IN MEMORIAM


ivan weltmanThe Web has lost one of its greats. South Africa’s Ivan Weltman, the founder and voice of Tudogs, the incredible free Web software evaluation site, died after a short illness January 16th, at the age of 67. Ivan’s wife Sheina sent the following lovely and heart-rending note to Tudogs’ e-mail subscribers, which tells Ivan’s story much better than I could:

Ivan was a lovely man, intelligent, sensitive and caring. I know you readers knew him well because he could express himself so well in his writings and it was important to him to be able to communicate with every one of his readers personally. I know that he enjoyed very much chatting with many of you about your lives, software and personal issues and where possible to advise you as best he could. He would spend most nights on his computer, with the TV in front of him as background to his work and to keep him abreast of world news and foreign affairs. Sometimes when I had time I would just sit there with him and watch a soppy love story as he worked. He loved you, his audience, and often when he came to bed in the early hours of the morning he would tell me of some of you who were experiencing illness or crises in your lives, or show me the very inventive websites, clipart or software that some of you had created.

My son Jonathan and I have decided that we will continue Ivan’s work and promise to keep you abreast of all the Gratis Software that we can find.

When I met and married Ivan we worked together, or rather I worked for him, in an advertising agency and we then ran our own market research company for 17 years. When asked why he married me he always said, jokingly, good staff are hard to find. We have had a working as well as loving relationship all of our lives. I have been his backroom surfer helping him find interesting sites to present to you.

Jonathan is a professional IT man, and E-Commerce Consultant and has been in the background for Ivan for technical and backend work since the beginning of Tudogs.

We intend to give you as close a level of professionalism and friendship, to that which you got from Ivan, as we can.

All of us in the family want to thank you for the friendship and constant personal interaction you had with Ivan. I know how he valued that and kept him constantly amazed at how “interesting” and “good” people are out there.

I have read many of your notes to him from time to time and know how much you have enjoyed conversing with Ivan. If any of you wish to make a contribution to the upcoming memorial section of the site be it a special piece of your correspondence with Ivan or just a sample of how he helped you find just the right piece of software when you needed it please send it through to me and we will try to post them all on the site.

Tudogs scours the Internet for useful free software, sorts it by type and ranks it by value, including warnings about glitches, spyware and security flaws. Most of the essential utilities I use every day were Tudogs recommendations.

Ivan, you will be missed.

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