Our team
Who we are
About our team
NiceProTools bvba is a software start-up company founded by two friends and former colleagues (Filip and Gert), who worked at a large Electronics company for more than 15 years. We both left the Electronics company in 2008, and went separate ways for almost 10 years.
During this time, Filip (and two other colleagues, also from the Electronics company) developed and marketed a product called “GiD®” (GPS Interface Device), which is currently being used by many ambulances, fire brigades and police services in Belgium. The GiD® is an interface device that allows a dispatch center to automatically send coordinates of an incident into a GPS system in the vehicle (e.g. ambulance, fire truck, police car, …), saving valuable minutes at critical moments, and saving lives.
Filip
founder
Gert stepped into the world of Intellectual Property, and besides his legal training, he translated more than 400 patent documents over the years. Like most starting translators probably do, especially if translating is not their main job, he started with a PDF viewer and a text editor (and a pencil to point to the screen when reviewing). Needless to say, this is not efficient, but costs were low. As the number of translations grew, he started using CAT-tools. And while a TM (Translation Memory) and TB (TermBase) are great, translating and reviewing word by word remained quite difficult, even in CAT-tools. And the “final review” occurs outside the CAT tool anyway.
End of 2015 Gert started developing a software tool that provides one or two semi-transparent lines, allowing him to underline text in the PDF document and/or in the text editor, or even in the CAT-tool. The initial version of “Line Or Cross®” was born …
Early 2017 our professional ways crossed again, and by the end of 2017 we decided to commercialize the tool, and founded NiceProTools bvba. Our initial plan was to offer Line Or Cross® in three versions: Standard, Advanced and Pro, but we decided to provide a fourth product with the same background features as Line Or Cross® for people suffering eye strain. But since there is no Line Or Cross®, we had to find another name; Tune my Screen® saw the light … (or actually dimmed the light).
In order to serve also other professions, a “semi-transparent cross” is provided to assist people when working in spreadsheets or with tables, and a “semi-transparent hand” is provided to help teachers or on-line coaches to show where they are in slides and much more.
The tool is initially provided with a user-interface in 22 languages, but our dream is to extend the UI to more than 100 languages, for which we seek the help of translators around the globe, willing to contribute. In this way Line Or Cross® and Tune my Screen® are “products made by translators for translators”.
