2042
I've been at Microsoft for quite some time now. Just a week shy of seven years as of today. That's long enough to almost forget what I did before.
Before I joined Microsoft, I did a small self-funded startup, the end result of which was an auto-versioning application called "Rev" which we eventually sold to Aladdin Systems who eventually renamed/rebranded it "Flashback".
Sure, there's CVS and version control systems for large projects and folks who know what they're doing. That wasn't the point of Rev. The point of Rev was to provide versioning for the rest of us. For folks who don't want to deal with a server and login passwords and all that administrative overhead nonsense.
Just drag the files you want versioned into Rev, and the go on about your work as you normally would. Save your file and Rev takes a snapshot and saves off the changes from the previous version. Did you save some changes to a document by mistake? No problem, go into Rev and retrieve the previous version. We even came up with a marketing term that named the problem that Rev was solving: "Saver's Remorse".
Anyway, apparently Flashback has finally made it to the clearance bin at the low low price of $9.95. Note: our contract for royalties ran out long ago — the above hyperlink is not a solicitation.
Frankly I'm surprised that FlashBack is still for sale. I mean, this product was originally written more than seven years ago. Yet not only does it still run just fine today (on both Mac and Windows), but apparently you can still buy it. Another surprise is that no other product has superceded it.
When we first thought of Rev, we were dreadfully scared that someone else would simultaneously come up with the same product idea and beat us to market. That didn't happen.
Not only did no one else come up with the same idea, no one else even copied the product after the fact! Eventually there were some others like "UndoIt" which did systemwide versioning, but nothing else provided the same simple functionality with such a trivial user interface.
We succesfully debuted Rev at the January 1997 MacWorld San Francisco Expo where it was named Tidbits' best new product of the show. Every demo we gave resulted in several sales right there on the spot. My first and last experience in retail sales. The Aladdin guys happened to be at a nearby booth, noticed what was going on, and decided they wanted the product. A few Microsoft guys also noticed and decided they wanted the engineers. The rest, as they say, is history.
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever write my own commercial software again...
people
Comments: