That Word was created by Reaction Software , a small (one-person, actually) software company founded by Todd Reed and based in Calgary, Canada.
The Team
Todd, the Programmer, Designer, Audio Engineer, Marketer, etc...✻
Todd has been writing software for over 20 years, first on the Tandy TRS-80 Colour Computer (the “CoCo”), and most recently on a Mac, focusing on iOS (née iPhone OS) devices. Throughout his career, he's worked mostly at start-ups. When he's not developing, he's learning to play the piano, trying to run a sub-40 minute 10k (for 10 years now—his best official race time is 40:36), or reading (mostly) non-fiction.
History
June 2010
In the spring of 2009 I left my job as Director of Research & Development at Call Genie † to take a self-imposed sabbatical. It was during this hiatus that I took up some iPhone development and began working on the first version of That Word. I worked on That Word for several months, released it in July 2009, and then anxiously waited for the money to roll in. And waited. And waited some more. Good thing the project was mostly a “hobby”.
After recently finishing up some contract work, I revisited the project, and decided to have another go at it. As I write this, That Word 2.0 is in beta testing, and I hope to release it this coming July (this time with a bit of marketing). Version 2.0 brings lots of new features, and a bit more polish overall.
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I list these roles in descending order of my competence. I enjoy all the roles, except the last—which I wish was unnecessary. ↩ |
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I was always somewhat embarrassed by the name “Call Genie”—people often mistook it for a certain kind of adult-oriented phone service. In fact, Call Genie's original product was an automated 411 service for finding businesses, not unlike GOOG-411 (and was launched—albeit prematurely—almost two years before GOOG-411). ↩ |