An interview with Steve Goodwin, creator of emailAI

When did you first start developing software ?

I started writing software when I was 7 years old. I remember my first program being a word processor I wrote on a TRS-80 in assembly language to assist with writing assignments. It’s funny because my memory of it while a happy one had a nasty moment where I had written a three page assignment, went to save it and the program crashed during the save, losing my newly written assignment. Needless to say it was my first taste of why programs need to be properly tested before using.

Where were you born ?

I was born in England in 1971 and came to Australia at the age of 1. I grew up in the Southern parts of Australia, mainly the Blue Mountains area. It was a great place as your backyard was miles and miles of bushland to explore. And I loved to explore.

Can you quickly give us a brief history on what you have done

At 15 years of age I spent 6 months in Thailand working along side his father in the rubber industry eventually returning to Queensland Australia to further my studies through college then onto university. I didn't finish university for personal reasons at the time but needless to say I have spent many hours studying programming and other various related I.T. topics.

Shortly after I went on to form a company called Software Support Pty Ltd that provided I.T. related services to businesses across Queensland. After successfully running that company for a number of years I sold the company to an employee while maintaining the software development side of the business which was later formed into a new company called Software Development Pty Ltd.

Today I create applications on a contract by contract basis. You can see several of my works at http://www.softwaredevelopment.net.au. Some notable projects were Argosoft Accounting (used by many business across Australia), AeroScan (Laser Scanning measuring system for use from helicopters), VMS Service Manager (A large service management application handling the day to day requirements of a large Interstate based business that repairs high tech instruments (like altitude meters for aircraft etc.)

I’ve done a lot to be honest but best not to bore your readers.

How did emailAI come about?

Before emailAI was a program called (STEVEN) that I wrote in my spare time to solve a few personal spam issue. It wasn’t long before I decided to put it online for others to benefit from as well. Shortly after a fellow called Brent Spencer came along and assisted with the suggestions of new features, fixing up all my bad grammar, and finding bugs. I was never really satisfied with (STEVEN) and shortly after began development on emailAI which was quite a considerable challenge for a single person to undertake, but 12 months later (again written in my spare time) emailAI was released to the public.

Why do you want emailAI to be free ?

I don’t believe anyone should have to pay for something to solve spam related issues, it shouldn’t really exist, it was bad original design to allow spam to happen in the first place. I do actively encourage people to register for $29USD though as it does assist me in creating more features and helps with marketing costs. Unfortunately it is not all that free to get a program onto the Internet and promoted so end users are given the chance to discover it. There is no difference between the un-registered version in functionality, it just adds a tag line to outgoing validation requests advertising the www.emailAI.com website. So people are welcome to use it for free, I prefer them to use it than not to as that in itself makes my work have more meaning.

Why call your program emailAI ?

emailAI to me was always about making email think, making each individual email work for itself and decide by itself what to do I do, hence I gave each and every email it’s own Artificial Intelligence to work this out. It’s kind of sad to think that some emails think to themselves “am I really spam, no I can’t be, please no, I really want to be a real email !”. “The artificial intelligence allows me to do a lot with the core engine for many of the functions that emailAI currently offers as well as many more functions I have planned.

The engine worked out well and every email truly does think for itself. Which allows the simultaneous sending, receiving and processing of emails.

Email Ringtones which utilise the artificial intelligence are a great feature which allows you to have individual different sound files depending on who an email was from or who an email was to. So now I can actively hear when an important email arrives and who it was from. I wanted to make email Smart.

Who does all the graphic works for emailAI ?

I create it all myself using programs like Poser, Carrara, Macromedia Fireworks. It is tough, 10 years ago you didn’t have to worry about program presentation it was simply text on a screen. Today you not only have to make a program very functional but also pleasing to the eye. While not the best graphics in the world I think they do improve the overall image. Well I hope so anyway.

Do you have any hobbies other than programming ?

Yes, I play the piano, started learning 4 years ago and really enjoying it. I also write a bit of music. Video games are also a favourite past time, the Final Fantasy Series, any good Role Playing Game really, Roller Coaster Tycoon and the odd First Person Shooter. The games to me are a great incite in what is being done in today’s programming world and you can draw from the functionality of games and apply the theories to business applications.

Has anyone ever inspired you programming wise?

Yes, I must say I have envied Chris Sawyer (www.chrissawyer.com), he is the gentleman that wrote Transport Tycoon (an all time favourite game) and of course Roller Coaster Tycoon. What inspired me about Chris was that he programmed them alone and still managed to release a successful program while many other development companies have teams of people but still fail to produce a product as good as Chris did, and not just once.

Thanks for you time

Thank you and I hope everyone reading this takes the time to discover how emailAI can benefit them and enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed creating it.