Prodigy Communications Corporation was an online service from 1984 to 2001 that offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services. It was one of the major internet service providers of the 1990s.
97-597: The company claimed it was the first consumer online service, citing its graphical user interface and basic architecture as differentiation from CompuServe , which started in 1979 and used a command-line interface . Prodigy was described by the New York Times as "family-oriented" and one of "the Big Three information services" in 1994. By 1990, it was the second-largest online service provider with 465,000 subscribers, trailing only CompuServe 's 600,000. In 1993 it
194-446: A Videotex -based TV set-top device that would allow consumers to shop at home and receive news, sports and weather. After concluding the market test, CBS and AT&T took the data and went their separate ways in pursuit of developing and profiting from this market demand. Prodigy was founded on February 13, 1984 as Trintex, a joint venture including CBS, computer manufacturer IBM and retailer Sears, Roebuck and Company . The company
291-565: A computer keyboard . The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements. Beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls . The term GUI tends not to be applied to other lower- display resolution types of interfaces , such as video games (where head-up displays ( HUDs ) are preferred), or not including flat screens like volumetric displays because
388-403: A 43% interest in the company, and Prodigy became the exclusive provider to SBC's 77 million high-speed Internet customers. More than a year later after the launch of Prodigy Broadband (conceived and led by Chris Spanos), SBC bought controlling interest for $ 465 million when Prodigy was the fourth-largest Internet service provider behind America Online, Microsoft's MSN, and EarthLink. Prodigy in 2000
485-568: A 43% ownership interest in Prodigy. On November 6, 2001, SBC purchased 100% interest in Prodigy and brought it private. On November 14, 2001, SBC and Yahoo! announced the strategic alliance to create the cobranded SBC Yahoo! . Sometime after that, SBC ceased offering new Prodigy accounts, and customers were encouraged to migrate to the SBC Yahoo! product line while maintaining their existing Prodigy email addresses. Prodigy's first headquarters
582-474: A GUI and some level of a CLI, although the GUIs usually receive more attention. GUI wrappers find a way around the command-line interface versions (CLI) of (typically) Linux and Unix-like software applications and their text-based UIs or typed command labels. While command-line or text-based applications allow users to run a program non-interactively, GUI wrappers atop them avoid the steep learning curve of
679-410: A combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, for the tasks of gathering and producing information. A series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with and use computer software. The most common combination of such elements in GUIs
776-421: A five-point scale, 5 being the highest and 1 is the lowest, with component ratings for defined areas, e.g., for restaurants, including food, decor, and service (with cost also being estimated). In addition to numeric scores, the survey also includes a short descriptive paragraph that incorporates selected quotations (typically a few words) from several reviewers' comments about each restaurant or service, as well as
873-426: A flat monthly fee that provided unlimited access. Initially, a monthly rate was set for unlimited usage time and 30 personal messages. In addition, subscribers could purchase additional messages. Later, Prodigy divided its service into "Core" and "Plus" sections. Core section usage remained unlimited, but Plus sections were limited by usage time. Subscribers were afforded a monthly allotment of Plus time, but if that time
970-508: A grid of items with rows of text extending sideways from the icon. Multi-row and multi-column layouts commonly found on the web are "shelf" and "waterfall". The former is found on image search engines , where images appear with a fixed height but variable length, and is typically implemented with the CSS property and parameter display: inline-block; . A waterfall layout found on Imgur and TweetDeck with fixed width but variable height per item
1067-540: A paid subscription on the Zagat website. As part of its more than $ 150 million acquisition by Google in September 2011, Zagat ' s offering of reviews and ratings became a part of Google's Geo and Commerce group, eventually to be tightly integrated into Google's services. Google relaunched Zagat 's website on July 29, 2013, with an improved interface, but cut down the site from 30 cities to nine. They released
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#17327756445021164-403: A policy that was later rescinded. In the summer of 1993, it began charging hourly rates for several of its most popular features, including its most popular feature, the message boards. This policy was later rescinded after tens of thousands of members left the service. The price increases prompted an increase of "underground IDs" by which multiple users would share a single account and manipulate
1261-506: A program was busy. Additionally, it was the first GUI to introduce something resembling Virtual Desktops . Windows 95 , accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, was a major success in the marketplace at launch and shortly became the most popular desktop operating system. In 2007, with the iPhone and later in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad , Apple popularized the post-WIMP style of interaction for multi-touch screens, and those devices were considered to be milestones in
1358-475: A pseudonym. Howard was the most prominent radio name in America, gaining excellent ratings at the time. So it could only have been a positive for the Prodigy brand. As the company shifted from its focus on its exclusive "Prodigy Classic" content and started transitioning to "Prodigy Internet" as an ISP in the late 1990s, Prodigy found itself competing with many other lower-priced ISPs, and the price didn't support
1455-474: A retail store, airline self-ticket and check-in, information kiosks in a public space, like a train station or a museum, and monitors or control screens in an embedded industrial application which employ a real-time operating system (RTOS). Cell phones and handheld game systems also employ application specific touchscreen GUIs. Newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. A GUI uses
1552-627: A return of the message. Prodigy was slow to adopt features that made its rival AOL appealing, such as anonymous handles and real-time chat . Eventually, the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web threatened to leave Prodigy behind. In 1994, Prodigy became the first of the early-generation dialup services to offer full access to the World Wide Web and to offer Web page hosting to its members. However, since Prodigy
1649-465: A searchable database of reviews from the other 21 cities in the following days while they worked on expanding to include more cities in the new site. In December 2012, Google announced that it would lay off most former full-time Zagat employees that were previously extended as contractors at the time of the acquisition, leading to prophetic business reports describing the future of Zagat book production as bleak, and subsequent business news reports recording
1746-414: A short sequence of words and symbols. Custom functions may be used to facilitate access to frequent actions. Command-line interfaces are more lightweight , as they only recall information necessary for a task; for example, no preview thumbnails or graphical rendering of web pages. This allows greater efficiency and productivity once many commands are learned. But reaching this level takes some time because
1843-428: A system or moved about to different places during redesigns. Also, icons and dialog boxes are usually harder for users to script. WIMPs extensively use modes , as the meaning of all keys and clicks on specific positions on the screen are redefined all the time. Command-line interfaces use modes only in limited forms, such as for current directory and environment variables . Most modern operating systems provide both
1940-443: Is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation . In many applications, GUIs are used instead of text-based UIs , which are based on typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces (CLIs), which require commands to be typed on
2037-674: Is a related technology that promises to deliver the representation benefits of 3D environments without their usability drawbacks of orientation problems and hidden objects. In 2006, Hillcrest Labs introduced the first ZUI for television. Other innovations include the menus on the PlayStation 2 , the menus on the Xbox , Sun's Project Looking Glass , Metisse , which was similar to Project Looking Glass, BumpTop , where users can manipulate documents and windows with realistic movement and physics as if they were physical documents, Croquet OS , which
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#17327756445022134-694: Is also the leader in WiFi (hotspots) and broadband (DSL) access. The broadband service is called Prodigy Infinitum and is available in speeds of 512 kbit/s, 1024 kbit/s, 2048 kbit/s, 4096 kbit/s and 20480 kbit/s. The installation and DSL or fiber optic modem are free and it is no longer necessary to sign a two-year service contract. Prodigy Internet in Mexico is part of Telmex (Teléfonos de México) and its sister company Telnor (Teléfonos del Noroeste). Graphical user interface A graphical user interface , or GUI ( / ˈ ɡ uː i / GOO -ee ),
2231-646: Is an organization which collects and correlates the ratings of restaurants by diners. For their first guide, covering New York City, the Zagats surveyed their friends. At its height around 2005, the Zagat Survey included 70 cities, with reviews based on the input of 250,000 individuals with the guides reporting on and rating restaurants, hotels , nightlife , shopping , zoos , museums , music , movies , theaters , golf courses , and airlines . The guides are sold in book form, and were formerly only available as
2328-409: Is arguably stronger than ever, thanks to its deep integration into the world's most popular... mapping service." On March 6, 2018, Google transferred ownership of the brand and assets to restaurant review website The Infatuation. They did not disclose the deal amount. The Infatuation CEO and Co-founder Chris Stang released a statement that the company was "thrilled by this opportunity to acquire such
2425-499: Is built for collaboration, and compositing window managers such as Enlightenment and Compiz . Augmented reality and virtual reality also make use of 3D GUI elements. 3D GUIs have appeared in science fiction literature and films , even before certain technologies were feasible or in common use. Zagat The Zagat Survey , commonly referred to as Zagat (stylized in all caps; / z ə ˈ ɡ æ t / , zə- GAT ) and established by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979,
2522-417: Is especially common with applications designed for Unix-like operating systems. The latter used to be implemented first because it allowed the developers to focus exclusively on their product's functionality without bothering about interface details such as designing icons and placing buttons. Designing programs this way also allows users to run the program in a shell script . Many environments and games use
2619-463: Is reported to have decayed further when, in December 2012, Google informed the contractors, most former full-time Zagat employees, that their contracts would not be renewed in 2013, only to alter course within days and report renewal of the contracts through the end of June 2013. In this new period, communications between Googlers and Zagat contractors are said to have decayed, with a further end to
2716-669: Is represented by rotating a cube with faces representing each user's workspace, and window management is represented via a Rolodex -style flipping mechanism in Windows Vista (see Windows Flip 3D ). In both cases, the operating system transforms windows on-the-fly while continuing to update the content of those windows. The GUI is usually WIMP-based, although occasionally other metaphors surface, such as those used in Microsoft Bob , 3dwm, File System Navigator, File System Visualizer , 3D Mailbox, and GopherVR . Zooming (ZUI)
2813-440: Is the windows, icons, text fields, canvases, menus, pointer ( WIMP ) paradigm, especially in personal computers . The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual input device to represent the position of a pointing device's interface , most often a mouse , and presents information organized in windows and represented with icons . Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with
2910-555: Is usually implemented by specifying column-width: . Smaller app mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space and available input devices. Applications for which WIMP is not well suited may use newer interaction techniques , collectively termed post-WIMP UIs. As of 2011, some touchscreen-based operating systems such as Apple's iOS ( iPhone ) and Android use
3007-709: The Xerox Star . These early systems spurred many other GUI efforts, including Lisp machines by Symbolics and other manufacturers, the Apple Lisa (which presented the concept of menu bar and window controls ) in 1983, the Apple Macintosh 128K in 1984, and the Atari ST with Digital Research 's GEM , and Commodore Amiga in 1985. Visi On was released in 1983 for the IBM PC compatible computers, but
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3104-453: The Zagat group, where it is reported that Google reorientation of Zagat from their original business model to "'Zagatize' the world... [through] 100,000 ratings for small businesses" resulted in missed editorial production goals and Zagat contractor resentment toward the new Frommer's Googlers they perceived as having been given their positions. The situation and morale in the Zagat unit
3201-438: The Zagat online service became free to use, and once required a Google+ account to register though that is no longer the case. By July 2013, the Zagat online presence had (alongside its printed Guides, see below) narrowed from thirty cities, to nine – eight in the U.S., as well as London – though earlier content on other cities remains discoverable by outside search. At the same time, Google pushed ahead with plans to "Zagatize
3298-501: The cursor (or rather pointer ) control: mouse , pointing stick , touchpad , trackball , joystick , virtual keyboards , and head-up displays (translucent information devices at the eye level). There are also actions performed by programs that affect the GUI. For example, there are components like inotify or D-Bus to facilitate communication between computer programs. Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad in 1963, widely held as
3395-627: The 1970s, Engelbart's ideas were further refined and extended to graphics by researchers at Xerox PARC and specifically Alan Kay , who went beyond text-based hyperlinks and used a GUI as the main interface for the Smalltalk programming language , which ran on the Xerox Alto computer , released in 1973. Most modern general-purpose GUIs are derived from this system. The Xerox PARC GUI consisted of graphical elements such as windows , menus , radio buttons , and check boxes . The concept of icons
3492-569: The CEO of Yahoo! in July 2012. Other management changes were harbingers of a challenging year for this group (e.g., executive firings and departures, including "the entire team that launched Google Wallet "), and Huber eventually moved from managing Geo and Commerce to join the Google X research team. Mayer's departure as champion of Zagat ' s acquisition and expansion, Huber's challenges in leading
3589-513: The GUIs advantages, many reviewers questioned the value of the entire concept, citing hardware limits, and problems in finding compatible software. In 1984, Apple released a television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh during the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII by CBS , with allusions to George Orwell 's noted novel Nineteen Eighty-Four . The goal of the commercial was to make people think about computers, identifying
3686-704: The Prodigy service over copper wire telephone " POTS " service or X.25 dialup . Prodigy employed 1,200 bit/s modem connections for its initial rollout and offered low-cost 2,400 bit/s internal modems to subscribers at a discount to provide faster service and stabilize the diverse modem market. The host systems used were regionally distributed IBM Series/1 minicomputers managed by central IBM mainframes located in Yorktown Heights, New York . Thanks to an aggressive media marketing campaign, bundling with various consumer-oriented computers such as IBM's PS/1 and PS/2 as well as various clones and Hayes modems,
3783-434: The Prodigy service soon had more than one million subscribers. To handle the traffic, Prodigy built a national network of POP ( points of presence ) sites that made local access numbers available for most homes in the U.S. This significantly expanded the service because subscribers were not required to dial long distance to access the service. The subscribers paid only for the local call (usually free), while Prodigy paid for
3880-534: The River Place Pointe building in northwest Austin; the building, then under construction, was scheduled to be completed in 2001. Prodigy moved its headquarters in December 2000. Unlike many other competing services, Prodigy started with flat-rate pricing. When Prodigy moved to per-hour charging for its most popular services in June 1993, tens of thousands of users left the service. Prodigy was also one of
3977-459: The aging software was not Y2K compliant. The service had 209,000 members when it was discontinued. In 1996, Prodigy was acquired by the former founders of Boston Technology and their new firm International Wireless, with Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helú , a principal owner of Telmex , as a minority investor. IBM and Sears sold their interests to the group for $ 200 million. It was estimated that IBM and Sears had invested more than $ 1 billion in
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4074-401: The class of GUIs named post-WIMP. These support styles of interaction using more than one finger in contact with a display, which allows actions such as pinching and rotating, which are unsupported by one pointer and mouse. Human interface devices , for the efficient interaction with a GUI include a computer keyboard , especially used together with keyboard shortcuts , pointing devices for
4171-457: The command words may not be easily discoverable or mnemonic . Also, using the command line can become slow and error-prone when users must enter long commands comprising many parameters or several different filenames at once. However, windows, icons, menus, pointer ( WIMP ) interfaces present users with many widgets that represent and can trigger some of the system's available commands. GUIs can be made quite hard when dialogs are buried deep in
4268-413: The command-line, which requires commands to be typed on the keyboard . By starting a GUI wrapper, users can intuitively interact with, start, stop, and change its working parameters, through graphical icons and visual indicators of a desktop environment , for example. Applications may also provide both interfaces, and when they do the GUI is usually a WIMP wrapper around the command-line version. This
4365-428: The company retooled itself as a true Internet service provider, making its main offering Internet access branded as Prodigy Internet. This new service featured personalized web content, news alerts to pagers , and Java chat. At the same time, Prodigy deemphasized its antiquated proprietary interface and editorial content, which were relabeled as Prodigy Classic. Prodigy Classic was discontinued on October 1, 1999 because
4462-506: The company to restaurant discovery platform The Infatuation for an undisclosed amount. On September 9, 2021, The Infatuation was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Google is reported to have planned to use the Zagat acquisition to provide more content and reviews for its locally oriented services. On May 30, 2012, Zagat was officially integrated into Google's services, with its reviews now appearing on Google Maps and Google+ Local pages for relevant restaurants. Additionally,
4559-465: The company was on the block for $ 200 million. After there were no takers, the company announced in June that it was no longer for sale and that it would seek an organic growth strategy. On September 8, 2011, the company was acquired by Google for more than $ 150 million, the 10th largest acquisition by Google as of that date, at the championing of Marissa Mayer , its Vice President of Local, Maps, and Location Services. On March 6, 2018, Google sold
4656-937: The connection to its national data center in Yorktown. 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 an online content portal —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 several lifestyle features, including popular syndicated columnists, Zagat restaurant surveys, Consumer Reports articles and test reports, games for children and adults, in-depth original features called "Timely Topics", bulletin boards moderated by subject matter experts, movie reviews and email. Working with Heilbrunn in
4753-470: The contraction in number of cities covered and in depth of print coverage, and on Google de-emphasis of the distinctive, traditional 30-point rankings (replacing it with a 5-point scale for products not at the Zagat website), Jason Clampet at Skift writes, "Whether or not Zagat's... brand voice will continue to rise to the top remains to be seen," and while "the Zagat brand may not seem as strong [post-Google]... [the] content's influence on diners and drinkers
4850-455: The contraction of their print businesses. Regardless, Google's acquisition and integration of Zagat provided it with a strong brand in local restaurant recommendations and ample content for location-based searches. On March 6, 2018, Google sold the company to restaurant discovery platform The Infatuation for an undisclosed amount. In September 2021, The Infatuation was acquired by JPMorgan Chase for an undisclosed amount. The Zagat Survey
4947-571: The designer's work to change the interface as user needs evolve. Good GUI design relates to users more, and to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows , usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, email message, or drawing. Smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a vertical market as application-specific GUIs. Examples include automated teller machines (ATM), point of sale (POS) touchscreens at restaurants, self-service checkouts used in
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#17327756445025044-485: The development of mobile devices . The GUIs familiar to most people as of the mid-late 2010s are Microsoft Windows , macOS , and the X Window System interfaces for desktop and laptop computers, and Android , Apple's iOS , Symbian , BlackBerry OS , Windows Phone / Windows 10 Mobile , Tizen , WebOS , and Firefox OS for handheld ( smartphone ) devices. Since the commands available in command line interfaces can be many, complex operations can be performed using
5141-597: The display of colors and graphics supporting electronic advertising, publishing and commerce. The initial emphasis was on DOS and later Microsoft Windows . After that, users could use the Apple Macintosh , but some Prodigy screens were not properly configured to the Mac standard, resulting in wasted space or partial graphics. Prodigy's initial business model relied more on advertising and online shopping for cash flow than on monthly subscriptions. Subscribers were charged
5238-435: The display represents a desktop, on which documents and folders of documents can be placed. Window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Entries may appear in a list to make space for text and details, or in a grid for compactness and larger icons with little space underneath for text. Variations in between exist, such as a list with multiple columns of items and
5335-483: The domain www.prodigy.net redirected to my.att.net, which appeared to be a Yahoo! -based content and search portal mainly linking to other online services. AT&T stopped serving Prodigy-created webpages in 2011, severing yet another tie with the brand. As of March 6, 2024, www.prodigy.net redirects to https://currently.att.yahoo.com . In Mexico, Prodigy Internet is the main ISP with an estimated 92% of market share. It
5432-694: The early stages of Prodigy's design, Bob Bedard pioneered the business model for electronic commerce. Prodigy was the service that launched ESPN 's online presence. Prodigy quickly implemented application standard code modules loaded from diskette. These modules relied upon real-time tokenized data from Prodigy database servers to drive core Prodigy service functionality on local user PCs. This client-server design worked well; by staging application-specific and reusable common code modules on Prodigy end-user diskettes, millisecond "click-to-available-cursor" response times were achieved that were otherwise unachievable in 1986 over slow 1,200-to-2,400 bit/s modems. The service
5529-523: The elimination of the Zagat enterprise as it had historically functioned, provided it "a strong brand in local restaurant recommendations... [and] lots of content for location-based searches." Even so, questions are being raised about the apparent change of course, e.g., regarding Google's steering Zagat and its mobile app toward general content, and away from its traditional reviewer stable into an already very competitive, well-populated everyman restaurant review approach and business niche. In commenting on
5626-410: The email service to act as private bulletin boards. This was accomplished by sending emails to intentionally invalid addresses containing the name of the intended recipients. The service would return the emails, which were not billed, and users of the shared account would find the returned messages there. Replies were sent by entering the name of the first sender as the addressee, which would again trigger
5723-505: The equivalent of HTML frames and prefetching technology. Prodigy patented its inventions, which continue to be relevant and valuable. By 1994, Prodigy became a pioneer in selling "dial-up" connections to the World Wide Web and sold hosting services for Web publishers. Prodigy regularly became the focus of discussions on The Howard Stern Show in the mid-nineties. Numerous shows were devoted to it. In addition, Howard met face-to-face with people he had talked to in Prodigy chat groups under
5820-504: The experience of contractors during this period is reported to have been that of a normal Google employee (invitations to all-hands Google employee meetings and social events, and receipt of at-work benefits). However, as the reorganization by Page continued, and further decisions were made by Google management, the commitment to the Mayer vision for Zagat waned. Page's assignment of Susan Wojcicki to head Google's advertising area led to
5917-611: The first graphical computer-aided design program. It used a light pen to create and manipulate objects in engineering drawings in realtime with coordinated graphics. In the late 1960s, researchers at the Stanford Research Institute , led by Douglas Engelbart , developed the On-Line System (NLS), which used text-based hyperlinks manipulated with a then-new device: the mouse . (A 1968 demonstration of NLS became known as " The Mother of All Demos ".) In
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#17327756445026014-497: The first online services to offer a user-friendly GUI when competing services, such as CompuServe and GEnie , were still text-based. Prodigy used this graphical capability to deploy advertising, expecting it to result in a significant revenue stream. Prodigy offered online banking, stock trading, advertising and online shopping before the World Wide Web became widely used, but was largely unable to capitalize on these first-mover advantages. Decades later, IBM , which now owns some of
6111-538: The helm to again manage the company – the request to increase the number of "Googlers" (full-time Google employees) was denied, and Google's Zagat editorial division was instead grown via staffing with temporary contractors (January–March 2012). During this period, at least some of the hired contractors were led to believe by Google HR that it was their hope that after the year, contractors would join Googlers as permanent employees, with benefits; moreover,
6208-485: The interface found in current versions of Microsoft Windows, and in various desktop environments for Unix-like operating systems , such as macOS and Linux . Thus most current GUIs have largely common idioms. GUIs were a hot topic in the early 1980s. The Apple Lisa was released in 1983, and various windowing systems existed for DOS operating systems (including PC GEM and PC/GEOS ). Individual applications for many platforms presented their own GUI variants. Despite
6305-413: The kind of data they hold. The widgets of a well-designed interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows flexible structures in which the interface is independent of and indirectly linked to application functions, so the GUI can be customized easily. This allows users to select or design a different skin or theme at will, and eases
6402-602: The large disparate Geo and Commerce group, and Google management's decision on a further acquisition – Frommer's , the venerable travel guide publisher, in August 2012 – appear, in concert, as evidence of changing plans of management for the original Zagat team. After the standard Google all-hands meeting where the Frommer's acquisition was announced and discussed, contractors ceased to be invited to these Google meetings. In this period, Hernandez continued to lead
6499-435: The methods of 3D graphics to project 3D GUI objects onto the screen. The use of 3D graphics has become increasingly common in mainstream operating systems (ex. Windows Aero , and Aqua (MacOS)) to create attractive interfaces, termed eye candy (which includes, for example, the use of drop shadows underneath windows and the cursor ), or for functional purposes only possible using three dimensions. For example, user switching
6596-434: The move of another Google veteran, Jeff Huber, to lead the very large "Geo and Commerce" area, a new combined group that would eventually include the Zagat team (alongside Google Maps & Earth, Travel, Shopping , Wallet , and other endeavors). This reorganization left Marissa Mayer without a comparable leadership position, instead placing her as a report to her "peer" Huber; Mayer departed Google thereafter, to become
6693-420: The original Prodigy patents, continues to sell licenses for basic ecommerce concepts. Prodigy was a forerunner in caching data on and near users' personal computers to minimize networking and server expenses while improving the experience for users. Prodigy's legacy architecture was novel at the time and anticipated much of current web-browser technology. It leveraged the power of the subscriber's PC to maintain
6790-403: The pointing device. A window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications , and the windowing system . The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, and positioning of the pointer. In personal computers , all these elements are modeled through a desktop metaphor to produce a simulation called a desktop environment in which
6887-664: The pricing and rating information. In 1999, Tim and Nina Zagat 's son, Ted Zagat, joined Zagat and served as president and COO until 2007. Zagat's distinctive thirty-point rankings were replaced with a five-point scale for products not at the Zagat website, following acquisition by Google in September 2011. In March 2018, Zagat was sold by Google to The Infatuation , a restaurant rating app. Private equity firm General Atlantic bought one-third of parent company Zagat, LLC, for $ 31 million in February 2000 and installed non-Zagat family member Amy B. McIntosh as CEO. In 2008,
6984-447: The product's poor graphics that resulted from the limitations of current technology. Using the early NAPLPS graphic standard, rendering realistic images of products was impossible, presenting great difficulty for online merchants to market products. Despite these challenges, Prodigy was primarily responsible for helping merchants such as PC Flowers become some of the earliest e-commerce success stories. However, revenue from advertising
7081-413: The rollout of the new Zagat website in July 2013 indicated both that the Zagat guides are "now smaller than ever," covering the same reduced list of nine cities as the website, and that Zagat had "quietly w[ound] down its licensing business... managing custom print guides for corporations" and third party content licensing. Regardless, Google's acquisition and integration of Zagat , while leading to
7178-703: The service since its founding. Prodigy continued to operate as it had previously, while Telmex provided Internet access under the Prodigy brand in Mexico and other parts of Latin America , with some services provided by Prodigy Communications in the US. Prodigy went public in 1999, trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol PRGY. Later that year, Prodigy entered a strategic partnership with SBC Communications by which Prodigy would provide Internet services and SBC would provide exclusive sales opportunities and network, particularly DSL , facilities. The strategic partnership also gave SBC
7275-458: The service, similar to AOL's. Access to Usenet newsgroups was made available and Prodigy's first web presence, Astranet, was released shortly afterward. Astranet was to be a web-based news and information service supported partly by advertising. However, the site was considered experimental and incomplete. Another innovation was Skimmer, a market trial ISP service that became the base for Prodigy Internet. In 1996, with Gregory C. Carr as chair,
7372-580: The session state, handle the user interface and process applications formed from data and interpretative program objects largely pulled from the network when needed. At a time when distributed objects were handled by RPC equivalents, Prodigy pioneered the concept of returning interpretable, platform-independent objects to the caller for subsequent processing. This approach anticipated innovations such as Java applets and JavaScript . Prodigy also helped pioneer true distributed object-oriented client-server implementations as well as incidental innovations such as
7469-399: The social perks they had earlier enjoyed. As well, Bernardo Hernandez departed from his leadership role of the unit. While Google has declined comment, one source reported in June 2013 that "The future of Zagat book production looks extremely bleak... The whole division as currently structured seems to be on death watch. Lots of chatter about outsourcing." Further reporting coincident with
7566-451: The subject of an aggressive plan to expand the impact of Zagat through new hard-copy city guides, which required that Google VP Marissa Mayer and a senior product manager Bernardo Hernandez add further editors to the group it acquired with the Zagat acquisition; unfortunately, because of leadership changes above Mayer – earlier in 2011, Google cofounder and first CEO, Larry Page , had replaced Eric Schmidt , returning to
7663-517: The system never reached commercial production. The first commercially available computer with a GUI was the 1979 PERQ workstation , manufactured by Three Rivers Computer Corporation. Its design was heavily influenced by the work at Xerox PARC. In 1981, Xerox eventually commercialized the ideas from the Alto in the form of a new and enhanced system – the Xerox 8010 Information System – more commonly known as
7760-505: The term is restricted to the scope of 2D display screens able to describe generic information, in the tradition of the computer science research at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center . Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of software application programming in the area of human–computer interaction . Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for
7857-778: The time. Still, with these providers competing primarily on ease of ISP setup rather than exclusive content, the retention value was lost. Many members found more affordable ways to access the online content and services they were used to. In 1999 the company, now led by a cadre of ex-MCI executives to turn the brand around, became Prodigy Internet, marketing a full range of services, applications, and content, including dial-up and DSL for consumers and small businesses, instant messaging, e-mail, and communities. In 2000, with subscriber growth exploding and brand attributes at an all-time high, Prodigy explored several partnership deals, including what would have been an unprecedented three-way merger with Earthlink and Mindspring . Ultimately, SBC bought
7954-456: The underlying logical design of a stored program , a design discipline named usability . Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the visual language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks. The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI . Typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to
8051-470: The user-friendly interface as a personal computer which departed from prior business-oriented systems, and becoming a signature representation of Apple products. In 1985, Commodore released the Amiga 1000 , along with Workbench and Kickstart 1.0 (which contained Intuition ). This interface ran as a separate task, meaning it was very responsive and, unlike other GUIs of the time, it didn't freeze up when
8148-538: The value of the Prodigy Internet exclusive content available for members. In a letter to members, Prodigy explained that upgrades to Prodigy Classic to resolve its Y2K issues were just too expensive and that it felt investing in Prodigy Internet was the best long-term strategy, as many of the popular services offered by Prodigy Classic could be found elsewhere. This decision was consistent with what other online service providers (AOL, CompuServe, MSN) were doing at
8245-499: The world" through broader simplified business rankings, and by providing broad content unlike the traditional Zagat , both city-specific (e.g., "Great Hot Dog Joints in NYC"), and cross-destination (e.g., "Best Sushi Restaurants in 8 U.S. Cities."), as well as completely location-independent content (e.g., "Rosé for Every Mood: What to Bring to Any Summer Occasion"). Initially, however, the eventually proscribed digital and print aims were
8342-544: Was established by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979 as a way to collect and correlate the ratings of restaurants by diners. Their first guide covered New York City dining, and was accomplished on the basis of a survey of their friends. By 2005, the Zagat Survey included 70 cities, with reviews based on the input of 250,000 individuals. The Guides, over the years, have reported on and rated restaurants, hotels , nightlife , shopping , zoos , music , movies , theaters , golf courses , and airlines . Zagat guide ratings are on
8439-403: Was exceeded, the subscriber would incur additional charges based on usage time. A blue indicator in the bottom-right corner of the screen indicated the subscriber's section. Prodigy's shopping applications initially underperformed relative to expectations. This was attributed to the company's misperception that online shoppers would pay a premium rather than expect discounts for merchandise and to
8536-670: Was headed by Theodore Papes, a career IBM executive, until his retirement in 1992. CBS left the venture in 1986 when CBS CEO Tom Wyman was divesting properties outside of CBS's core broadcasting business. The company's service was launched regionally in 1988 in Atlanta , Hartford and San Francisco under the name Prodigy. The marketing rollout plan closely followed IBM's Systems Network Architecture (SNA) network backbone. A nationwide launch developed by ad agency J. Walter Thompson and sister company JWT Direct followed on September 6, 1990. Subscribers using personal computers initially accessed
8633-587: Was in White Plains Plaza in White Plains, New York . Prodigy announced plans to renew its lease in August 1992, occupying all 340,000 square feet (32,000 m) of space in the building. In 1992, the facility had 1,000 employees. In 2000, the company announced that it would move its headquarters to Austin, Texas in order to work more closely with SBC Communications . During that year, Prodigy leased 112,000 square feet (10,400 m) of space in
8730-640: Was initially developed primarily to aid shopping. However, it later found much greater usage as a means of general communication between users. The popularity of Prodigy's message boards caused users to remain connected to the service far longer than had been projected. This resulted in escalating expenses that adversely affected the service's cash flow and profitability. To control costs and raise revenue, in January 1991, Prodigy modified its basic subscriber plans by allowing only 30 free email messages each month, while charging 25 cents for each additional email message,
8827-399: Was later introduced by David Canfield Smith , who had written a thesis on the subject under the guidance of Kay. The PARC GUI employs a pointing device along with a keyboard. These aspects can be emphasized by using the alternative term and acronym for windows, icons, menus, pointing device ( WIMP ). This effort culminated in the 1973 Xerox Alto , the first computer with a GUI, though
8924-481: Was limited. By 1993, Prodigy was developing a network architecture now known as a content delivery network in which the network caches its most frequently accessed content as close as possible to the users. The company sold private versions of it within customers' private corporate networks. Two of Prodigy's most popular services were its message boards and email. Because Prodigy's business model depended on rapidly growing advertising and online shopping revenue, email
9021-588: Was never popular due to its high hardware demands. Nevertheless, it was a crucial influence on the contemporary development of Microsoft Windows . Apple, Digital Research, IBM and Microsoft used many of Xerox's ideas to develop products, and IBM's Common User Access specifications formed the basis of the GUIs used in Microsoft Windows, IBM OS/2 Presentation Manager , and the Unix Motif toolkit and window manager . These ideas evolved to create
9118-531: Was not an actual Internet service provider , programs that needed an Internet connection, such as Internet Explorer and the Quake multiplayer game, could not be used with the service. Prodigy developed its own web browser, but it compared poorly to other mainstream browsers in terms of features. In 1995/1996, Prodigy hired Ed Bennett and Will Lansing. From 1995 through 1996, Prodigy unveiled several Internet-related products. It debuted its real-time chat area within
9215-535: Was presented using a graphical user interface . The Data Object Architecture wrapped vector and incremental point graphics, encoded as per NAPLPS , along with interpretative programs written in the proprietary languages TBOL (Trintex Basic Object Language) and PAL (Prodigy Application Language). NAPLPS grew out of the Canadian Telidon project, becoming an international standard in 1983 after some extensions were added by AT&T Corporation . NAPLPS enabled
9312-621: Was reported to have 3.1 million subscribers, of which 1.3 million were DSL customers. Attempts by SBC to sell the Prodigy brand became public knowledge on December 9, 2005. In late 2006, SBC purchased AT&T Corporation and re-branded itself as AT&T Inc. As of early 2007, there remained within AT&;T's Internet operations a small group of former Prodigy employees located in AT&T's Austin , Texas, and White Plains, New York , facilities. What had started 27 years earlier as an AT&T online experiment had come full circle. Through 2009,
9409-591: Was the largest. In 2001, it was acquired by SBC Communications , which in 2005 became the present iteration of AT&T . The Mexican branch of Prodigy, however, was acquired by Telmex . The roots of Prodigy date to 1980 when broadcaster CBS and telecommunications firm AT&T Corporation formed a joint venture named Venture One in Fair Lawn, New Jersey . The company conducted a market test of 100 homes in Ridgewood, New Jersey to gauge consumer interest in
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