About

Who We Are

Rhododendron Software LLC (or just RhodoSoft for short) is a small startup located in Portland, Oregon. RhodoSoft is focused on developing elegant Mac OS X apps that work in an intuitive way, leveraging computing power to reduce the toil and unnecessary complexity of everyday life. Our first product is FolioCalc, an investment portfolio manager and performance tracker. Other potential products are currently in the early design stages. But we're always open to fresh ideas!

Our Name

For those curious about our name, the rhododendron is a very common plant in the Pacific Northwest, the home region of RhodoSoft. In fact, it would be difficult to travel around the Portland area without seeing at least one. In Greek, "rhodo" means rose and "dendron" means tree (in fact some varieties actually resemble a tree with roses as flowers). Therefore our short name RhodoSoft implies rose software, which is also appropriate since Portland is the "City of Roses".

Our People

Carl Sheppard is the primary software developer at RhodoSoft. Carl has been writing mission-critical software professionally for over 15 years and for several entities including NASA. Most of his prior work experience was with C, C++, and Java programming languages on several Unix based platforms including Solaris, HP-UX, and Linux. He has extensive experience in both back-end and user interface design. In the last few years he has dedicated his time to mastering development on Mac OS X, the core of which is also based on Unix. Carl is proficient in the latest development technologies currently endorsed by Apple including Objective-C, Cocoa, Xcode, CoreData, and bindings. This helps ensure forward compatibility with future platform changes, compliance with the latest Mac OS X user interface standards, and prompt utilization of new features of the platform as they come out. To help keep up with the latest trends in Mac development, Carl regularly attends Apple's annual World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).