Appropriate Solutions, Inc.
Appropriate Solutions, Inc. has been turning ideas into products since 1987.
ASI provides custom software development services for desktop, client-server, and web applications. Based in downtown Peterborough, NH, our professional and experienced in-house development staff works with local writers, graphic artists, and web designers to transform your basic ideas and sketches into ready-for-market product.
We love building software to solve problems.
Ray Côté
Ray Côté, President and co-Founder of Appropriate Solutions, Inc. (ASI), creates software to help other businesses thrive. “I like to see our software being used in the real world and to see people actually enjoy using it,” says Ray. “We’ve written software for sole proprietorships and Fortune 50 companies. We listen to people to understand their actual problem, which is not always the problem they walk in with. We work with them to develop a solution. I don’t care how small or large the problem is. Every problem is large for the person who has it.”
An entrepreneur himself (his early businesses included several robotics magazines and a rabbit farm), Ray majored in Electrical Engineering at Northeastern University. He began his career as technical editor and editor-in-chief of Byte magazine. In those positions he reviewed millions of lines of code and helped set the magazine’s standards for good programming: functionality, efficiency, and elegance.
Ray’s interest in robots led him to become editor of Robotics Age, co-founder and editor of Robot Experimenter and Robot Explorer, and a board member of the Personal Robotics Institute. In 1987, he co-founded Appropriate Solutions, Inc. “My partners and I were discussing what to name the company and every suggestion met the response, ‘That’s not appropriate.’ So clearly ‘Appropriate’ was the perfect name.”
A long-time resident of Peterborough, NH, Ray was 2008 Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, former chair of the Chamber's Business Support Committee, former School Board representative, former member of the Town Economic Development Committee, and a former member of Toast Masters. He has also acted with the nationally known Peterborough Players and is a member of the Actors Circle Theater where he fulfilled a lifelong ambition to play Teddy in Arsenic and Old Lace.
At ASI, Ray manages people and projects, and keeps the company up to date with the latest programming languages and tools. But for Ray, his mission begins and ends with the customer. “I work with customers until their problem is solved. If we can’t solve it, we find someone who can. Everybody in ASI is front line support. That’s extremely unusual even in a small company. At ASI we make sure the customer is taken care of.”
Beth Alpaugh-Côté
Beth Alpaugh-Côté, Vice-President of ASI since 1994, has overall responsibility for accounting, maintenance, human resources, customer support, and shipping and receiving.
Born in Boston, Beth has worked all over the country. She owned and operated her own semi, hauling household belongings through 42 of the 48 contiguous states. Later she owned and ran a limousine service, and also oversaw harvesting and maintenance on a 125-acre blueberry farm. Throughout, she developed both management and entrepreneurial skills.
After moving to Peterborough in 1975, she worked at Byte magazine, where she edited articles, sold advertising, and served as Associate Publisher. Along with Ray, she founded two robotics magazines and took on the jobs of Production and Advertising Manager. Later, she began buying and renovating homes in the area. The Côté's current home sports a fenced in yard for their three Nigerian Dwarf goats, famous in the African savannah for climbing trees.
A member of the Contoocook and North Branch Rivers Local Advisory Committee (CNBRLAC), Beth serves on the local Water Resource Advisory Committee and the Master Plan Steering Committee. She is a member of the Actors Circle Theater and a former house manager for the Peterborough Players.
Beth enjoys the practical and inventive spirit of ASI: “You solve the problem, get it done, and go on to the next thing.”
Steve Apiki
Steve Apiki is a Senior Developer at ASI, where he has worked since 1993. “The people at ASI have a vast amount of experience in a wide variety of programs,” says Steve. “That experience makes us comfortable in many application domains, so we can quickly understand a customer’s requirements and translate those into hard technical rules. We understand the programming tools and which tools are appropriate to which job.”
One program that benefited from that experience and knowledge is a hospitality industry application on which Steve was the initial lead programmer. The application allows institutions to track the costs, ingredients, and nutritional value of every meal they serve, and to customize meals based on the preferences and needs of the institution’s clients. Steve is also excited about his work on some of ASI’s proprietary credit card processing programs, including Trevance®, a multi-threaded application that handles up to 30 credit card transactions per second in real time.
A native of Hawaii, Steve came to the mainland to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. After graduating with a B.S. in electrical engineering, he joined Byte magazine as technical editor and then testing editor. Eventually, he became the director of Byte’s testing laboratory. At Byte and in his career at ASI, he gained experience in a variety of development tools, including but not limited to C++, MFC, Delphi, and Python. His current programming interests include C#, Net 3.0, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
Steve is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared on several sites, including DevX, Small Business Computing.com, and Enterprise Storage Forum. His articles in DevX concentrate on programming topics related to AMD and Intel processors.
“I love software development,” Steve says, “and ASI lets me concentrate on my work.”
Charlie Farinella
Charlie Farinella began working at ASI in 2000 to provide technical support to ASI customers and is now in charge of all in-house IT. He is responsible for over ten servers (including mail, version control, virtual web, and remote servers), 30 to 40 computers, ASI’s virtual private network, and the company’s firewall and Internet security measures. In addition, Charlie assists in web development, maintains ASI’s customer data base, and helps write code.
A New Jersey native, Charlie majored in music education, then left college to became a piano technician. In 1983 he moved to New Hampshire for the quality of life. Soon after, he discovered that he enjoyed computers as much as pianos.
A member of the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group, Charlie is constantly researching to stay ahead of trends—and problems—in IT services. “I like what I do and I care about it,” he says. “It’s not just a job, but something I do with real satisfaction and pleasure. Everyone at ASI is that way.”
John Tourgee
John Tourgee joined ASI in 2005 to provide customer support. He is now responsible for Business Development as well. In his 20-year career, he has helped a variety of companies sell, define, and explain their products and services. He uses that experience to introduce new customers to the technical expertise of ASI.
“I find out about the customer’s technical and business problem and strategize ways in which ASI can help. Once we take on a problem, we stay with you until it’s solved. Whatever it takes,” John concludes, “we want to role up our sleeves and take it on.”
John has assisted people and businesses in the acquisition of technology since the mid-1980s. He rose to managerial positions through his sales success, based on a “get it done” attitude and creative spirit. At ASI, his sales role includes investigating value-added products and services for customers and helping to produce ASI’s marketing materials for the Internet, print, and television. He also serves as liaison with third-party vendors and partners. “I’m always looking for opportunities to make things simpler for our customers,” he says.
A New Hampshire native, John lives in Sharon with his wife and three children. He plays the guitar, writes music, and is a dedicated fund raiser for the YMCA.
William Freeman
Bill Freeman joined ASI in 2008 as a Senior Developer with experience in Unix® kernel software, Windows® applications, data reduction software, device drivers, Linux software, and utilities.
With a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he soon switched from hardware to the growing field of software development. “I like making things work, whether they’re hardware or software,” he says. “Software gives you a lot of immediate gratification: you see right away if it works.”
A recent project involves turning a customer’s marketing and sales data into .pdfs that are created online on the fly. He also wrote JavaScript code to display graphs in a browser, implemented two websites and designed debugging tools for internal use. “ASI has a lot of exciting things to do,” Bill says. “Our customers give us interesting problems to work on. Ray is a technical guy so he understands what you’re doing and you can concentrate on getting things done.”
Bill trains with nationally recognized dance instructors and has competed in ballroom dancing across the Northeast. He also enjoys flat water kayaking. He has two grown children and lives in Goffstown.
Ken MacDonald
Ken MacDonald brings more than thirty years of computer programming experience to the role of Senior Developer at ASI. A graduate of the University of North Dakota with a B.S. in Computer Science, Ken has worked for such prestigous institutions and companies as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM.
“I’ve worked on a lot of scientific projects, including satellite image processing, large data base projects, software tools development, accounting software, optical character recognition, algorithm development, robotics, and website design and development,” Ken states. “It helps to have experience in different problem domains and methodologies. For example, I was working at IBM on a database problem but the solution came from the work I had done in the image processing domain.” Once a solution is found, Ken is committed to producing clear, accurate documentation—another boon to ASI customers. In fact, one of his documents was nationally recognized as one of the top five software documents in its year of publication.
Ken chose programming as a career because it is both predictable and challenging. “My background involved a variety of sciences. I found you can’t always predict what’s happening with a living organism but you can predict what will happen with an 'if' statement.”
Ken’s hobbies include cooking, gardening, kayaking, mountain biking, and music—he plays the Appalachian dulcimer, five-string banjo and autoharp. He moved to Peterborough in part because of its strong ties to folk music, especially as home of the now-closed Folkway club/restaurant, which was located in the same building where ASI now has its offices.