Cliff Helsel is a computer professional that has been developing software since the age of 13. At 13 years old Cliff wrote a video game called Brickbuster that was developed for the Texas Instruments Professional Computer (shown below).

Cliff later developed a high speed text retrieval engine for an early database called FoxPro. The text retrieval system was named Fastext and predated similar technology used by Google and Yahoo. If only he had connected his text retrieval engine to the Internet! Based on the success of Fastext and presentations that he made to user groups around the Midwest he became known as someone quite proficient with database technology and he was called to New York where he spent the next ten years working as a computer consultant for high end clients including JP Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse First Boston and Citibank.

Cliff later developed a new spell checking system for the web in 1996. The product, JSpell, is still for sale today and is in use by many thousands of people every day.

In 2009, the iPhone was released and Cliff jumped at the opportunity to write apps for it. He was one of the first 4,000 people selected for the Apple iPhone Developer Program. Within a few short months, Cliff launched Credit Card Reader, an app that lets people accept and swipe credit cards using their iPhone. The first version of the Credit Card Reader app and card swipe device actually beat Square to the market.

Some of his favorite apps that he has worked on include:

Cliff prides himself on high quality applications and building frameworks for other developers. Please visit the other pages of this website to learn more about the applications that Cliff has built.