A 1998 documentary following the lives of a group of Netscape engineers in Silicon Valley. It was shot during a time of flagging company fortunes, the initial release of the Mozilla code as an open source project, and the friction of an impending AOL-Netscape merger. The documentary depicts Netscape programmers forgoing their normal lives and families in an attempt to save the company from ruin.

Netscape took an enormous risk in deciding to open the Mozilla source code to unpaid contributors worldwide so they could accept tweaks and changes from a huge pool of engineers. A close-knit crew of eccentric but brilliant minds work on the project, picking bugs out of huge amounts of code, and struggling to make it all work by the fateful day when the new browser is to be launched.

A 2001 documentary film tracing the twenty-year history of GNU, Linux, open source, and the free software movement. It features several interviews with prominent hackers and entrepreneurs (and hackers-cum-entrepreneurs), including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, Linus Torvalds, Larry Augustin, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, Frank Hecker and Brian Behlendorf.

The film also documents the first full-scale LinuxWorld Summit conference, with appearances by Linus Torvalds and Larry Augustin on the keynote stage. It appeared in several film festivals including South by Southwest, the Atlanta Film and Video Festival, Boston Film Festival, and Denver International Film Festival; it won Best Documentary at both the Savannah Film and Video Festival and the Kudzu Film Festival.

The iPod Revolution goes behind the scenes and presents the inside story on how Steve Jobs gave Apple new life and paved the way for iPod to takeover the mp3 market and redefine the music industry.

Apple currently holds a significant market share of not only digital music players, but also now have the largest online music store. It’s odd that a company that only holds a market share of 7% for personal computer users has achieved a whopping 70% market share for mp3 players. Apple is however, a company founded on innovation and the always-expanding frontier – at a time when Apple introduced its first iPods in 2001, most companies rejected the idea.

Apple has been successful in this market for a number of reasons, but mainly because they offer both the player and the music, all packed into an easy to use, streamlined package. They developed an innovative product at the right time and marketed it in the right way. Now the iPod has established a brand name and is seen as more than just a music player.

Documentary taking a look into the world of Google, in the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California and in its London offices. We see, among others, Vint Cerf, named ‘the father’ of the Internet who explains the inner workings of Google as a company. Since 2004, Cerf has been working for Google, helping them to develop new applications for the Internet. What is his view on the development of the Internet, and on the role Google plays in today’s world?

With its motto ‘Don’t be evil’, Google seems to have the best intentions. But there are also claims that Google is slowly turning into Big Brother, keeping track of its users and continuously making decisions about the information it provides to an ever faster growing number of users.

Those of us searching for online information are increasingly being referred to Wikipedia. For the past two years, this free online “encyclopedia of the people” has been topping the lists of the world’s most popular search engines. However, do we really know what we’re using?

Backlight explores the story behind Wikipedia and examines the wonderful world of Web 2.0. Is it an information revolution, or merely hype?

John Heilemann explores the interactive nature of the World Wide Web. From the founders of eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Netscape, Google and many others, we hear amazing stories of how, in just ten years, the Internet has taken over our lives.

These extraordinary men and women tell of how they went from being geeky, computer-obsessed nerds to being 21st-century visionaries in the time it takes most people to get their first promotion, and how they made untold billions along the way.

The founders of Amazon.com and eBay, Jeff Bezos and Pierre Omidyar, tell how their businesses grew from nothing to dominate the global economy and profoundly change the way we live our lives. The programme explores the growth of the dot.com bubble and illustrates how rapid growth in the industry and investor speculation contributed to the U.S. recession of 2001.

In just a few years, a unique method of finding information revolutionized the internet and in the process created Google, one of the largest companies in the US. This programme explores how their innovative use of advertising rocketed the company to the top of the technology market and caused competitors such as Yahoo! and Excite to be sent scrambling to improve their search.

A documentary examining the history of video games from the first coin operated Atari machines through to Nintendo consoles, including insights regarding the power of the arcade game and home consoles.

The computer in the modern world has taken over both the workplace and home. What began as the hobby of a group of enthusiasts – computer nerds – has expanded into a billion-dollar business. This programme charts the development of the PC from its precarious early days, and investigates how an alien and inaccessible machine has become part of the fabric of everyday life.

TV series broadcast in 1983 as part of the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project, following on from the earlier series, The Computer Programme. Unlike its predecessor, Making the Most of the Micro explored in greater depth the technical details of computing and the potential uses that microcomputers could be put to, once again mainly making use of the BBC Micro for demonstration purposes in the studio.

Episode 9 of the series looks at early examples computer generated imagery in movies, and techniques for graphical manipulation and animation on the micro. The programme also explores computer aided design software and how it is beginning to revolutionize the manufacturing processes of the time.

Making the Most of the Micro was a TV series broadcast in 1983 as part of the BBC’s Computer Literacy Project, following on from the earlier series, The Computer Programme. Unlike its predecessor, Making the Most of the Micro explored in greater depth the technical details of computing and the potential uses that microcomputers could be put to, once again mainly making use of the BBC Micro for demonstration purposes in the studio.