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.
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.
[1] Appleton has designed and written more than 30 professional software publications throughout his career, including World Builder, the first-ever rich media authoring tool.
[2] 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.
[17] Appleton is also credited with developing third-party enterprise applications for Cisco WebEx Connect, Microsoft Windows Azure and Intuit WorkPlace.