These two are not ScreenMates but MessageMates - I didn't actually write either of them but they have a certain sentimental value.

FotoMate was a Jerry Carpenter idea and Stress Reliever was created by Jim.

One contains a photograph of me and the other contains a photograph of my old boss, Charlie Robson. Here at Frescom.com we are wondering if you can you tell which is which?

Message Mates

THE CODEHAMMER STORY or "MY LIFE IN PIXELS"

Adtools (now part of the Indimi group) was a small British animation company started by James Everard all the way back in 1998. It rose to fame and glory with its unique vision and irreverent humour.

Employing some of the UKs most talented cartoonists, programmers and animators the company developed imaginative, irreverant products. The ScreenMates (www.screenmates.com) brand proved hugely popular. Inspired by the now legendary lamb.exe the site delivered small downloadable characters who inhabited the desktop and entertained the user (imagine the office assistant running loose on your PC). These characters lent themselves to corporate branding which allowed Adtools to do what other dot com start-ups could only dream of - make money!

More fame and success came with MessageMates (www.messagemates.com) which again attracted millions of visitors and downloads. These were short animations unleashed onto the desktop (imagine a 20 second blipvert) and again they readily lent themselves to branding. The company had caught the dot com wave and cracked the dream of effective viral marketing.

Viral marketing was the advertisers holy grail. Simply - its an advert that is so good you send it to your friends. The cartoons delivered advertising to the desktop as well as jokes and entertainment. They are small stand alone executable files that would run on any Windows machine. The sites and products were incredibly popular and enjoyed a cult following.

I spent quite a bit of my time producing ScreenMates (www.screenmates.com) for a wide range of advertisers. They proved incredibly popular and on this page are a selection of the products I programmed. I worked there as an analyst programmer from January 200 until July 2001 when I was made redundant - easy dot com, easy dot go.

These products were produced using Microsoft.Visual C++ using Win32 (there's not a single line of MFC) and the Adtools Codebase, oh and just a dash of XML with a sprinkle of HTML.

All the products on this page are almost certainly copyright of Indimi, Adtools, Codehammer, ScreenMates.com, MessageMates.com or the property of the various companies, corporations, individuals or groups that paid the money for me to sweat and stress over them. I really ought to have asked them if they mind me having them on my site but to be honest I simply haven't got round to doing it yet. But do check out the sites:

www.screenmates.com and www.messagemates.com as well as www.pumpiworld.com and www.indimi.com and www.tooned.com. not forgetting the excellent www.planster.com

The company is still there (albeit with a reduced staff in the UK), their rates are reasonable, their code is solid and the products are, as you can see, unique online marketing tools that still enjoy a a global following.

If you have any queries or comments, or if you would like to instigate an expensive law suit for infringement of copyright please mail

matt@frescom.com

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