Lifeboat Associates was a company that acted as a independent software broker marketing software to major hardware vendors such as Xerox, HP and Altos

Altos

Altos is a district and locality of the Cordillera Department, Paraguay.-Etymology:It is also called “Altos de Ybypytaré”, which in Guaraní means “path of the wind”, previously called “San Lorenzo de la Cordillera de los Altos”, one of the oldest cities of Paraguay...

. As such Lifeboat Associates were instrumental in the founding of Autodesk

Autodesk

Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on 3D design software for use in the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media and entertainment industries. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker, a coauthor of the first versions of the company's...

and also financed the creation of PC Magazine

PC Magazine

PC Magazine is a computer magazine published by Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009...

.

The company distributed T/Maker

T/Maker

T/Maker Company was an early personal computer software company. Created in 1979 by software engineer Peter Roizen , the original product, "Table Maker," later shortened to "T/Maker," was one of the first spreadsheet programs designed for the personal computer user...

, one of the first spreadsheet programs designed for the personal computer user. In addition Lifeboat Associates started collecting and distributing user-written "free" software, initially for the CP/M

CP/M

CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...

 operating system. One of the first was XMODEM

XMODEM

XMODEM is a simple file transfer protocol developed as a quick hack by Ward Christensen for use in his 1977 MODEM.ASM terminal program. XMODEM became extremely popular in the early bulletin board system market, largely because it was so simple to implement...

, which allowed reliable communication via modem

Modem

A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...

and phone line.

It was later purchased by Programmer's Paradise.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/programmer-s-paradise-inc#ixzz1XccYe2F2