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    History of miva





    Greetings Richard.

    I was one of the original authors of htmlscript along
    with some friends. That was in 1995. The company
    htmlscript Corporation was formed in mid 1996.
    Jon Burchmore came aboard in 1997 and single
    handedly re-wrote the engine to uniquely support
    both the old htmlscript syntax and the new Miva
    Script syntax. Jon is still with the company
    and is now our VP of Development.

    Derek Finley, now our VP of Marketing, has been
    with the company since the beginning.

    In 1998 we renamed the company to Miva Corporation
    and in late 1998 we came out with the first version
    of Miva Merchant. At that point the company was
    a handful of people. I think about five or so.
    We didn't start making money until we had Miva
    Merchant -- there is not alot of money in
    scripting engines.

    The name Miva is derived from the hieroglyphic
    name for cat -- the picture of a milk basin followed
    by the picture of a bird and pronounced Me Waa.
    My friend Boris kept on pronouncing it Miva, so
    a new company name was born. Choosing a cat was
    random and was simply the first word in a book
    on hieroglyphics that I had picked up because
    it looked cool. I also have a cat which, as
    I recall, was another reason and finally it
    made sense because of electronic (cat)alog --
    a tie in to e-commerce.

    In 1999 the company grew very rapidly on the success
    of Miva Merchant. I think we had about 22 or so
    people by the end of 1999. We raised about three
    and a half million dollars in 2000 mainly from
    two Japanese corporations. The fact that it
    was Japanese money is incidental -- there is
    no other connection with the Japanese.

    In 2002 we finally delivered on the Miva Script
    Compiler. It took longer to develop than
    we had thought. The htmlscript syntax and
    macros were dropped from the engine.

    In September 2003, at the Miva Conference,
    we announced that we were selling the
    company to FindWhat.Com (NASDAQ:FWHT) in
    a (approx) $8mm transaction. I had actually
    been working on the deal since April of
    that year. On 1 January 2004 the deal
    closed and I remain on as General Manager.

    This year we will be announcing Miva Merchant 5
    and Miva Empresa/Mia 5. General information
    will be out in the next few weeks. Alot
    of information will be available at the fifth
    annual Miva conference. I hope to see all
    of you at the conference.


    - Joe Austin


    -----Original Message-----
    From: Richard Grevers [mailto:[email protected]]
    Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 4:08 AM
    To: [email protected]
    Subject: [meu] History of miva

    Is there a miva timeline available anywhere? The current company info page
    isn't strong on info, and Wikipedia is lacking an article on the the
    language and company, something I thought I'd put to rights.

    Things I'd like to clarify:
    Who first wrote HTMLscript and when?
    When did it become mivascript? Was that when Joe got involved?
    When was Merchant first launched?
    I don't think we'd better publish the Miva Hotel, Bratislava, version :-)

    --
    Richard Grevers
    Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried



    #2
    History of miva



    YAHOO!!!!!!!

    Thanks Joe - great review - I never really knew where Miva came from!

    And Version5 - EXCELLENT!!!

    Bill


    -----Original Message-----
    From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On
    Behalf Of Austin, Joe
    Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 2004 4:44 PM
    To: [email protected]
    Subject: RE: [meu] History of miva




    Greetings Richard.

    I was one of the original authors of htmlscript along
    with some friends. That was in 1995. The company
    htmlscript Corporation was formed in mid 1996.
    Jon Burchmore came aboard in 1997 and single
    handedly re-wrote the engine to uniquely support
    both the old htmlscript syntax and the new Miva
    Script syntax. Jon is still with the company
    and is now our VP of Development.

    Derek Finley, now our VP of Marketing, has been
    with the company since the beginning.

    In 1998 we renamed the company to Miva Corporation
    and in late 1998 we came out with the first version
    of Miva Merchant. At that point the company was
    a handful of people. I think about five or so.
    We didn't start making money until we had Miva
    Merchant -- there is not alot of money in
    scripting engines.

    The name Miva is derived from the hieroglyphic
    name for cat -- the picture of a milk basin followed
    by the picture of a bird and pronounced Me Waa.
    My friend Boris kept on pronouncing it Miva, so
    a new company name was born. Choosing a cat was
    random and was simply the first word in a book
    on hieroglyphics that I had picked up because
    it looked cool. I also have a cat which, as
    I recall, was another reason and finally it
    made sense because of electronic (cat)alog --
    a tie in to e-commerce.

    In 1999 the company grew very rapidly on the success
    of Miva Merchant. I think we had about 22 or so
    people by the end of 1999. We raised about three
    and a half million dollars in 2000 mainly from
    two Japanese corporations. The fact that it
    was Japanese money is incidental -- there is
    no other connection with the Japanese.

    In 2002 we finally delivered on the Miva Script
    Compiler. It took longer to develop than
    we had thought. The htmlscript syntax and
    macros were dropped from the engine.

    In September 2003, at the Miva Conference,
    we announced that we were selling the
    company to FindWhat.Com (NASDAQ:FWHT) in
    a (approx) $8mm transaction. I had actually
    been working on the deal since April of
    that year. On 1 January 2004 the deal
    closed and I remain on as General Manager.

    This year we will be announcing Miva Merchant 5
    and Miva Empresa/Mia 5. General information
    will be out in the next few weeks. Alot
    of information will be available at the fifth
    annual Miva conference. I hope to see all
    of you at the conference.


    - Joe Austin


    -----Original Message-----
    From: Richard Grevers [mailto:[email protected]]
    Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 4:08 AM
    To: [email protected]
    Subject: [meu] History of miva

    Is there a miva timeline available anywhere? The current company info page
    isn't strong on info, and Wikipedia is lacking an article on the the
    language and company, something I thought I'd put to rights.

    Things I'd like to clarify:
    Who first wrote HTMLscript and when?
    When did it become mivascript? Was that when Joe got involved?
    When was Merchant first launched?
    I don't think we'd better publish the Miva Hotel, Bratislava, version :-)

    --
    Richard Grevers
    Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


    Comment


      #3
      History of miva



      On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 13:43:46 -0700, Austin, Joe <[email protected]> gave
      utterance to the following:

      Thanks Joe - I'll write an article when I get time - hopefully at the
      weekend, and will publish a link here. Being wikipedia, you are welcome to
      correct any errors of fact that I make. (They do prefer, however, that
      articles about people and companies are not initially written by the
      subject themselves)

      --
      Richard Grevers
      Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


      Comment


        #4
        History of miva



        On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 16:33:06 +1200, Richard Grevers <[email protected]>
        gave utterance to the following:

        > On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 13:43:46 -0700, Austin, Joe <[email protected]> gave
        > utterance to the following:
        >
        > Thanks Joe - I'll write an article when I get time - hopefully at the
        > weekend, and will publish a link here. Being wikipedia, you are welcome
        > to correct any errors of fact that I make. (They do prefer, however,
        > that articles about people and companies are not initially written by
        > the subject themselves)
        >
        It's at

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MivaScr...mming_language

        Feel free to embellish it folks, just remember the "Neutral Point of view"
        rule.
        And we could use an article on Merchant from someone who actually works
        with it. Just click the red link in the mivascript article and you'll be
        able to start it.

        --
        Richard Grevers
        Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried



        Comment

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