Power Point Art

David Byrne, the former front man of the musical group Talking Heads, publishes his book "Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information" in August 2003. The book is a collection of essays and artistic imagery created with Microsoft's Power Point software. The work explores emotional and subjective information through the Power Point media producing an array of thought provoking and clever themes.
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Cisco Systems

Stanford computing staff employees Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner establish Cisco Systems in 1984. Named for the shortened version of San Francisco, the company markets the first commercially successful network router that allows incompatible computers to communicate. The router was developed by Bosack, Lerner and several individuals at Stanford University.
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Flowcharts

Graduate student Ben Shneiderman envisions the idea of structured flowcharts while attending a 1972 ACM discussion on structured programming. Working with fellow student Isaac Nassi, they put together and refine the sketches leading to the first ideas of sequence, conditionals and iteration. They draft and publish the paper "Flowchart Techniques for Structured Programming" in August 1973.
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The Russian software industry

The Russian software industry dates back to the 1950s. The government controlled the software industry, which dealt mainly with military or industrial applications. One of the first successful software applications was used in the space program. Russia encountered problems over the ensuing decades as it tried to create its own computing hardware and software systems despite worldwide standards.
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Visual Basic

Software designer Allen Cooper conceives Visual Basic in 1986. VB is an environment that provides a palette of Windows controls allowing users to easily create and program forms. After showing his project to Bill Gates, a deal is worked out with Microsoft to purchase Cooper's work. Microsoft integrates Cooper's concept with its QuickBasic language and releases Visual Basic 1.0 in 1991.
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Ebay

Ebay is founded in Pierre Omidyar's San Jose living room on Labor Day 1995. Omidyar poses the question, "What would happen within a marketplace if everyone had equal access to information and tools?" Joined by co-founder Jeff Skoll, and three years later by Meg Whitman, the company charts an enormously successful business model based on a world-wide community of online buyers and sellers.
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C++

Bell Labs engineer Bjarne Stroustrup begins the development of the C++ language in 1980. Stroustrup comes up with the idea of adding class structures to the C language by using elements of the object-oriented language Simula. He calls the newly developed language "C with Classes." The language is later renamed C++ and goes on to become a highly popular applications programming language.
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