My name is Chris Wright and I'm a 23 year old from the UK, working as a technical support analyst for an IT support company based in Yorkshire. I've been working in IT support businesses since I was 17 but I've also always had an interest in software development - both of my parents were programmers so perhaps that has something to do with it.
A few years ago I started learning Visual Basic .NET in my spare time and with the help of lots of books, websites, and the helpful people at vbforums.com, I progressed to the point where I was able to make applications that helped me in my job
as an IT admin.
I started off just making simple programs that only served a very specific purpose but I realised that other IT Professionals might still find these apps useful, so after a while I started posting some of them on my blog. You can find a lot of these programs on the Software page of this website under the heading "Old Software", so feel free to take a look and download anything that looks like it might be useful. I also started making some .NET code libraries to help other .NET developers provide certain functionality in their software - in fact some of the more simple applications available on this website are just spruced up demo applications that I made to demonstrate what some of my code libraries could do. If there are any .NET developers reading this, you might find some useful code examples and libraries (including my .NET Windows API Library) on my blog.
After a while I decided I wanted to make more than just simple little applications though, I felt I had enough VB.NET knowledge for me to be able to make more sophisticated software that would be more useful to other IT Pros. I thought of several ideas for applications that would help people doing a similar job to me, but of course pretty much all of them had already been made and already had features that I hadn't even considered. Now as there is so much great software that is completely free these days, I found that when I was looking at applications aimed at IT Professionals that were selling for hundreds of dollars, I was thinking "that's not that hard to make, surely someone will just make it and offer it for free..." - but in a lot of cases no one has. I also found myself looking at some of the IT software that we use in our company and thinking "I could make a better version than this!". So based on my interest in software development, my desire to help other IT Pros and my hatred of over priced and badly made software, I decided to start on several applications I'd had in mind for some time and make them all completely free.
Of course the only issue with this (and the reason why there aren't already free versions of a lot of the applications we use) is that it takes a lot of time, effort, and in some cases money, to make well made and useful software. I don't mind spending a lot of time making a particular application, as long as I know that it is going to be helpful for a lot of people - for this reason its very important to me that I hear feedback or suggestions from the people that these applications are aimed at.
At the end of the day I am just one person, not a software development company with lots of resources and several developers, but if someone has a request for a new feature in one of my apps or reports a bug then I will always try my best to help as soon as I can (bearing in mind I do have a 9 - 5 job to do as well).
So if you ever use one of my applications, please let me know what you think of it... if you can think of a way it could be improved, if you think it's rubbish, or even if you are just happy with it the way it is, please let me know!
UPDATE 23/01/2011: Whilst it is still my aim to help other IT Pros as much as I can with my applications, I have realised that I would be foolish not to try to recover some of the costs (in money, time and effort) that I incur making these applications, so I am starting to charge for some of my software. This will only affect new applications I make and there
will always still be free versions of the new applications (just with a few less features) that will still be useful - hopefully that along with the fact that my
applications will cost considerably less than other similar applications will mean I am still helping other IT Pros as much as
possible.
Oh and I'm also now a recognised Microsoft Community Contributor :)
Thanks
Chris