Five Years of Open Source Development Yields Numerous Awards
2005 was a banner year for open source developer and CIS graduate student Tom Bulatewicz, with two applications winning awards, but these are not the first accolades for Bulatewicz's project Nosleep Software. In October, Bulatewicz released nosleep's newest application, Super Analyzer, a Mac and Windows tool that works with iTunes, and immediately received a 5 star rating and two awards from Softpedia, a major internet distributor of free software.
Bulatewicz founded Nosleep in May 1999, when he wrote Due Yesterday, a student organizer for Palm OS devices, which was awarded second prize in the Handheld Design Awards for Education sponsored by the Center for Innovative Learning Technology in March 2000. In July 2001, the software was featured in an article in the NY Times, and a year later, Bulatewicz moved it to an open source project under the Gnu Public License, as it remains today. This year, Due Yesterday was listed on Austrian multimedia and electronics magazine ITM Praktiker's Best List of Software for PalmOS-Calculators.
Nosleep is also responsible for FileZ, a file management utility that received software distributor Softonic's Best Program of the Year for 2003, and software distributor Palm Boulevard's Best award. FileZ is the most popular download from Palm Gear, with more than half a million downloads, and also available at numerous other sites. Two applications, QuizWiz and IdeaPad were initially sold by Palmtop Learning Inc, but later moved to GPL. "I did this for several reasons," said Bulatewicz, "As a student I appreciate free software, as a software developer I appreciate open source, but most of all, I do this for the fun, the art, and the challenge inherent in creating innovative and high-fidelity apps."