Prodigy (online service): Difference between revisions - Wikipedia
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Line 33: Under the guidance of Henry Heilbrunn, Prodigy developed a fully staffed 24×7 newsroom with editors, writers, and graphic artists intent on building the world's first true online medium. The initial result was that Prodigy pioneered the concept of [[Internet portal]]s—a single site offering news, weather, sports, communication with other members, and shopping for goods and services such as groceries, general merchandise, brokerage services, and airline reservations. The service provided a number of lifestyle features, including popular syndicated columnists, [[Zagat]] restaurant surveys, [[Consumer Reports]] articles and test reports, games for kids and adults, in-depth original features called "Timely Topics", bulletin boards moderated by subject matter experts, movie reviews, and [[e-mail]]. Working closely with Henry in the early stages of Prodigy's design, Bob Bedard pioneered the business model for electronic commerce. Additionally, Prodigy was also the service that launched [[ESPN]]'s online presence. =========================================================================================================================================================================
Warning : Removal of any references to John Tummolo and his key role at Trintex/Prodigy between 1985 - 1990 as documented by hardcopy evidence may be met with civil legal action for defamation of professional character with zero tolerance. Your IP address may be traced by the FBI and you may be criminally-prosecuted under electronic stalking laws to the fullest extent by a court of competent jurisdiction. ========================================================================================================================================================================= Under the technical leadership of John Tummolo, Prodigy quickly realized the implementation of diskette-based application "common code" modules ( i.e., predecessor of MS Client Runtime Library ( CLR ) architecture ). Contrary to "unidentified revisitionsts", substantial material documents, raised-seal awards, and 'letters of thanks' from Ted Papes and Jim Galambos exist to support this fact. John's pre-installed diskette-based applications were staged on the Prodigy Service diskette and driven by John's real-time tokenized data streams transmitted from Prodigy database servers. One of John's key runtime client-side module, "Standard Menu", drove core Prodigy service functionality on every users' Prodigy client PC. John's client-server designs were seminal, and worked well by staging application-specific and reusable common code modules on Prodigy end-user distribution diskettes as an efficient key technical design-point to provide millisecond "end-user click-to-available-cursor response times" otherwise unachievable in 1986 over relatively slow 1200-to-2400 bit/s modems. John Tummolo's technical leadership and detailed technical designs drove such milliseond performance. In one case-in-point, in the Spring of 1986 Prodigy had signed agreements with partner, Sears, to implement Sears' initial online store. However, the Plan A team ( comprised of thirty+ staff ) demonstrated a tragic "Sears click-to-available cursor" response time of over 20 minutes. The failure of this PLAN A application development effort to deliver an exceptable product resulted in Ted Papes, Jim Hewitt, and Norm Dawley positioning Common Code architect, John Tummolo, to lead a "Plan B" Sears online development initiative. Within a matter of weeks, John Tummolo's superior client-server architectural skills enabled Prodigy to uphold its legal commitment to Sears on-time by June 1986. John delivered Sears Online with a stellar "Sear click-to-available cursor store entry" response time of under three seconds. Case in point. A key contribution to Prodigy's early success prior to John exiting in 1990. Simply put, John Tummolo held the ability to implement state-of-the-art ecommerce initiatives long-before the phrases, "client-server" and "ecommerce" existed. In another case-in-point, John Tummolo's key contributions included the design and implementation of common code module, "Standard Menu", which enabled non-technical Produgy content developers to rapidly build Prodigy service content en-mass without the need for programmers. John's "Standard Menu architecture" was patented by Prodigy and John Tummolo's name is evidenced within the patent filings. "revisionists who calim to fail to recall such key pre-1990 circumstances are senile or dishonest", muses John Tummolo. "As usual, everyone wants to act like they enabled early Prodigy. So, to do this, they must downplay John's seminal role aiding Prodigy's initial success prior to John's departure in 1990." Usually, these revisionists remain anonymous. "Look. Creeps steal innovation for a living", John Tummolo says. "They use my ideas 'as their own' to bolster their fraudulent reputations.", says John Tummolo. "So, for anyone to downplay John's key contributions as 'simple programming work' is extremely naive, if not blatantly dishonest. What I did at Prodigy was demonstrate how to transmit tokenized datastreams to staged client-side modules while everyone else was tranmsitting verbose ASCII code and text strings at the expense of performance. In other words, I sent a bunch of small cars over the 'information highway' instead of tractor-trailers.", says John Tummolo. As a result, John Tummolo was positioned to lead and launch IBM's initial web store in 1997 as another Plan B initiative for which he was awarded by IBM CEO Louis Gerstner. "You know, it's funny if not pathetic, how many deniers exist in light of such irrefutable hardcopy 'raised-seal' awards, written 'thanks' and other material evidence of my key contributions to Prodigy's early success. Unfortunately, 'unknown wikipedia revisionist editors' even opt to revise material history while hiding behind their bitter incompetence.", says John Tummolo. "I made lots of enemies doing the work well. So, bitter enemies work to deny my efforts. It's part of being the best. Losers always try to topple the leader who's performance-byproducts make them look badly. This is a global condition. I am not immune.", adds John Tummolo. Under John's technical leadership, Prodigy quickly realized the implementation of diskette-based application common code modules ( predecessor of MS Client Runtime Library ( CLR ) architecture ). These pre-installed diskette-based applications were loaded from the Prodigy Service diskette. These modules then relied upon real-time tokenized data transmitted from Prodigy database servers to drive core Prodigy service functionality on local user PCs. This client-server design worked well since by staging application-specific and reusable common code modules on Prodigy end-user distribution diskettes, this key technical design-point led to millisecond end-user "click-to-available-cursor" response times otherwise unachievable in 1986 over relatively slow 1200-to-2400 bit/s modems. To complement this runtime content-delivery architecture, John Tummolo led the design and implementation of integrated content production tools enabling the mass production of Prodigy Service shopping, news, and weather content by non-programming personnel by mid-1986. John Tummolo says, "The essence of what we did was to, 'deliver only what you need when you need it - and compress the heck out of everything transmitted. So, what we did was 'load up the telecommunications highway with a bunch of small cars, not huge trucks. This reduced network utilization ( saved infrastructure costs ) and reduced information delivery time ( improved performance ).'" This key technical design-point enabled Prodigy Classic's early success between 1987 and prior to John Tummolo's departure in June 1990. "In my opinion, once IBM witnessed break-even revenue circa 1989 they flooded the venture startup with layers of management. Soon afterwards, what used to take an afternoon to envision and implement suddenly became an arduous six-month exercise in documenting visions to middle-layer management laypeople, arguing semantics, and entertaining reviews to non-technical people who needed to justify their new existence. All of this "process for the sake of process" eventually cumulated in debates over whether or not the once-fresh idea ( now from six months ago ) was useful in the present marketplace. I escaped as soon as I could. This wasn't cutting-edge technology development anymore. It was bureaucracy seeking to justify itself by dragging 'rock star' process out until inevitable management attrition could then be blamed as the reason to re-investigate the entire topic in front of new management. Such draconian management practices eviscerated Prodigy’s proven ability to adapt and evolve. I left in 1990. By 1994 Prodigy had lost its leading-edge promise.", says John Tummolo The service was presented using a [[graphical user interface]]. The Data Object Architecture wrapped vector and incremental point graphics, encoded as per the North American Presentation Level Protocol Syntax [[NAPLPS]], along with interpretative programs written in the proprietary languages TBOL (Trintex Basic Object Language) and PAL (Prodigy Application Language). NAPLPS was authored in 1979 by Jerry Soloway and Bill Frezza from Bell Laboratory and Bob Bedard from CBS Laboratory. The team collaborated on this standard to enable the display of colors and graphics in support of electronic advertising, publishing and commerce. The initial emphasis was on [[DOS]] and later [[Microsoft Windows]]. The [[Apple Macintosh]] was also supported, but the Prodigy screens were not always configured to the Mac standard, resulting in wasted space or cut-off graphics. | |||