Nowadays, it publishes details of more than 1, 500 software interfaces on the web, to help third-party developers.

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While COBOL has not gone away at the banks, more and more of the technical staff spend their time programming new features and interfaces in modern languages and web application frameworks that provide highly applicable and transferable skills to startups only too happy to hire them for their technical training and domain experience.

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Jaron Lanier has been known for decades as one of the pioneers of virtual reality, and it's very hard to argue his importance in much of the early development of computers, interfaces, and the World Wide Web.

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There's still room for improvement for the Internet travel industry, such as more intuitive user interfaces, better customer service and faster Web site speeds.

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Unfortunately, with all of this new-found freedom, design for the web and apps has become filled with skeuomorphic user interfaces that attempt to imitate the appearance of real things in digital form.

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While every web browser still has a URL bar that allows someone to enter a website address, but with shinier interfaces and toys available, the role of the direct URL is being diminished.

FORBES: Directed Browsing And The Death Of The URL