Hotline was designed in 1996 and known as "hotwire" by Australian programmer Adam Hinkley (known online by his username, "Hinks"), then 17 years old, as a classic Mac OS application. The source code for the Hotline applications was based on a class library, "AppWarrior" (AW), which Hinkley wrote. AppWarrior would later become litigious, as Hinkley wrote parts of it while he was employed by an Australian company, Redrock Holdings. Six other fans of Hotline, David Murphy, Alex King, Phil Hilton, Jason Roks, David Bordin, and Terrance Gregory, joined Adam Hinkley's efforts to promote and market the Hotline programs, working day and night and using the company's own products to stay in touch from across the US, Canada, and Australia. Eventually, Canadian Jason Roks approached Adam Hinkley and encouraged him to move to Toronto, where Hotline Communications, Ltd. was incorporated. In 1997, "Hotline" won a "Best of the Show" award from one of the award ceremonies concurrent with the Boston MacWorld Expo. It received accolades in computer magazines and the mainstream press from "Macworld Sweden" (which awarded it a "Golden Mouse Award") to the "Los Angeles Times", which called it one of the "best kept secrets on the internet", as well as a short article in Wired Magazine's September 1997 issue. At the time, the company's main objective was to release a stable Windows-compatible version to reach a wider audience.