Dev-Picayune

It was over 9 years ago that I was primary developer (but certainly had some significant help from Michael Ledet) for an alphanumeric paging program called Alpha Plus. I was curious to see whether someone even still had it or sold it. I found that Telepage Paging Services is still selling it for $19.95. Here is a product that is 16-bit and originally developed under Windows 3.1, and yet someone still sells it. Wow! It’s amazing how things can live on if you make enough copies. I can’t remember how many packages we had created, I think it was somewhere in the thousands of copies. I still have the package (seen on the linked web page) sitting on my desk. What’s funny is the back has the names of some of my friends from college (although some of them now have new names) appearing in the screen shot for the packaging. Too bad nobody has a shot of the back of the package.

Another interesting tid-bit if you happen to be reading this and you are an Alpha Plus user, there is an embedded easter egg. I believe it is like control right-click or Alt or Shift combination something with a right single or double click on the ‘?’ help button on the toolbar. It’s a pretty cool little animated screen with the letters for everybody’s names flying across from the paging tower into the pager and scrolling down. I know I spent a ton more time on that than I should have, but it was sure fun.

If you are an Alpha Plus paging software user be sure to contact me (unless you really hate it — in which case don’t bother).