Brilliant Tech Visionaries #3
from Fortune 500 magazine 2012. enhanced by Peter@ Wiz4.biz 4/13
Barnes & Noble CEO, William Lynch found his Niche, er, Nook
When people think about e-books, they often think of Amazon. But it is Barnes & Noble, once the looming goliath to local book stores, that many publishers not-so-secretly hope will succeed. In recent years, it has struggled mightily, closing more than 100 stores and seeing its stock price languish. But it managed to build a game changer in its Nook. Microsoft is investing $300 million with Barnes & Noble for a 17.6% stake in its digital e-book reader. Microsoft’s investment values the overall Nook business at $1.7 billion, which is more than twice the $792 million recent market value for all of Barnes & Noble.
DVD Renter “Coinstar” CEO, Paul Davis
With all the buzz around content streaming, it’s easy to overlook Redbox, pioneer of the $1-a-night DVD rental. What began as an experimental subsidiary of Coinstar in 2004 has evolved into one of the company’s biggest money makers, so much so, that it raised forecasts for its first quarter 2012 earnings, driven by larger-than-expected customer interest in Redbox. To get there, Davis fought several hard-won legal battles with movie studios concerned that the company would further eat away at DVD sales. And expect the Redbox business to expand even further thanks to the $100 million acquisition of NCR Corp.’s entertainment business, the unit behind the Blockbuster Express brand, as well a new streaming service in partnership with Verizon, due out the second half of this year, that could give Netflix’s own instant service a run for its money.
Wow !!! WWW. World Wide Web, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee isn’t a household name, but nearly every household uses his invention. During the ’80s and into the ’90s he worked at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland, where he created a system of hypertext documents that allowed scientists to access information quickly, without resorting to email. His program, Enquire (which stored information in links), was the precursor to the Web.
In the early ’90s, Berners-Lee wrote software for the first Web browser, and went on to found the World Wide Web (W3) Consortium at MIT, an organization that abides by the mottos “Web for All,” and “Web On Everything” (meaning mobile devices, TV systems, etc.) Its mission is to develop Web standards that ensure the Web’s longevity.
[ Next Visionaries from: Oracle billionaire – Larry Ellison & the GOOGLE co-founders, Larry Page & Sergey Brin ]