MIME STIPE CUVALO - BECOMING A WELL-KNOWN NAME
IN THE WORLD WIDE WEB
From personal communications, travel directions, maps, buying, selling,
and data search to airline tickets, hotels, and banking we turn to the
internet. Although it's a novelty for some, it can be a powerful
instrument in making our lives more productive, efficient, and faster.
However, the web is a mysterious world for most of us. It is a world
somewhere "beyond" the "real" world. It has its own reality, its own
language(s), and its own "society."
A large number of brave and idealistic computer scientists believe that
the world of the internet must be the property of everyone in the world
and not appropriated by a few for their own gains and interests. Such
"idealistic geeks have been gathering silently in internet cafes and
plotting to 'take back the web.'" They believe in an "open source"
ideology that "software and the technologies that computer scientists
develop should not be proprietary. It would be like Einstein keeping the
proof for his famous E=mc2 equation a trade secret....The “open-source�
community believes that such secretiveness hinders progress." Thus,
these enthusiasts have been contributing their talents and time in order
to provide the world wide web with the newest and best tools free of
charge. One of these computer scientists is a young Croatian
American, Mime Stipe Cuvalo.
Mime is from Chicago, Illinois. He graduated summa cum laude in May of
2004 from Ball State University, Indiana, majoring in computer science.
He finished his undergraduate studies in three years and has received
many university recognitions for scholarly excellence. Since his
graduation, he has been in Croatia. His intentions were to enroll in
graduate school at the University of Zagreb. However, after the initial
promises on the part of the University, things didn't work out, so he is
coming back to Chicago, and he will continue his studies in the USA.
While living in Croatia, Mime did not waste his time but developed a web
browser program (fireFTP - the FTP client for Mozilla Firefox) that put
him on the map of the world wide web. It was lunched in October 2004 and
became an instantaneous success. It received great reviews and comments
from the users. Soon after it was posted, it was chosen as the "Current
Featured Project." So far, Mime's program has been translated into many
languages, including German, French, Spanish, Polish, Czech, Russian,
Turkish, Italian, and others. Hopefully, someone will translate it into
Croatian too. So far, over 100,000 people have downloaded his program.
Mime and other computer scientists like him are sharing their talents
and knowledge with people in every corner of the world. By doing so,
they are protecting the world wide web from becoming a monopoly of a
few. These idealist are asking others to join the movement.
We congratulate Mime Cuvalo on these successes quite early in his life.
We believe this is only the beginning! Zagreb University missed the
opportunity of getting a superb graduate student and scientist.
Those interested in further information about Mime's program please go
to: http://chasaidthekitty.com/firefox/nov9.html and
http://www.getfirefox.com
Marko Puljic - St. Louis