PawSoft

History

PawSoft has been around in various forms since 1998. Learn about each period of our history here, from most recent to oldest.

September 2000 - Present

There were several reasons for this final name change from PsySoft to PawSoft. The first is that PsySoft is a common name, there are plenty of them about already and so it would make us harder to find. The second is that PsySoft suggests the software is somehow related to psychology - our software clearly is not. The third and final reason is that PsySoft was never intended to be a permanent name in the first place. It was decided in September 2000 that a new, more permanent name should be chosen, to coincide with the development of a new website and the first release of PawBrowse (the new name for EyeBrowse/PsyBrowse). To keep things similar and simple, DigiClock also received a name change to PawClock. Since then we have made many other software releases and there are always more on the way. Watch the website for details!

PsySoft

January 2000 - August 2000

DigiClock, which although not particularly good at version 1.0, had received some favourable comments and so was clearly worth pursuing further. Paul worked hard for many weeks until he had created a decent follow up to the previous release. The new version, DigiClock 2.5, kickstarted the company under it's new name, PsyPab Software (just referred to as PsySoft). DigiClock became PsySoft's main software and grew in popularity with each version number. Version 2.6 followed 2.5, then 2.7, 2.8, 2.81 and finally 2.9. It was only a month before the end of PsySoft as our name that Paul began work on the next big software release - an all-new version of EyeBrowse. The new version would not be called EyeBrowse, and was simply called PsyBrowse for the purpose of it's development.

Bitstream Software

March 1999 - May 1999

Despite being a short-lived name, Bitstream Software was a highly productive period in our history. Like Image Browser, Spark Multimedia Productions was just a temporary name and so shortly after Image Browser became EyeBrowse, SMP became Bitstream Software. The website received a complete redesign to reflect these changes and looked all the better for it. EyeBrowse went through several well-received freeware releases before becoming shareware from version 2.0 onwards. It reached version 2.2, possibly the most popular release of EyeBrowse under the Paul and Kristan partnership, with version 3 coming along well when the business partnership was suddenly ended because of internal disputes.

Spark Multimedia Productions

November 1998 - February 1999

The earliest incarnation of PawSoft was under the name Spark Multimedia Productions (SMP), way back in late 1998. SMP was formed by two college friends, Kristan Dyson and Paul Wolfenden. Their original aim was developing Image Browser, a primitive image viewer, into a popular freeware program. Kristan handled all the programming and Paul did everything else, which ranged from interface design to graphics to the website. Image Browser became quite popular and soon evolved into EyeBrowse, a name change to reflect the fact that it was no longer just an experimental program (Image Browser was not exactly an original name!).