This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2009)

Tom Proulx is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur.^[1] He was a co-founder of Intuit and a pioneer of usability testing in the 1980s.^[2] He lives in Atherton, California, one of the wealthiest cities in the United States, on an 11-acre (45,000 m²) estate.

In 1983 Scott Cook went to Stanford University in California, USA.^{[citation needed]} He wanted a programmer for a planned home bill payment and bank reconciliation program. Proulx, who studied Electrical Engineering/Computer Science at Stanford,^[3] was the first person Cook met and they soon co-founded Intuit. Proulx was the first and main programmer of the first version of Quicken and the first Apple and Radio Shack versions. He obtained a patent for finding a way for a computer to verify that a user had correctly inserted blank checks in a dot matrix printer. This was essential to the near universal use of such checks in accounting programs.

In 1984, in what may have been the first case of usability testing with engineers, Intuit recruited people off the street to test Quicken with a stopwatch.^{[citation needed]} After each test Proulx improved Quicken. Before this experienced computer users spent an hour or more to install programs and print a check. Novices often gave up. Quicken let novices do it in less than 15 minutes, printing checks faster than it took to write them. The market share of Quicken varied from 65% to 98%, making it a killer application, which drove many computer sales. It also made usability testing a standard industry practice.

In 1985, while Proulx was one of three Intuit employees, Intuit became the first company to shrink wrap floppy disks and manuals. This further revolutionized software development. By 1992, all major Intuit programs has a market share of 75% or more. Proulx then created an Intuit credit card with a download service, which automatically classified charges. In 1993, he actively assisted with helping Intuit go public and was the driving force behind its Chip Soft TurboTax merger. He resigned soon after.^[2]

Proulx a recipient of the Inc. Magazine Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1992.^[3] He and his wife Barbara have two children, Audrey and Ian. Proulx is now CEO of Netpulse, a fitness entertainment company based in San Francisco, CA.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Intuit photos, including Tom Proulx and Scott Cook in their first formal portrait, 1989.

Gordon Davidson (7 May 1933, Brooklyn, New York) is an American stage- and film director.

External links[link]

• Gordon Davidson at the Internet Broadway Database
• Gordon Davidson at the Internet Movie Database

This theatrical biography is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Edna Annie Proulx ( /ˈpruː/; born August 22, 1935) is an American journalist and author. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.

Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction^[1] and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction^[2] and was adapted as a 2001 film of the same name. Her short story Brokeback Mountain was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning major motion picture released in 2005. She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards.

Life and career[link]

Proulx (born Edna Ann Proulx, her first name honoring one of her mother's aunts), was born in Norwich, Connecticut, to parents of English and Native American/French-Canadian ancestry.^{[citation needed]} Her maternal forebears came to America fifteen years after the Mayflower in 1635^[3]. She graduated from Deering High School in Portland, Maine, then attended Colby College "for a short period in the 1950s", where she met her first husband H. Ridgely Bullock, Jr. She later returned to college, studying at the University of Vermont from 1966 to 1969, and graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts in History in 1969. She got her Master of Arts from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, Quebec in 1973 and pursued, but did not complete, her Ph.D. Starting as a journalist, her first published work of fiction is thought to be "The Customs Lounge", a science fiction story published in the September 1963 issue of If, under the byline "E.A. Proulx".^[4] Another contender, probably earlier, was a science fiction story called "All the Pretty Little Horses", which appeared in teen magazine "Seventeen" possibly a year or two before this. She subsequently published stories in Esquire magazine and Gray's Sporting Journal in the late 1970s, eventually publishing her first collection in 1988 and her first novel in 1992. Subsequently, she was awarded NEA (in 1992) and Guggenheim (in 1993) fellowships.

A few years after receiving much attention for The Shipping News, she had the following comment on her celebrity status: "It's not good for one's view of human nature, that's for sure. You begin to see, when invitations are coming from festivals and colleges to come read (for an hour for a hefty sum of money), that the institutions are head-hunting for trophy writers. Most don't particularly care about your writing or what you're trying to say. You're there as a human object, one that has won a prize. It gives you a very odd, ginger kind of sensation."^[5]

In 1997, Annie Proulx was awarded the Dos Passos Prize. Proulx has twice won the O. Henry Prize for the year's best short story. In 1998, she won for "Brokeback Mountain," which had appeared in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997. Proulx won again the following year for "The Mud Below," which appeared in The New Yorker June 22 and 29, 1999. Both appear in her 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The lead story in this collection, entitled "The Half-Skinned Steer," was selected by author Garrison Keillor for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 1998, (Proulx herself edited the 1997 edition of this series) and later by novelist John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century (1999). In 2001 Proulx was one of the writers heavily criticized by Brian Reynolds Myers in his polemical work A Reader's Manifesto.^[6][7]

Proulx lived for more than thirty years in Vermont, has married and divorced three times, and has three sons and a daughter (named Jonathan, Gillis, Morgan, and Sylvia, a.k.a. "Muffy"). In 1994, she moved to Saratoga, Wyoming, where she currently resides, spending part of the year in northern Newfoundland on a small cove adjacent to L'Anse aux Meadows.

Proulx has four sisters: twins Joyce and Janet, who live in Louisana and Florida respectively; Roberta, of Fairlee, Vermont, and Jude, another writer who lives in Wales. Proulx has chosen to have little contact with any of her family over the years. In 2007, she attended a memorial for her father, George Napoleon Proulx, at which all five sisters were together for the first time in over 40 years.

Bibliography[link]

• Sweet and Hard Cider: Making It, Using It and Enjoying It (1980; with Lew Nichols), ISBN 0-88266-242-2
• Plan and Make Your Own Fences & Gates, Walkways, Walls & Drives (1983), ISBN 0-87857-452-2
• The Gourmet Gardener: Growing Choice Fruits and Vegetables with Spectacular Results (1987), ISBN 0-449-90227-7
• Heart Songs and Other Stories (1988), ISBN 0-684-18717-5; republished with altered but similar content as trade paperback Heart Songs (1994) ISBN 1-86373-777-4^[8]
• Postcards (1992), ISBN 0-684-83368-9
• The Shipping News (1993), ISBN 0-684-85791-X
• Accordion Crimes (1996), ISBN 0-684-19548-8
• Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999), ISBN 0-684-85222-5
• That Old Ace in the Hole (2002), ISBN 0-684-81307-6
• Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 (2004), ISBN 0-7432-5799-5
• Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 (2008), ISBN 978-1-4165-7166-7
• Bird Cloud: A Memoir (2011), ISBN 978-0-7432-8880-4

Awards[link]

Literary Awards and Prize Collections:

• 2004—Aga Khan Prize for Fiction for "The Wamsutter Wolf"
• 2002—Best Foreign Language Novels of 2002 / Best American Novel Award, Chinese Publishing Association and Peoples' Literature Publishing House (That Old Ace in the Hole)
• 2000—WILLA Literary Award, Women Writing the West
• 2000—Borders Original Voices Award in Fiction (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)
• 2000—"People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water," Best American Short Stories 2000
• 2000—English-Speaking Union's Ambassador Book Award (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)
• 2000—The New Yorker Book Award Best Fiction 1999 (Close Range, Wyoming Stories)
• 1999—"Half-Skinned Steer" inc. Best American Short Stories of the Century, ed. J. Updike
• 1999—"The Bunchgrass Edge of the World," The Best American Short Stories 1999
• 1999—"The Mud Below," O. Henry Awards Prize Stories 1999
• 1998—"Brokeback Mountain" National Magazine Award
• 1998—"Brokeback Mountain" inc. O. Henry Awards Prize Stories 1998
• 1998—"Half-Skinned Steer" inc. Best American Short Stories 1998
• 1997—John Dos Passos Prize for Literature (for body of work)
• 1997—Shortlisted for the 1997 Orange Prize (Accordion Crimes)
• 1994—Pulitzer Prize, Fiction (The Shipping News)^[1]
• 1993—National Book Award, Fiction (The Shipping News)^[2]
• 1993—Irish Times International Fiction Prize (The Shipping News)
• 1993—Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction (The Shipping News)
• 1993—PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (Postcards)

Film adaptations[link]

• The Shipping News (2001) was directed by Lasse Hallström and featured Kevin Spacey as the protagonist Quoyle, Judi Dench as Agnis Hamm and Julianne Moore as Wavey Prowse.
• Brokeback Mountain (2005), directed by Ang Lee and starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, was based on a story of the same name in Proulx's collection of short stories, Close Range.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Christopher Cox (Spring 2009). "Annie Proulx, The Art of Fiction No. 199". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5901/the-art-of-fiction-no-199-annie-proulx. 
• Books That Changed My Life PEN World Voices at the New York Public Library May 4, 2008
• At close range with Annie Proulx, interview by Matthew Testa (Planet Jackson Hole, December 7, 2005)
• The Scripting News by Jessica Winter (The Village Voice, November 22, 2005)
• Audio interview with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW (link to audio)
• Interview with Annie Proulx in the Fall 2005 Wyoming Library Roundup (PDF 3.69 MB)
• Blood on the red carpet Proulx's reaction to the 2006 Academy Awards in the Guardian (March 11, 2006)
• [1] Interview on the BBC World Service, World Book Club (30 September 2008)
• E. Annie Proulx at the Internet Movie Database

Gilles Proulx (born April 5, 1940) is a historian, radio and television host in the province of Quebec, Canada. His radio career began in 1962, and he would retire as talk radio host on CHMP-FM forty-six years later on August 7, 2008. His brother, Jacques Proulx was the former morning man of another local station CKAC.

Biography[link]

Gilles Proulx grew up in the Montreal neighbourhood of Verdun.

Proulx holds a Bachelor's in communications. He asserted that he earned a Master's in communications from Saint Louis University, in St. Louis, Missouri in 1986. On the January 10, 2007 episode of Les Francs-tireurs on Télé-Québec he claimed that he did not actually earn the diploma. The show's research team inquired about his claim to the university, who confirmed that Gilles Proulx was not among their alumni.

From 1979 to 1991, he taught a communications course at Université de Montréal, and was a guest lecturer on radio journalism at Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Sénégal in 1983.

He was the news director at CKLM, a journalist on the show le Temps de vivre on Radio-Canada, and commentator on CKOI-FM.

After his return from Bosnia and Herzegovina in August 1994, he published a long report on the humanitarian aspect of the Canadian forces in La Presse.

He was best known as the host of Journal du midi, over a span of 24 years. From 1984 to 1994 on CJMS, from 1994 to 2004 on CKAC, and from 2004 to 2008 on CHMP-FM. Gilles Proulx has said that his colourful radio hosting style was inspired by Adrian Cronauer, played by Robin Williams in the film Good Morning, Vietnam.

In 1998 and 1999 he hosted les Grands Dossiers historiques on the Canal D television channel.

Also a photographer and voyager, he has published various books, such as À la conquête du monde in 1996, and Globetrotter in 2000.

On March 15, 2007, while he was undergoing a routine medical examination at the Montreal Heart Institute, doctors determined that a Coronary artery bypass surgery was necessary.

Starting in late 2009, he has hosted a television series known as "Mémoire de Proulx" on Canal VOX in Montreal, which is rebroadcast on other stations across Quebec.

Controversy[link]

In September 2005, he co-hosted a public affairs show on TQS, known as l'Avocat et le diable. During one episode, he made shocking remarks about a victim of a sexual assault, which led to a large amount of criticism in the media, and the suspension of the show.^[1]

Awards and honours[link]

• He received a Bene Merenti de Patria medal in 1987.
• The Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste awarded him the Olivar-Asselin Award.
• In 1996, he was named an honorary citizen of Morocco.
• In 1997, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters awarded him a Gold Ribbon.
• In 1998, he received an
• In 1998, he received the Médaille de la Reconnaissance française, which is awarded by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, for his devotion to the defense and development of the French language.
• For his promotion of the truth concerning Napoleon Bonaparte, he received a Legion of Merit medal from the International Napoleonic Society.
• On November 22, 2007, Gilles Proulx was named a knight of the Ordre de la Pléiade.

On June 18, 2008, he received the 2008 Édouard-Raymond Fabre Award from the Association of the descendants of the Patriotes of 1837.

Works[link]

• Pour une radio civilisée, Éditions de l’Homme, 1972.
• Pour une radio réformée, Éditions du Jour, 1973.
• La télévision du mépris, Éditions Point de mire, 1975.
• L’aventure de la radio au Québec, Éditions La Presse, 1979.
• La radio d’hier à aujourd’hui, Éditions Libre Expression, 1986.
• Ma petite histoire de la Nouvelle-France, Publications Proteau, 1992.
• À la conquête du monde, Éditions Transcontinental, 1996.
• Les grands détours de notre histoire : Québec-Canada, Éditions Priorités, 1998
• Globetrotter, Éditions du Trécarré, 2000
• Les premiers ministres du Canada et du Québec, Éditions du Trécarré, 2002.
• Visages du monde, Éditions du Trécarré, 2003
• La vie de l’indomptable saint Paul, Éditions Catholiques, 2008.
• Le voyageur qui n'arrive jamais, éditions Michel Brûlé, 2009.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Claude Jasmin, Gilles Proulx: portrait d'un tirailleur tiraillé
• Raymond Paquin, Les 400 coups de Gilles Proulx (Biographie)

External links[link]

• • Mémoire de Proulx website (French)