kevin O’Leary  Kevin’s Facebook Page  Twitter: @KevinOlearyTV  Instagram: @KevinOlearyTV  Cold Hard Truth on Family, Kids, and Money  The Cold Hard Truth on Men, Women, and Money  Subscribe to The Giant Thinkers Podcast on iTunes.     Get 20% off my image search library of choice: Stocksy Stocksy provide royalty-free stock photography and cinematic video footage. A big reason why I love them is because their library is highly curated and isn’t full of cheesy, overused assets. Plus, the entire website is insanely easy to use. The searching, the filtering, the navigating – It’s all clear, intuitive and simple. They even have a drag and drop search feature if you have an image you like and want to see similar images on Stocky, just drag and drop it straight onto their website. And, they have a search by colour feature too. Perfect for finding images to match your colour palette. I encourage you to take advantage of the exclusive 20% OFF discount. Head to: GiantThinkers.com/Stocksy The discount is automatically applied.

Millionaire entrepreneur Kevin O'Leary is known for his ruthless and outspoken opinions on ABC's entrepreneurial reality show Shark Tank. O'Leary or "Mr. Wonderful" as he is known to viewers, made his fortune founding SoftKey, an education software company. Learn how he fought his way to the top of the tank.

В новом выпуске предельно практического шоу об электронной коммерции Retail Rocket Science генеральный директор Softkey.ru Феликс Мучник расскажет о том, чем отличается продажа ПО от продажи одежды, как можно победить пиратство в России и кто выиграет среди глобальной мировой войны экосистем. В нашем выпуске: - С чего начиналась продажа ПО в России в конце 90-х? - Как зарождался лидер рынка Softkey.ru? Практика рынка: - Есть ли отличия между продажей ПО и продажей одежды? - Какие категории программ популярны у частных пользователей, а какие у бизнеса? - Кому из тройки Apple, Google и Microsoft удалось выстроить практически идеальную экосистему по продаже софта и почему? - Распределение пиратства по платформам: где больше покупают софт? - Как повлияет закон о блокировке сайтов на рынок? - Почему в социальных сетях бесполезно продавать и полезно продвигать? - Каким образом можно интегрировать офлайн и онлайн в продажах ПО и как это ведет к росту продаж?

В программе: — Google+ стала самой быстрорастущей соцсетью; — Раскрыт крупнейший в мире хакерский заговор; — Intel инвестировала $30 миллионов в "облачные" технологии; — В новом Skype поддержку видеовызовов получили 17 андроидофонов; — Mail.Ru перерисовала электронную почту; — Яндекс подсчитал русскоязычных пользователей твиттера; — Softkey начинает продажи электронных версий Microsoft Office в российских розничных сетях. По материалам: ruformator.ru, lenta.ru и internet.ru. Выходит при поддержке "Независимой ассоциации русскоязычных подкастеров". Donate: WM — R287676834635 // Z279697361175 ЯД — 41001795061576

В программе: — Toshiba Dynabook Qosmio T750 – всегда разный; — Enspert E201 – в продаже с 1 февраля; — Google Android вышел на первое место; — LG G-Slate с 3D от T-Mobile уже в марте; — JVC GC-PX1 – из прототипа в реальность; — Событие недели: Совместный запуск Softkey и ВКонтакте сервиса "социальных покупок"; — Ресурс недели: TrainMe.ru — занимаемся спортом с умом. Проголосовать за нашу аудиопрограмму "Apple Mania" в "Блоге Рунета 2011" можно здесь с помощью аккаунтов в социальных сетях ВКонтакте, Facebook, Twitter и т.д.