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SOLANA BEACH--According to the dictionary, nisus means an effort or endeavor to realize an aim.
"From a marketing standpoint it's the worst name you could pick because it doesn't mean anything to anyone," said Jerzy Lewak, president and CEO of NISUS Software Inc.
But it does mean something to Lewak, who strives to place his Solana Beach company onto the information superhighway alongside the likes of software giant Microsoft Corp.
From solving math problems to the power of language, NISUS has positioned itself as a player in the saturated software market. And, with the help of investors, it can become a solid player, Lewak said.
An electrical and computer engineering professor at UCSD for 25 years, Lewak developed--with the help of some of his students--a mathematics teaching software program for Apple II computers in the 1980s.
"I recognized in teaching that computers were not being utilized like they could be utilized," Lewak said.
"It made me think there is a need for this type of education. I believe this is my mission, to develop courseware."
That mission began with Paragon Concepts, which Lewak started in his home in 1984. It was then that Lewak developed an algebra tutor software for junior and senior high school students.
Lewak changed the company name to NISUS a year later with the release of the firm's NISUS Writer software. The word-processing program, which can be used with Apple Computer Inc.'s Worldscript software, allows non-English-speakers to write in their native language without the need of a foreign language computer program.
NISUS writer includes text, graphics and sound...