02/10/2002 Interview with Morgan Leigh from wirejunkie
When was wirejunkie formed and how many people are associated with the company?
wirejunkie has been around since 1996. We started out doing web development, specialising in e-commerce, which we still do today. wirejunkie was started by the coming together of Tim Serong and Morgan Leigh both of whom had a long history in the computing industry beforehand.
What can Clie users expect from you guys in the future?
We will soon be releasing Leonardo's Workshop which is a desktop application which allows you to export images to other vector formats and also to view and print your images on your PC. Once that is released we will be adding Hi Res support which will be a major benefit for Clie users.
What makes Leonardo special compared to the other Palm OS drawing programs?
The fact that it is vector based for a start. This allows you to resize images to any size with no loss of quality, so you can make a small image on your handheld and resize it on your desktop to print it out. Also it means that file sizes are really tiny compared with bitmapped apps. The range of features also makes Leonardo a stand out product. There isn't another product on the market that offers the range of features and configurability that Leonardo does. Another kool thing about Leonardo is the fact that you can have a maximum image size of about 20 meters square. It used to drive me nuts that other programs only allowed you to draw an image as big as the screen. I mean what can you do with a bunch of 160x160 images!?
Do you intend to release other Palm OS programs?
We have millions of other ideas for products but they will have to wait for a while as we are flat out with Leonardo and our web development business.
What PDA do you use and why?
Obviously we have a number of PDA's here which we use for testing purposes but personally I use a Palm IIIc. Yes, its true. It is the first PDA I bought and so I suppose I have an emotional attachment to it. It does everything I want, has never broken down and I am too busy writing software to go PDA shopping.
What's the best song you have ever heard?
You know, I don't actually have a best song or favourite web site. Both these things are a function of time, experience and mood at the very least. The song that I most consistently got the biggest kick out of for a long period of time was "Break Away" by Penyon, but I may be somewhat biased in this, given that that's my old band. The song I've listened to the most in the last couple of weeks is "All You Need" by Sublime. Take your pick
What's your favourite web site?
It's always which ever one we are working on at the time. So presently its www.leonardo.wirejunkie.com
What one feature would you like all PDAs to have?
A transporter.
How long did Leonardo take to complete from start to finish?
We wrote Leonardo over quite a long time, two years in fact. The reason was that we did it in our spare time and we don't have much of that. We started this project as we wanted to do it for the fun of writing a Palm OS app but we had no time to include it in our working day, so we did it after hours for relaxation. Ok we admit it, we are chronic geeks.
Has it been as successful as you hoped for?
We haven't achieved world domination yet but we are confident we will subjugate the globe soon! (Did I say that out loud?) It is really too early to say as Leonardo has only just been on the market for a month and it comes with a fully functional 30 day trial period. So far we have been very pleased with the reactions to Leonardo though. We honestly didn't think that anyone would buy it at all until the trial period was over, but they have, and we have had a great deal of positive feedback from everyone.
If you want more information about Leonardo please visit www.wirejunkie.com. Many thanks to Morgan for taking the time to answer my questions.