Simon Williston posts that “writing […] web applications that only work in Internet Explorer in this day and age is short-sighted and inexcusable.” Jeremy Hedley agrees, and adds that “if I’m checking work email from home, I’m working for free. If you have employees who are willing to work for free, the least you could do is make it pleasant [if they don’t use Internet Explorer for Windows].”

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is a well-established data exchange standard among large companies, but it was originally developed over 30 years ago purely for business-to-business communications in the pre-Internet world. Although based on the same fundamental principles, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) provides greater flexibility for modern web-based data exchange, which is why we use it for Navarik’s software systems. Jeremy Jones of DevX puts it more bluntly in his article “Why EDI Must Die.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has published a look back at the dot-com bubble, which peaked with the U.S. Dow Jones and NASDAQ stock markets five years ago, at the beginning of 2000. Navarik was never part of the dot-com boom—we started a few months later, just as the bubble burst. Our president, Bill Dobie, returned from Seattle to his home town of Vancouver to co-found the company that spring.

Bill Dobie, Navarik’s president and co-founder, is featured in Business in Vancouver magazine’s current issue, as part of the 2004 “40 under 40″ list—British Columbians under age 40 who are “the future of business” in the province.

The full list and Bill’s individual page are currently available online only to magazine subscribers. The print edition is now on newsstands, and a PDF can be purchased on the BiV website.

In his interview with the magazine, Bill says that “After the dot-com boom, a lot of people did not trust anything that was coming out of the Internet. Because I had relationships with these guys from shipping, we could work with them to pull the good stuff from the technology and speak their language. Our software acts like a real-time diary of what happens to the ship while it is at sea and while it is at port.”

He also reveals that he was born in New Westminster, B.C., and that he walks to work rather than owning a car.