Bob Frankston has been working with computers since 1963. The MIT graduate worked on the Multics projects as well as used the predecessor of the Internet beginning in 1969. At MIT, his Master's Thesis was "The Computer Utility as a Marketplace for Computer-Based Services". One area of continuing interest is "federated" systems. These are loosely coupled systems and databases as opposed to the more rigid distributed systems. He also Co-founded the Student Information Processing Board, which provided computer access to students.

Commercially, he supported online services since 1966. He worked at White-Weld and Company in their computer research division, which later became Interactive Data Corporation, in various roles doing systems design and implementation. White-Weld was one of the earliest financial information services and used the Scientific Data Systems 940 to provide time-sharing services. Later, at IDC, he developed tools on their own version of IBM's VM system. These projects included an interactive debugger and a VM-based mail system (predating Profs).

In 1979 he went from the mainframe world to the PC industry and co-founded Software Arts with Dan Bricklin, where they implemented VisiCalc. He was with Lotus Development from 1986 to 1990 where he created Lotus Express (and started lotus.com). At Microsoft from 1993 to 1998 he championed "IP Everywhere" and focused on the consumer use of computers--in particular, home networking, and the idea of "No New Wires Networking" with phone wire networking being one result. He is now pursuing a number of projects, among them trying to explain the larger concepts of IP everywhere.

www.frankston.com