The GIF

[dando]

A shout out to my old stomping grounds and Steve Wilhite, creator of the GIF.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/an-honor-for-the-creator-of-the-gif/?smid=tw-nytimes

Sadly he suffered a stroke circa '99, but has recovered fairly well. CompuServe in its time was an incubator pre-Web. CS could have bought AOL for $50m in '94, but H&R Block pooped on the deal. Instead they bought Spry (Internet-in-a-Box) for $30m. :saywhat: Somewhere out there David Pool is sitting on a beach. :irked:

-Kevin

[nrc]

Using LZW compression was a blunder. I didn't know that the creator pronounced it "JIF".

[dando]

Using LZW compression was a blunder. I didn't know that the creator pronounced it "JIF".

Steve is an interesting man. He was responsible for developing the DOS and Windows clients for CServe. Say what you will, but we broke ground (chat, SIGs, etc.). :thumbup:

-Kevin

[Napoleon]

I didn't know that the creator pronounced it "JIF".

More on this here. The guy who wrote this post, before he was doing political blogging full time, was in the computer/software industry in Silicon Valley (hence his familiarity with the GIF issue).

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/05/most-absurd-religious-war-geek-history-news-today