About Isaacsoft

About Isaacsoft

SetTime

Isaacsoft began in 1993 with an experiment with a newly popular programming language called Visual Basic (version 3). An interest in timekeeping and calendar calculations led to a utility called SetTime. This little program used a modem (remember those?) to dial the National Institute of Standards and Technology's time service. The 1200 baud time signal was used to set the computer's clock to official standard time. Almost on a whim, I uploaded the program to the shareware archive on AOL (the hottest way to get online at the time).

To my amazement, thousands of people downloaded the free program, and it was even given a paragraph in a PC World Magazine cover story (October 1994, p. 124). Soon people began to ask for an updated version that was designed for Windows 95, and before long, SetTime32 became a reality. The new version used an Internet connection to retrieve the time signal, rather than a direct modem connection.

SetTime32 sold several hundred copies as shareware. A number of regional magazines, including a Dutch and a Japanese computer-related magazine, ran stories on it or included it in shareware collections distributed to subscribers. It has since wound up on several "crack" sites, with the authorization system apparently defeated.

LiveMix

The idea for LiveMix was conceived in 2008 when I was volunteering on the tech team at Houston Northwest Church. We were using software called MediaShout to display song lyrics and sermon outlines on large projection screens at the front of the auditorium. MediaShout had some great features, such as being able to display text over video backgrounds. But it also gave us all sorts of frustrations. It crashed a lot, it was sluggish, and editing was not for the faint of heart. I thought to myself, "I can do better."

It took three years of software development, but in the end, the result was software that did in fact perform better than MediaShout, and was much easier to use.

The Future

Your ideas, suggestions, and comments are always welcome. Please click the Contact link for contact information.