Shareware Beach

Some readers asked me why I call my blog “Shareware Beach”. There’s no real reason. I just tried to come up with a nice, original name.

The view in the graphic at the top is not the view from my office. The nearest beach is 500 km away from here. I did take the picture myself. It’s a 150 degree view of Chalong bay, south of Phuket island in Thailand. I was standing on a stretch of beach called “friendship beach”, which inspired the name of my blog. Maps indicate it as Rawai beach, which is the name of the district.

“Shareware” is the business that I’m in. Originally, “shareware” meant “try-before-you-buy software”, usually produced by small companies or individuals. Until the rise of the commercial Internet in the mid-1990s, large software companies sold software in boxes in retail stores, without offering trial or demo versions. Today, free trial downloads are the norm, and the meaning of “shareware” has shifted to mean software produced by small companies or individuals (even if the Association of Shareware Professionals stubbornly retains the definition of “shareware” as the “try-before-you-buy marketing method).

A more business-like name for a shareware company would be “micro-ISV”, an abbreviation for “small independent software vendor. But that’s jargon without a soul, so like many industry veterans I stick by the name “shareware”.

So, “Shareware Beach” is a place where I geek like me hangs out to enjoy the nicer things in life.