Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen feature in BBC timeline
The BBC Money Programme has a big interview with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates telling his computer-life story to Fiona Bruce, and there's a 12-minute clip online now. It's not exactly a grilling, but at least it's not Terry Wogan.
There's also an accompanying Timeline: Bill Gates and Microsoft where you can have fun spotting the odd mistake.
It's been two years since Gates announced he was shifting the focus of his time (he'll still be working for Microsoft), and it must by now have prompted several thousand articles. Indeed, I've done three this year for The Guardian, PC Pro and this week's Computer Weekly. But it's probably not Goodbye Bill, really. I expect he'll want plenty of coverage for his charitable trust.
Update: So, what did you think of the programme? It turns out to have been not much of an interview, but some of the archive material was great. (Somebody will do a loop of Bill jumping over a chair -- one of his party tricks.) In today's Guardfian review, Bill Gates: How a Geek Changed the World (BBC2), Sam Wollaston says:
But I'm a bit disappointed how little of this Money Programme is taken up with the interview. So disappointed in fact that I decide to time it. Sad, I know. Guess how long he's on there for, talking to Fiona, in this hour-long progamme? Four minutes, 36 seconds, by my calculations. And that includes the bit where she stalks him outside 10 Downing St
I thought Alan Sugar was pretty funny, but it was sad to see Mitch Kapor still whining when his overpriced and underwhelming 1-2-3 software hung on to its market share longer than it deserved, before finally being beaten by a better product. Somebody should have asked him how his open source Chandler project is going, and whether it will make it to version 1.0 this century.
