Sign in

William Appleton

American entrepreneur and technologist

William "Bill" Appleton (born May 23, 1961) is an American entrepreneur and technologist best known as the programmer of the first rich media authoring tool World Builder, the multimedia programming language SuperCard, a best-selling CD-ROM Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, the DreamFactory REST API platform, and Snapshot Org Management for Salesforce.2

From Wikipedia’s article on William Appleton (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born May 23, 1961.1

Companies

Early life and education

  • Date not recordedDavidson College3
  • Date not recordedOak Ridge High School3

Originally from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Appleton graduated from Oak Ridge High School in 1979 before moving on to Davidson College, where he studied philosophy, painting and economics. In 1984 Appleton passed up an economics graduate fellowship at Vanderbilt University and moved into his parents’ basement, where he developed programs for his Macintosh computer.

From Wikipedia’s article on William Appleton (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: programmer.5

Appleton has designed and written more than 30 professional software publications throughout his career, including World Builder, the first-ever rich media authoring tool. Appleton also created the multimedia programming language SuperCard and developed Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, a national best-selling CD-ROM game that sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. He was the founder and Chief Technology Officer of DreamFactory and developed a serverless REST API platform in the enterprise space. Currently he is the Chief Technology Officer at Metazoa working on Snapshot Org Management for Salesforce.

In 1989, Appleton won the Silicon Beach Software Technical Innovation Award, presented for his work in hypermedia development environments. Appleton owns two patents. The first, issued in 1997, covers a method for the production of digital movies. The second, issued in 1998, describes a computer display system for the real-time display of digital movie frames.

Appleton's software applications include the following:

Silicon Beach Software

1985, Enchanted Scepters

1986, World Builder

1988, Apache Strike

1989, SuperCard

TeleRobotics Inc.

1986, Course Builder

1987, Video Builder

Symmetry Corp

1988, HyperDA

Reactor

1991, Creepy Castle

Cyberflix

1993, Lunicus

1994, Jump Raven

1995, Dust: A Tale of the Wired West

1996, Skull Cracker

1996, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time

1996, Timelapse

1997, Power Rangers Zeo vs. The Machine Empire

1998, Redjack: Revenge of the Brethren

Disney Interactive

1997, MathQuest

1998, The D Show

1998, ReadingQuest

1999, Villains’ Revenge

MessageBay

2000, VoiceAnimation

2001, VideoAnimator

DreamFactory

2002, DreamFactory Player

2003, SBuilder

2005, DreamTeam

2006, OrgView

2006, SnapShot

2006, Carousel

2006, FormFactory

2006, Web Meeting Mashup

2008, TableTop

2008, Monarch

2009, GamePlan

2010, Retail Relay

2011, LaunchPad

2013, DreamFactory API Platform

Read more

CyberFlix

After stints in Silicon Valley and Chicago, Appleton moved back home to Knoxville, Tennessee. From 1994 to 1998, Appleton served as founder and president of Cyberflix Inc., a Knoxville-based multimedia computer programming company specializing in interactive movie production. While at Cyberflix, Appleton worked on the hit titles Lunicus and Jump Raven, both of which were sold to Paramount Technology Group. In a 1993 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Appleton discussed what he saw as the future of video game characters. "Great dramatic issues will be played out on CD-ROM, things that will play all of the human emotions, love hate, joy, greed, childbirth, death, promotion, firing – you name it," he was quoted as saying.

Cyberflix launched its hit title Titanic: Adventure Out of Time in November 1996. Production costs totaled $2 million, and the game retailed for $50. The Titanic title went on to sell millions of copies and become an international best-selling CD-ROM game. The game features an interactive, authentic replica of the Titanic ship that took two years of research to create digitally and included the use of the ship's original blueprints. At the time, the Discovery Channel called it "the most historically accurate digital model of Titanic available." Titanic: Adventure Out of Time earned a MacHome Journal Home Choice Award in 1997, as well as a first place prize for best animation at the World Animation Celebration. By 1998, Cyberflix had 35 employees, and annual revenue exceeded $3 million. Throughout his career, Appleton has worked with Disney, Paramount and Viacom to create applications for content development.

DreamFactory

Appleton served as the chief technology officer of DreamFactory, a Campbell, California-based company he co-founded. DreamFactory builds software tools for the enterprise, originally targeting Salesforce.com users and currently developing a cloud service platform for enterprise companies to move their apps and data freely without any lock-in restrictions to any hosted cloud. Appleton is also credited with developing third-party enterprise applications for Cisco WebEx Connect, Microsoft Azure and Intuit WorkPlace.

From Wikipedia’s article on William Appleton (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

Appleton lives in Los Gatos, California.

From Wikipedia’s article on William Appleton (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6