The next morning at Mettingstrasse, I mentioned the travel information system to Rainer, explaining that Digithurst UK was trying to get into the point of sale market. He took me to Hans’ office and showed me a demonstration of an image database similar to the one I saw the previous afternoon. Actually, ‘PictureBook,’ the name Hans had given the software, was being used for that beta system at Hannover airport. After five weeks without a holiday, most Germans were desperately in need of a break and didn’t much care where they went, so long as it was hot. The holiday ‘vending machine’ let the customer choose the destination at the airport – incredibly last-minute.com. What PictureBook had, but our estate agent system did not, was an architecture based on hyperlinking, the technology which, in later years, became a fundamental component of the World Wide Web …
… (An extract from The Ghost in the Labyrinth by Peter Kruger)
