Warm welcome to Solid Software:

News (selected sample):

Mar 08, 2024: Our apologises, if you have had trouble reaching this site from time-to-time, over the last month. There have been web-site hosting issues beyond our reach (i.e. service providers) - which we have now addressed. So, onwards and upwards... There are interesting things happening in the general software tech industry, several of which lean our way as it happens:

• WebAssembly technology, that allows many preexisting programs written in languages other than JavaScript, such as C, C++, Go, Java and Rust, to run within the standard web browser, is reaching a level of maturity that offers to bring all manner of sophisticated applications to the browser. Sure, its been around for quite a while now, e.g. the first book I read on it was - Learn WebAssembly by Mike Rourke, published by Packt in late 2018. And, Microsoft added WebAssembly capabilities to .Net6 via Blazor in 2021, and so on. But 2024 looks like a watershed year for WebAssembly technologies.
• With renewed focus, or should we say global mainstream focus on AI via ChatGPT V3+, there is a new focus on Human-AI Interfaces, and human-in-the-loop (i.e. people buddied up with AI) becoming a mainstream interest, indeed, a priority to save many a human job. We've had published research in this area since 2001 (e.g. a paper in a NASA run workshop in 2003 - of course, NASA always had an emphasis on humans working together with intelligent systems), and our DigitalFriend technology built on our advanced research, since 2003!

With both of these areas of intense technical activity entering the zeitgeist, we should see more of our products coming to the commercial space in 2024-2025... lets "Make it so".

Oct 21, 2021: Hurray!@@%&&!! We finally come out of lockdown tomorrow (Friday, 2021-10-22), after enduring as the City (Melbourne) with the worlds most days locked down since March 2020. On the plus side - the vast majority of our citizens are alive and well. The State clocked up 73,151 cases of Covid19 and 1005 deaths, over nearly two years. Not bad for a city of 5 million people. In fact, Australia's mortality rate fell in 2020 according to the ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics), with Covid19 being way down at 38th on the ladder of leading causes of death. Death by flu fell dramatically: in 2020 there were 55 people who died from influenza, compared to 1,080 in 2019! (ABS again)

Its going to take us here at Solid Software a while to rise above the hurdles that the lockdown (and of course the global pandemic in general) has created for us. Revenue has been a problem. Consequently, our new online training courses are taking longer to develop than expected. As are our two innovative platforms that we are now unlikely to be able to launch this year. However, 2022 looks like its going to be exciting on those fronts, for us, for our clients, and I'd wager for the whole of Melbourne. I.e. Melbourne is a sleeping giant, about to wake up and have a significant positive impact on the new World:)

Mar 1, 2019: One of our inhouse strengths is our ability to design and develop bespoke high-tech tools, that very few teams are capable of doing (i.e. we have a power of R&D under our belts). We have done this recently for our eBook publishing Imprint, eBookDynasty.net. We have developed our own eBook file format and eBookReader, for a number of reasons, including:

1. We needed to be able to display Chinese language fonts (lines of) in both horizontal and vertical modes at the click of a button (n.b. although many readers of Chinese happily read horizontal lines, courtesy of western word-processor defaults over many years, traditionally Chinese publishers printed text vertically, and from right-to-left . . . many people reading Chinese still prefer it that way, or at least, the option to do so);
2. We wanted to carry the necessary fonts within our ebooks, to remove dependence on the user's device actually needing Chinese fonts installed - i.e. you don't need any Chinese language installed on your device to be able to read our eBooks on your device - this reduces overheads on the user's device and your management of it, and reduces dependence on operating system technology providers (both their technology and policy updates, both of which can be way too frequent);
3. A further strand of our current publishing endeavours, involves providing tools for Aspiring Authors in the Chinese and other languages. The technology for this new area is related to the eBookReader technology, in that the display of the results in Chinese fonts, every which way, is more-than half-way to the authoring tool.

Fig.1: Interface to SodaFountain our inhouse eBook maker

The screen-shot in figure 1 above is taken from V0.5 of our in-house tool - SodaFountain - for creating and testing our eBooks - the part that we do, inhouse. The 'testing' part involves choosing the various screen-resolutions of user-devices, in both Portrait and Landscape orientations of device, and in both horizontal and vertical line modes. E.g. The ToolBar in the app has buttons for 7 common screen resolutions, while other resolutions can be chosen from within the menus. Similarly, there are toolbar buttons for Landscape and Portrait modes, while the choice of vertical or horizontal lines is made within the menus only. Note: the currently displayed book (in the most-forward window) is in vertical display mode, which also displays lines from right to left (and pages from back of the book to the front, in western parlance). Expect to see these options in our 'Aspiring Authors' authoring tools a bit later this year.

See our eBook publishing Imprint, eBook Dynasty, here at: eBookDynasty.net

Dec 3, 2015: Our eBook publishing Imprint, eBook Dynasty was one of the recipients of Victoria's Multicultural Awards for Excellence for 2015. Our Manager of eBookDynasty.net Dr Christine Sun, received the award from Premier Daniel Andrews at a splendid ceremony at Government House, hosted by the Governor of Victoria, the Honourable Linda Dessau AM. See our full report here at eBookDynasty.net

Fig.1: Victorian Multicultural Award of Excellence.

Nov 1, 2014: We have just released a new ebook in Apple's ibooks format, that fills a current void in the information about the Facebook platform. A platform more stable in structure than ever before, since Facebook announced a "2-year stability guarantee" of their core API at the now-annual Facebook F8 Developers Conference in late April 2014.

The eBook takes full advantage of the zoom-in images to display high resolution/large images of the conceptual data models portrayed there-in, as the foundation for the readers way-findering around what has become a platform significant in scope, over many, many renovations (e.g. the additions of Events in 2008; then Messages, Groups, Places and Pages in 2010; Apps in the App Center in 2012 - all re-vamped for the Graph API 2.0 release at F8 in 2014).

There's never been a better time to get this insightful global view of the Facebook platform.

Title: Facebook from Five Thousand Feet:

Sub-title: A Visual Mapping from Conceptual Model to Ground-level Graph API Data

Fig.1: Cover from our new eBook.

The eBook is available now from Apple's iBooks Store:

Note: iBooks lets you browse books and download them directly to your Mac, iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.

The Home Page for the book is over at eBookDynasty.net where there is also a sample reading (the first chapter of 23 pages) of the 11 chapter book: Facebook from 5000 Feet

Publisher: eBookDynasty, an imprint of Solid Software Pty Ltd.

Publishing Date: 28 October 2014

Format: ibooks

Language: English

ISBN: 978-0-9803595-5-8

Abstract: Presents an inferred Conceptual Data Model of the Facebook platform as a way-finding map of what has become an extensive system. The visual data models of the various facets of Facebook - Groups, Events, Messages, Pages, Apps and so forth - are mapped down to the descriptive level of the individual data fields as publicly documented in the Graph API 2.0. While filling such a visual gap is particularly useful for app developers, it is an approach open to every reader who wants a better understanding of the four corners of the Facebook platform and what it has to offer, beyond ones current usage. A spinoff benefit of the visual approach, is that it also provides an effortless introduction to Data Modeling, around a subject domain (i.e. Facebook) that just about everyone on the planet is familiar with to some degree.

Keywords: Facebook platform, data model, visualization, ER model, Entity-Relationship, conceptual model, Groups, Events, Messages, Pages, Apps, database, DBMS, SQL, ER notation, IE notation.

Apr 06, 2013: We have just published a free app on Google Play store. Called simply 'OctaDial for Free' and is exactly the same functionally as the fully-paid version of OctaDial we published about a month ago.

The details are on a blog here: www.DigitalFriend.org/blog/

While the game is directly downloadable from Google Play store here: OctaDial for Free on Google Play

Feb 22, 2013: We have just launched OCTADIAL on the Google Play store. This version has four sets of screen-graphics that the program chooses from optimally for the device it is currently running upon - so you get a great user experience no matter what Android device you are using. When we uploaded it to the Google Play store it reported back, that this version of OCTADIAL supports 2527 devices - that's a lot of variation of hardware out there in userland!

The full story is on the OCTADIAL home page, which you will find here: solidsoftware.com.au/Products/Octadial/index.html ... check it out. Or else, go to the Google Play store here: Google Play ... and do a Search on OCTADIAL.

Jan 15, 2013: Research In Motion are launching their long anticipated BlackBerry 10 OS (i.e. a new Operating System for BlackBerry smart phones) at the end of this month (30 Jan 2013). We have had our hands on the pre-release developer model - the Dev Alpha BB10 for some months now - see the image of me playing OctaDial on it below.

Fig.1: OctaDial BB10 - OctaDial BlackBerry 10 version running on the BB Dev Alpha.

As usual we took my OctaDial game to this new platform first - i.e. its our standard porting-test app, since it uses a lot of aspects of a new OS+device that put it to the test ... the image and vector graphic system; the database/file system (for storing both the current state of the game when you get otherwise interrupted (e.g. a phone call), plus the sorted list of 'Best Game Times' so far achieved; handling multiple screen resolutions and changes in orientation via the acceleration sensor; good use of touch; as a normalised measure of the various markets out there; etc.).

The screen resolution of the Dev Alpha BB10 is a whopping 1280x768 pixels - which looks great on a 4" phone - as long as the app developer updates their graphics to the higher resolutions, instead of just doing a lazy scale-up of the old graphics artefacts; or worse, just letting the OS do the scaling for them! Naturally, we didn't take that 'cheap' root but instead have updated the graphics with nice crisp high-resolution images for these high-res smartphones and tablets too (i.e. optimised for 4 sets of resolutions, not just one). Note: RIM plans to release six different models of smartphone running BB10 in 2013 alone.

Keep an eye out for it in the Blackberry App World store - its a supreme bargain at around $1 ... you can't even buy a cup of coffee for that these days, but the pleasure from playing OctaDial lasts and lasts. click here for BlackBerry App World

Mar 19, 2007, Melbourne: Solid Software publishes draft version of DigitalFriend website:

Solid Software finally publishes the first version of the website for the DigitalFriend software application. The site is located at www.DigitalFriend.org click here to link to the site. There is also a Blog there, with a general theme of a user-oriented view of agent oriented software.

March 26, 2003, Melbourne: Solid Software CEO graduates ADI Business Ready Program:

Steve Goschnick completes an Executive Development program developed and run by Australian Distributed Incubator in conjunction with Ernst & Young.

Photo 1: The Victorian Treasurer and the Minister for Innovation, the Hon. John Brumby MP, presented Steve Goschnick with his graduation certificate.

(Note: The Digital Self Project in the background. See our 'Activity' link for further information and photos. Note: The DigitalFriend is a user-friendly Intelligent Agent system)

Intelligent Software Agents:

Software Agents are a recent breakthrough in the way people design, build and use software, largely inspired (even necessitated) by the interconnectedness of computers on the Internet. Software Agents mean different things or hold different emphasises to different people:

• Internet people may come across them first as mobile agents - bits of software that can act as semi-autonomous servants, moving out about the web with a particular agenda.
• To Software Engineers, they are 'Objects with attitude' (BDI agents - Beliefs, Desires and Intentions) - autonomous software entities that hold and update their own world-view of the environment they continuously operate within, as they go about achieving their goals, either reactively or deliberatively as necessary.
• To Computer Human Interface people, they are most often seen as Interface Agents, Believable Agents, Personal Assistant agents or even psychological agents.
• To us, they encompass all of the above and more: we see a role for them as persuasive software - software that you use in your daily life and work, that not only helps you achieve the things you want to, but also has inbuilt capability to improve your own performance, self-knowledge and attitudes, as you do so.

For an overview of the types of software agents: click here.

Our motto is: Entertain, Educate, Inform, Empower.

• We make things you can use: mainly software, including Intelligent Software Agents.
• We write things you could read: articles, papers, books.
• We teach things you may wish to learn: Java, C, C++; Mandarin.
• We have tools and techniques that help empower people in proactive and positive ways.
• We use the latest techniques and tools in software development: Agent-oriented analysis and design; object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD); data analysis and normalisation; Java; XML;
• We consult to others who share similar principles and objectives, with similar visions.

Brief Site Overview:

Solid Software is a "concept-to-product" company, inventing, specifying, developing, publishing and dispersing innovative techniques and tools. We are also consultants in several specialised fields. Prior to the Internet, we published several software packages and games, which you can see something of on this site.

The following is a discription of the eight coloured site-navigation buttons you'll find at the top of the main pages on this site:

1. For Services including Consultancy: click here, or at any time via the Services navigation button (Purple).
2. Profiles of our Consultants, others and other details: click here, or at any time via the People navigation button (Orange).
3. What's New on this site and What's Happening recently at Solid Software: click here, or at any time via the Activity button (Red).
4. Information as News, articles, papers, readings, news about Taiwan: click here or via the Info button (Black).
5. Products we sell and the ones we give away for free: click here, or via the Products button (Blue).
6. Techniques and Tools: click here, or via the Tools button (Yellow).
7. Guidance around the site (Site Map and Search), plus education and training: click here, or via the Guidance button (White).
8. Home: this page you're now reading can be accessed from elsewhere on this site via the Home button (Green).

Objectives and Policy of Solid Software: click here.

White Papers: click here

History of Solid Software: click here.

Contact/Feedback:

(initial contact by email is best):

Solid Software Pty Ltd

ABN: 60 084 786 498
Postal Address: P.O. Box 218, Belgrave, Victoria 3160, Australia
Phone: +61 (insert zero here if local) 40 7544 260
Email: gosh 'at' solidsoftware 'dot' com 'dot' au

This page last updated: March, 2024.

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