Issue 10: Tech from the Military

42 | ORIGINS
Sergey Brin paid Susan Wojcicki $1,700 a month
to work out of her garage. Twitter originated
by Jack Dorsey sharing the idea with his friends
Evan Williams and Biz Stone in a San Francisco
park. PayPal was funded with $4.5 million using
a Palm Pilot and the new PayPal technology in
a Woodside, California restaurant. Dennis Crowley
and Naveen Selvadurai created FourSquare
in two New York City coffee shops. Recent MIT
graduate Drew Houston created DropBox on a
bus ride from Boston to New York City.
Paul Wright and Geoff Smith started Blyth Computers
Ltd in 1979 as the first Apple dealership
in Westhaston, England. Three years later, Blyth
Software was created with a database application
tool for the Apple 2 called “OMNIS” using
Apple’s Pascal. The company grew and incorporated
in San Mateo, California in 1984. After the
release of the Apple Macintosh in 1984, the UK
headquarters moved into Mitford House located
in Suffolk.
The company was renamed OMNIS Software in
1997 and eventually became TigerLogic in 2008,
maintaining its role as a leader in developing and
deploying component engineering software.
OMNIS software is a Rapid Application Development
(RAD) tool. The RAD concept is a rigid
paced schedule that defers improvements to the
next version by reusing software components,
prototyping with early reiterative user testing of
designs, and gathering requirements from focus
groups or workshops leaving out much of the
formality of reviews and communication.
OMNIS Studio versions have successfully added
more features with new powerful capabilities,
increasingly simpler to use. It is the only RAD
tool that offers the integrated ability to deploy
on many platforms with seamless interface of
external components. The OMNIS application
has a set of web tools that allow it to operate
without modification using a standard browser
as the interface.
David Swain, OMNIS Technical Account Manager,
says, “It is impossible to misspell. Type a character
to retrieve code objects, never write the
code. OMNIS is a token incorporated language.
www.knowyourorigins.org
“ Wine has been a part
of civilized life for some
7,000 years. It is
the only beverage that
feeds the body, soul and
spirit of man and at
the same time stimulates
the mind... ”
- Robert Mondavi
It reads tokens that represent various code.
OMNIS command objects 2 to 4 bytes in size,
almost like precompiled. This is very fast, incredibly
accurate and the only concern for the
programmer is the logic of the code. Because
the structure is sophisticated, it is less likely to
be hacked.” David Swain has written numerous
articles on OMNIS to help developers and programmers
save time and alleviate frustration.
Rod Young has been very successful in Shaklee
sales for over 30 years. He started his success
with a rolodex. When he bought his Macintosh in
1984, he learned OMNIS. His rolodex was replicated
and he, with the aide of MIT programmers
and David Swain, created a program after an
in-depth market analysis of the optimal time to