Introducing Bookworm Library — Your Personal Book Collection, Always With You

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Coming soon to iPhone, iPad, and Mac

If you’re anything like us, your book collection tells a story of its own. Shelves overflowing with titles you’ve loved, stacks of books you mean to get to, and that nagging feeling in a bookshop — do I already own this one? We built Bookworm Library to solve exactly that.

Bookworm Library is a beautifully simple app for cataloguing your personal book collection, and it’s coming soon to iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

What Is Bookworm Library?

At its heart, Bookworm is a personal library manager. You add books you own, books you want, and everything in between. It’s your reading life, organised.

What makes it different is the experience. Adding a book takes seconds — just point your camera at the barcode on the back cover and Bookworm does the rest. It pulls the title, author, publisher, and cover art automatically, so you spend less time typing and more time reading.

No subscription. No cloud account required. Your library lives on your device, private and always available — even offline.

Key Features

  • ISBN Barcode Scanner — Scan the back of any book to add it instantly. Perfect for cataloguing a whole shelf in minutes.
  • Owned & Wanted Lists — Track what you have and what you’re after. Green for owned, amber for your wish list.
  • Smart Search — Find any book by title, author, publisher, or ISBN. Scan a barcode in a shop to instantly check if you already own it.
  • Sort & Filter — View your whole library, just owned books, or just your wish list. Sort A–Z or Z–A with a tap.
  • Export & Print — Export your entire collection to a spreadsheet, or generate a beautifully formatted PDF to print or share.
  • Dark Mode — A clean, adaptive design that looks great in light and dark mode and feels right at home on any Apple device.

Built for Apple Devices

A Bookmark Manager That Actually Works

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WebVault is a clean, fast, and private bookmark manager coming soon to iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It’s designed for people who take the web seriously — researchers, developers, designers, writers, or anyone who regularly finds things worth keeping.

Add any website in seconds. Assign it to a colour-coded category. Add a note if you need context. That’s it. No friction, no clutter, no rabbit holes.

Save From Anywhere

The feature we’re most excited about is the Share Extension. From Safari or any other app, tap Share and choose WebVault — your bookmark is saved instantly without ever leaving what you were doing. No copying URLs, no switching apps, no losing your place.

Always In Sync

Your bookmarks live in your own iCloud account, syncing automatically across every Apple device signed in with your Apple ID. Add something on your iPhone during your commute and it’s waiting for you on your Mac when you sit down at your desk.

Know Your Links Are Alive

There’s nothing more frustrating than clicking a saved bookmark only to find it’s gone. WebVault quietly checks your bookmarks in the background and places a small warning badge on any link that can’t be reached — so you always know the health of your collection at a glance. You can also re-check any bookmark on demand from its detail view.

Private by Design

WebVault collects no analytics, requires no account, and sends no data to our servers. Your bookmarks are yours — stored locally and in your personal iCloud. That’s how it should be.

Coming Soon

WebVault is finishing up testing now and will be available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac very soon. We’ll have pricing and a release date to share shortly.

If you’re the kind of person who’s been looking for a bookmark manager that’s simple without being basic, and private without being complicated — this one’s for you.

PiNGPONG

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Well as 2025 is in full swing I found some time to play around with App Game Kit Studio which I have programmed much over the past 10 years but thought it would be a nice idea to use AGK to create a simple two player game of the classic Atari PONG.

AGK allows you to program once and then export / compile for many, so the code here works without change on iOS (iPAD), Android tablet, macOS, Windows and HTML browser support.

The macOS, Windows and HTML5 versions all work from keyboard control with iOS and Android being touch / virtual joysticks.

AGK is an easy to use language simple to BASIC-like syntax so quick to pickup and learn.

For more information on AGK visit their website: https://www.appgamekit.com

I’ll add the links for each version soon . . .

Parachute Rescue

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Introducing “Parachute Rescue”, the retro-inspired game currently in a beta release that will take you on a thrilling adventure to save falling parachute divers from the jaws of hungry sharks! In Parachute Rescue, players take control of a small rowboat and navigate through treacherous waters to rescue parachute divers who have fallen from the sky.

Parachute Rescue (HTML5)

As you play, you’ll encounter various challenges, including rough seas, treacherous rocks, and the ever-present threat of hungry sharks. You must have quick reflexes and a steady hand as you maneuver your rowboat to save the parachute divers before they fall into the water.

Catch the parachute diver

The game features a nostalgic 8-bit art style reminiscent of classic arcade games of the 80s and a chiptune-inspired soundtrack that will keep you engaged and entertained as you play. The gameplay is simple and intuitive, making it easy for players of all ages and skill levels to pick up and play.

Parachute Rescue is available on PC, Mac, iOS and Android, so you can play it wherever you go. It’s a perfect game for those who love classic arcade games and want to relive the nostalgia of the 80s and for those who are new to the genre and want to experience the fun and excitement of retro-inspired gaming.

Don’t let the sharks get the divers

So grab your rowboat and set sail to rescue those parachute drivers! Parachute Rescue is available now and will surely be a hit with gamers of all ages.

SNAKE – VIC 20

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Had a few nights free recently so was inspired to create a simple game for the unexpanded Commodore VIC – 20 using BASIC v2.0. For those who have programmed the VIC 20 in BASIC realise that you only have 3.5KB of memory in this configuration.

SNAKE in Commodore BASIC

The inspiration for Snake came from watching ‘The Coding Train‘ on Youtube where a Snake game was created for the Apple II in BASIC. The reason for targeting the VIC was that memory limitation increased the challenge and the ability for using colour, sound and a joystick or keyboard for a controller which were key to the VIC – 20 success.

SNAKE grows when eating the pi symbol (RAT)

Like traditional versions of SNAKE you start with a snake of one segment and eat time you eat some food in this case the pi symbol (which looks like a RAT) your snake increases in size by one more segment.

You snake can grow to 20 segments (memory limits) but be careful as if you eat yourself then the game will end. Also if you go off the size of the screen either top or bottom you may die… To add some challenge going off the sides might wrap the screen or if may kill your snake so be careful and only try it if you feel very lucky 🙂

Track high score

You can view the VIC 20 source code and download for Snake here.

Major Android App updates for 2022

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It’s been a long time since all four of our Android games have updated, in fact some of them haven’t seen a new code release since 2015. The good news is that they haven’t crashed or failed in all that time.

This year both Google and Amazon have imposed some requirements for new minimums for API and build so over the past six weeks all of them have been given a complete overhaul including improvements to game play.

Three of our titles have already been updated on the Google Play Store and the Amazon App Store for Fire Tables with the last app being submitted tonight. All going well this will also be approved and available for download or update later this week.

Planetoids

If you like Retro style games please take a minute to download and play our titles, they are free and fun.

Sky Invaders (Google Play) (Amazon)
Brick Buster (Goggle Play) (Amazon)
Batty (Google Play) (Amazon)

and soon look out for Planetoids (Google Play) (Amazon)

Spotted in the wild

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Always get a kick out of seeing products that I designed and built a long time ago turned up in the wild. This printed circuit board (PCB) was the 3rd revision of a design that had its origins in the late 1980s and was tidied up and manufactured in Australia in 2003.

In 2008 I was approached by the developers of a Commodore 64 game called Kikstart 2, and they wanted to put this game on a cartridge and sell it to the retro computer community. I helped burn the EEPROM and tested it, ensuring it would work, eventually supplying several PCBs, cartridge plastic cases, and clamshell plastic packaging, and shipped them to the UK.

Kick-start C16 (although its a remake for the C64)

Fast forward 14 years, I noticed a collector from Switzerland mentioning his newest addition on Twitter. He included a few photos of the cartridge game opened displaying the Kikstart EEPROM and the PCB in the tweet.

Opened cartridge showing Kick-start ROM

I tweeted back, mentioning that I designed and manufactured those PCBs, and if he would turn them over, he’d see Alphaworks on the back.

“Yes, you’re right; it’s an Alphaworks PCB. And what a beauty! 🙂 No unnecessary vias, straight up routing and an overall very clean layout. Congrats on that.”

Alphaworks – C64 8K cartridge revision 3

It’s always good to see your products in the wild, particularly many years after they left the production line, and most of all, they are still being enjoyed by those who own and use them.

Brick Buster (Amazon Fire Tablet) update

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A few years between code updates but I’ve finally gotten around to putting in a few hours on Brick Buster for the Amazon Fire tablets.

It you would like to take a look, download and have some fun the app can be found for free on the Amazon App store (HERE)

“A very fun game to play, very addictive”

Fire TV

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Just over twelve months ago I picked up an Amazon Fire TV with the plan to release a few games onto it. I though it would be fun to play the Alphaworks retro style titles on the big screen.

Amazon Fire TV

Well that was November 2019 and until now I haven’t spent much time with the Fire TV at all. In fact I only set it up to test that it worked and put it back in the box. But in September 2020 I needed to update some of my Fire tablet apps so spent sometime getting back into the Android ecosystem again.

Skip ahead almost half a year and I started playing around with the Fire TV, in fact I converted a game that I wrote 13 years ago for the Windows PC and to my surprise the conversion process worked extremely well, so well that tonight I had the game fully playable on the big screen and using the Fire TV remote as a controller.

Lunar Lander, my take on the classic game from the 70’s and originally written for the Windows PC and released to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing in 1969. The game is a simple easy to play retro style which allows you to attempt a number of different landings (pads) before you run out of fuel.

Using the Fire TV remote as a controller you can guid your Lunar Lander craft to one of three safe landing pads, but remember not to land too fast or you’ll crash. This limited fuel you need to see how many times you can land successfully and how many points you are able to score.

Lunar Lander (Amazon Fire TV)

Before I submit for release via the Amazon App store I’ll need to do more testing, and more importantly add a few new features.