Skinnk was a set of enhancements for the webmail system of the CommuniGate Pro (CGP) messaging server. It was written in HTML, WSSP, WSSI, JavaScript and CSS, plus it used SOAP style data interactions with the platform's XML / RPC APIs. It consisted of the following components:

• A template based webmail skin that was designed to allow very rapid skin creation with multi-language support.

• A collection of pre-made skins that emulated a wide range of commercial email environments or provided a totally new webmail appearance for corporate environments.

• A collection of paid extras that enhanced or altered the behaviour of Skinnk.

CommuniGate Systems (then called Stalker Software) purchased all rights to Skinnk in 2006 and permanently embedded it into their product.

Here are just a few of the skins and extras that were available for Skinnk:

AShare Helper was a freeware application to help AppleShare IP Server administrators with the upkeep of their servers by doing a number of minor tasks, then sending notification to remote locations via email. It was written in Xojo (then called REAL basic) with some Objective C and AppleScript components, and did the following:

• Detected a system crash then used Disk Warrior to repair all local, non boot volumes.

• Launched the AppleShare IP Web & File Server on startup and could periodically restart it.

• Detected when the server was not running and provided alerts or notifications via email.

• Could keep a nominated application running in the foreground and launch it if it was not running.

• Did regular checks for free space on any mounted volume.

• Could monitor a list of folders and volumes, checking that their size did not exceed preset limits.

• Flushed parts of the server's cache to discard old items and allow more memory to be available for other applications.

• Made regular backups of the local Users & Groups Data File and AppleShare PDS files.

• Emptied the contents of the invisible Network Trash Folders on each volume, deleting all files more than 24hrs old.

• Logged all its actions to a local, tab delimited text file, as well as a HTML file for web-based monitoring.

AShare Helper was given good reviews in various online magazine articles, and was even included on a MacWorld utilities CD.

Here's what one of the interface windows looked like:

Insight was a commercial time management and reporting application. It was used to help companies to keep accurate records of work done by their staff when working on jobs for clients, who were billed at an hourly rate or for specific tasks. It was written in Xojo (then called REAL basic) with 4D and SQL, and consisted of the following components:

• A central 4D database that used SQL to sync data between itself and a range of third party commercial accounting platforms and other data collection points.

• A client application that interacted with the database to find jobs, task types, work types etc, then recorded all user activities.

• An admin application for managing the database settings, connectivity, access control, and producing summaries, reports and time sheets for review, printing or export.

Here are some of the interface windows from Insight:

After reading a book about chaos theory and how Edward Lorenz had found that steady state systems gradually become unstable before developing recurring patterns of randomness and then stability again, I just had to write my own program to check it for myself.

I wrote a simple program on my Macintosh (I can't remember what model I had at the time or language I wrote it in) that plotted the classic population growth, bifurcation and then the ensuing descent into chaotic values with occasional periods of stability.

This photo of the monitor is all that remains to remind me of it. 😀