About Garth Catterall-Heart

Webmaster of About-the-web.com

For over 30 years, I have been involved with audio, video, photography and publishing. At Sunnyvale High School (in the heart of Silicon Valley), I was an audio/video specialist. I recorded many different types of performances, worked in the campus TV studio, edited the literary magazine and did stage lighting for many performances. It was in these early years that I began taking photographs.

Coming from a very musically inclined family, I played the Tuba in concert and jazz bands and the Sousaphone in marching band throughout high school. I have also sung in several community and church choirs during my life and played in two English Handbell choirs as well.

When I graduated from Sunnyvale High School, I wanted to become a recording engineer, so I attended Ohio State University.

One of my first "real" jobs was as an Advertising Salesman for a local weekly newspaper in Canal Winchester, Ohio. For many years I sold, designed, and typeset advertising for several weekly newspapers, where I also contributed some of my photography. I was Production Manager for a year, at a newspaper in Hollister, California. The paper was produced on Mac Pluses using PageMaker, SuperPaint and other drawing programs.

My first experience with multimedia was in high school after retuning home from a six week vacation in Japan with my family. Both my father and I took many rolls of photographs while there and in the following months, we wrote and recorded a narrative script, added music and synchronized it to three slide projectors which automatically projected our photos onto three screens. The production ran about 40 minutes. We did this a second time after another trip to Europe.

In 1988, David Donaldson, a friend of mine from high school, was working at Apple Computer when a program called HyperCard was being developed by Apple for the Macintosh. He called me one day and said that this program was going to revolutionize the world. A few months later, I bought my first Macintosh and learned HyperCard.

HyperCard is a multimedia production tool that has a sophisticated high level programming language. With it you can easily combine text, images, sound and even video to create elaborate presentations. You can also create reasonably complex database applications and prototypes for more conventional software projects. Please visit spiritworks-software.com to see my line of productivity tools for Mac and Windows.

In the mean time, David had started a small firm with two others, called HyperPro, which specialized in custom multimedia development using HyperCard. For the next year or so, I worked part time developing HyperCard programs for HyperPro. Then in 1989, they hired me full time as an "implementer."

At HyperPro, I developed (and helped to manage) projects ranging from messaging kiosks for conference attendees, to speaker support presentations, to a program that dealt with the management of hazardous materials.

In 1991, I began an eight year employment with The HyperMedia Group in Emeryville, CA where I worked as a Project Manager and Multimedia Producer. I used Director, SoundEdit, PhotoShop, MetaCard and many other programs to manage and develop over 40 projects. We used many different development engines and delivered projects on Macs, PCs and Sun workstations.

At The HyperMedia Group, I worked on projects such as a guided tour of Lotus 1-2-3 for Macintosh, a promotional sales presentation for a new line of computers from Compaq, a series of educational kiosks for the Missouri Botanical Gardens, a line of children's educational software for Silver Burdett Ginn, a medical advice program for Kaiser Permanente, and several sales engineering courses for Sun Microsystems.

While at The HyperMedia group, I worked with lots of great people on many exciting projects including a number of web sites. During this time, I also began taking photographs with the intention of selling them on the Internet. In 1997 I also bought two Hi-8 camcorders and began exploring ways I could make money with them.

In 1998 The HyperMedia Group was acquired by Wilson Learning. As a result, in 1999, I moved to Redwood Valley, California, in order to concentrate on my photography, videography and web design businesses. My wife, Dayadevi, and I decided to raise chickens and rabbits. We sold eggs and home-grown produce, from a self-service roadside stand.

You can view samples of my stock photography collection here.

In November of 1999, I launched this website, about-the-web.com, which is a resource for newcomers to the Internet, and Webmasters who want to know more about the Internet and ways to make money on the World Wide Web. For newcomers, there are tips and tricks for a better web surfing experience, great web sites to check out, a glossary, and information on e-mail, browsers and scams. For webmasters, there is lots of information on creating and promoting a web site.

Over the next few years I developed a line of productivity software for small and home businesses, including Activity & Expense Tracker, Inventory Tracker, Small Business Tracker Deluxe, Rental Property Tracker Plus and Vacation Rental Tracker Plus. You can try out any of these programs on most Mac and Windows computers for ten days before deciding to purchase a registration number which unlocks the software for unlimited use. Please visit spiritworks-software.com to see my line of productivity tools for Mac and Windows.

In 2004 we decided to sell the ranch and buy a place in Oregon and a motorhome. You can read all about this move and our travels and some of my many inspiration photographs at photosByGarth.com.

I look forward to working on lots of creative and lucrative projects, including custom software and web site development. I also intend to use my publishing skills to create a line of e-books, for myself and others, to sell on the Internet. If you have a project that you would like my help on, please contact me at garth@about-the-web.com.

Sincerely,

Garth Catterall-Heart