The Shareware Industry Awards were a series of awards issued annually by the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation during the Software Industry Conference.
The Software Industry Conference website notes: "The Shareware Industry Awards were conceived by Michael Callahan aka Dr. File Finder at the time of the first shareware conference – as a means to focus attention on the shareware industry. Michael felt that while the conference would help shareware authors in general, an awards ceremony "like the Academy Awards" would benefit the shareware industry as a whole. In 2010, Callahan pleaded guilty to embezzling $167,000 from the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation. He was given a 10-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay restitution. [1]
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines freeware unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification, redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software, which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models.
Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. Shareware is often offered as a download from a website. Shareware differs from freeware, which is fully-featured software distributed at no cost to the user but without source code being made available; and free and open-source software, in which the source code is freely available for anyone to inspect and alter.
Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein, and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D, the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. The player traverses each of the game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss, fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with a knife and a variety of guns.
Platon Leonidovich Lebedev is a Russian businessman and former CEO of Group Menatep. He was convicted of tax evasion, money laundering and embezzlement by Russian courts in two cases and imprisoned from July 2003 to January 2014. He is best known as a close associate of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
PC-Write was a computer word processor and was one of the first three widely popular software products sold via the marketing method that became known as shareware. It was originally written by Bob Wallace in early 1983.
Jack Allan Abramoff is an American lobbyist, businessman, film producer, writer, and convicted felon. He was at the center of an extensive corruption investigation led by Earl Devaney that resulted in his conviction and 21 other people either pleading guilty or being found guilty, including White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and congressional aides.
NYC Media is the official public radio, television, and online media network and broadcasting service of New York City, which has been called the media capital of the world. The network oversees four public television channels, a public radio station, and an Internet video on demand service.
Scott Swedorski is the founder of Tucows, a large Internet domain name reseller, and Internet service provider.
A micro ISV, a term coined by Eric Sink, is an independent software vendor with fewer than 10 or even just one software developer. In such an environment the company owner develops software, manages sales and does public relations.
EmEditor is a lightweight extensible commercial text editor for Microsoft Windows. It was developed by Yutaka Emura of Emurasoft, Inc. It includes full Unicode support, 32-bit and 64-bit builds, syntax highlighting, find and replace with regular expressions, vertical selection editing, editing of large files, and is extensible via plugins and scripts. The software has free trial and after that it downgrades to free version, which still can handle huge files and regex.
Anthony Michael Pilla was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as an auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland in Ohio from 1979 to 1981 and as bishop of the same diocese from 1981 to 2006.
Datastorm Technologies, Inc., was a computer software company that existed from 1986 until 1996. Bruce Barkelew and Thomas Smith founded the company to develop and publish ProComm, a general purpose communications program for personal computers. ProComm flourished in the pre-World Wide Web world, when personal computers used modems to connect over telephone lines with other individual computers, online services such as CompuServe, bulletin board systems (BBSs), Telnet and Gopher sites, and the like. Datastorm was the first company to grow from a shareware publisher into a large commercial software publisher. ProComm 2.4.3 for MS-DOS is still available as shareware.
As-Easy-As for DOS and As-Easy-As for Windows was a shareware 32-bit spreadsheet program developed in 1986 for MS-DOS and later for Microsoft Windows. The name is a play on the phrase "as easy as 1-2-3", a reference to the dominant MS-DOS spreadsheet at that time, Lotus 1-2-3 with which it competed for a fraction of the contender's price. The program was developed and sold by TRIUS, Inc.. The company eventually branched out developing CAD and GIS/Mapping software and SDKs, not focusing on As-Easy-As.
The Association of Software Professionals (ASP), formerly Association of Shareware Professionals, was a professional association for authors and developers of freeware, commercial, and shareware computer software. It was formed in April 1987, and for a time, it was considered as the most popular trade organization for independent software developers and vendors.
Nelson Ford was one of the founders of shareware software distribution, of HAL-PC, of the Association of Shareware Professionals, founder of the Public (software) Library, the largest commercial library of public domain and shareware software, and of the first major order processing service for shareware programmers. In 1984, through his shareware column in Softalk-PC magazine, he was responsible for standardizing the use of the term shareware for free-trial software. He wrote several shareware games: CardShark Hearts, CardShark Spades, and CardShark Bridge Tutor. Nelson Ford was inducted into the Shareware Hall Of Fame in August 2001.
An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to a lack of publisher support. The term is synonymous with that of independent music or independent film in those respective mediums.
MyInfo is a personal information manager developed by Milenix Software. MyInfo collects, organizes, edit, stores, and retrieves personal-reference information like text documents, web snippets, e-mails, notes, and files from other applications.
Brett DiBiase is an American retired professional wrestler and professional wrestling referee. He is best known for his time in Florida Championship Wrestling, WWE's developmental territory. He is a former FCW Florida Tag Team Champion with Joe Hennig as The Fortunate Sons.
Women for Independence is a grass-roots political organisation which seeks to improve the representation of women in public and political life throughout Scotland. Founded in 2012, the movement promotes the causes of Scottish independence and other constitutional changes they consider likely to contribute to greater democracy, gender equality and social justice. The organisation's full name is Women for Independence – Independence for Women.
Typhoon! was a Tigard, Oregon-based Thai restaurant with seven locations in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, including Beaverton, Bend, Gresham, and Redmond. The restaurant closed in 2012.