The creation of Sharkle is a labor of love and it required the help of friends and family. Many stepped up and helped troubleshoot Sharkle and suggest changes and additions that would make Sharkle much better. A large THANK YOU to the following individuals:
Brett Groom. Washington. Brett is a busy guy working on the Microsoft account but he took the time to review Sharkle and provide an excel workbook of features that did not make sense or that needed to be improved. His advice was good because of his savvy internet knowledge.
Colton Wright. New York. Big brothers are there for support and ideas. He was a believer in the idea since the beginning and just like a big brother he was always quick to caution me on things to keep in mind and investigate. Like bandwidth usage which is still an unknown.
Dave Brown. California. I worked with Dave at Flycast and Dave now works at Yahoo in their music division. I called Dave out of the blue and he was quick to provide me with ideas to consider, encouragement that the idea was feasible, technical reference links, and even built me a probability analysis for bandwidth usage.
Eric Yang. California. Eric was the 2nd person I told about Sharkle. He helped set up a meeting with some young coders who supposedly had built the functionality I was looking for. They gave me an absurdly high quote near a half million dollars at which point I decided if these kids can build what I'm after then it can't be that hard to build on my own.
Errol Samp. Illinois. Errol can build Caterpillar tractors and sell Caterpillar tractors for Cat World trade but his real calling is evaluating web sites. He caught a big flaw in the Watch Video process and he was always available via phone to test a new feature. Errol was a great early litmus test to determine if Sharkle elicited any emotion and his immediate reaction told me Sharkle is intriguing. His wife Johniese Samp was also quick to test functionalities on a dialup connection.
JB Kropp. Ohio. JB completed the most thorough testing of Sharkle, registering several different emails to test degrees of separation and taking copious notes throughout the process. Alerting me to broken portions and providing fantastic user interface suggestions. His comments and input helped push me through a doubtful time in the creation of Sharkle.
Jonathan Lee. HongKong. Jon tested the system with various browsers and operating systems. He was the second person to upload a video and his excitement when the video worked helped fuel my motivation.
Karen Wright. California. The Sharkle idea passed the wife's initial “Is it bullet proof?” test with flying colors. In fact, it not only passed but even got her full approval.
Mark Donovan. Massachusetts. Mark was the first person to upload a video and he did it during a phase where it was extremely difficult to upload a video. Having someone actually upload a video was a big boost in spirits. His great computer knowledge help identify several bugs which we eventually squashed.
Oli Smith. Minnesota. Always took the time to test the site and provided great suggestions throughout the process. I first told Oli about the project after we jumped out of an airplane from 15,000 feet in the air.
Sue Stella. Illinois. Mom took it to heart when I asked her to review Sharkle. Far and away she spent the most time working on Sharkle. Much of the marketing language she developed and many of the user interface features were her suggestions. She completed several very detailed critiques of Sharkle. Her support can not be under estimated in keeping my spark strong.
