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About Ideonautics Corporation
We make software.
Who?
When we use the editorial 'we,' it's really an exaggeration. Although
Ideonautics Corporation is a properly constituted business entity, a
'C' corporation formed in New York, its only real resource is ... one
guy. That's Steve Walton, president and C[A-Z]O (Chief Everything
Officer). Me, I. Pets aside, the only sense in which IC is a 'we' is
that I'm
supervised by a spouse who doesn't like to see me waste my time. So
whenever I write 'we' or 'us' it's just unbridled, corp-speak
grandiosity that you can read as 'I' and 'me.'
I've been programming professionally since 1978 and
publishing software since 1980. My programs include a vector
graphics package for the TRS-80 Model I, original games, the Run/C
interpreter for the C programming language, an expert-system shell,
productivity aids and a lot
of custom software for businesses, some of it introducing
computational-intelligence methods ("soft AI") to surprising new
application domains.
The main idea of this site is that some of the things that interest me
will probably interest a few others too. (That's along with
shameless self-promotion, pushing my services as developer of your organization's
custom software, of course.) What I hope to evolve here is a kind of
blog with working programs.
Ideo What?
Our name was suggested by Douglas R. Hofstadter (Metamagical Themas,
page 50), writing about the 'ideosphere' as a term for the realm of
ideas — synonymous with "idea-space" or Jacques Monod's
"abstract
kingdom." Then 'ideonautics' is the art and science of navigating the
ideosphere. Nothing presumptuous here.
Born in 1986 as a Doing-Business-As certificate and a minimal bank
account, Ideonautics Company as such was long an unlit back burner,
while I held salaried jobs (W-2) or freelanced as an individual
contractor(1099). In 1999 an important client told me it could no
longer pay me, not as an individual. (Their accountants and/or lawyers
decided to cut out 1099 vendors because of potential abuses,
in which the IRS might later say the persons were really employees and
make a fuss about it; my situation as a genuine contractor was clear
cut, but
that did not matter.) Thus morphed Ideonautics Company into Ideonautics
Corporation, which has employed me, sometimes with a salary and
sometimes without, since then. Except for legal and tax purposes, and
that regal 'we,' it's still just me.
The logo is adapted from the Egyptian hieroglyphic meaning "the hill of
creation" or "to appear in glory."
I always wanted to appropriate that first lump in the primordial soup,
and when I needed a logo, I spooned it up. Modesty rules.
The Plan
When something is finally obvious that should have been obvious years
before, we call it common sense. Common sense is telling me to stop
trying
to sell software (except what's custom built for particular
users,
to
their particular specifications). My explorations of the realms of
shrinkwrap
and shareware have shown me that I am not cut out to simultaneously
produce programs and
do everything it takes to monetize them. I've
found myself really annoyed when I was trying to offer a simple program
and found that the scheme for demo management and registration took far
more tangled thinking and coding effort than the application itself.
I really just want to make software and, with luck, see others enjoy
using it. The best approach to that, I now think, is not to try to sell
it, but to either give it away or give away the use of it. I've done
the former in the past, and proably will again from time to time; the
latter is what appeals to me most right now. The Web makes it
practical. [CBH]
The Agenda
We started with something simple. The new regime at Ideonautics begins
with a web version of
EstiCost™, previously offered for the Palm OS
platform.
EstiCost™ is a mortgage calculator (remember the one that
came
with the original IBM PC? nah, I'm not that old either) but it seems to
be unique, because of two
features:
- It knows how to handle condominiums and co-op
apartments,
not just houses. It knows their terminologies and it knows how the
quantities labeled by their special terms enter into calculations.
- It estimates not just the mortgage payment, but the
true,
after-tax cost of housing when all the relevant costs and deductions
have been taken into account. This makes it the best way to compare
homes and financing options, and to make a truly informed rent-vs.-buy
decision.
Next, we plan to web-ize another specialized calculator, but we're
not saying just yet what it's for. After that will come one
or
more web-based games. And after that, we'll see. Stick around.
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