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My
father brings home and Apple II from work and I learn my
first programming language: Applesoft BASIC and 6502
assembly language.
My first real programming effort is a game called
"Rock-Belter-Hounds". |
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I have a strong interest in
programming and computers. |
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At 16, my
father pulls some strings with Marvin Minsky to work with
the Logo Group at the A.I. Lab at M.I.T. Projects
include building a floor turtle, programming the logo
interpreter on a DEC PDP 8 and early attempts to engineer
systems that exhibit intelligence. |
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I learn about basic electrical
engineering and compiler design. |
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During the last two years of
high school, I'm given permission to attend M.I.T.
Class credits are applied to my high school graduation.
I also attend Harvard for the "well rounded" subject areas
such as English, etc. I'm offered a job as a
programmer and never finish my college degree. |
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Accupoint developed robotic
automated test equipment (ATE) such as "Bed of Nail" testers
for printed circuit board manufacturers. A typical
Accupoint system had six separate processors for the testing
software and control of the robots.
I was part of a three-person management team in charge of
development and production of all Accupoint Products.
I was in charge of software, with co-managers in charge of
hardware and mechanical engineering. The engineering
department was staffed with 15 engineers. |
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I learned 6809 assembly language and
operating system's internals after porting OS9 (now used in
TV set top boxes) to our proprietary hardware.
I also learned that programmers were paid reasonable well. |
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I joined Data Acquisition Systems
(DAS), a startup, as software manager. The company
manufactured laboratory data acquisition hardware and
software for personal computers.
The department had eight software engineers and a technical
writer. The company was acquired by Keithley
Instruments. |
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Product Description
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The company's product added 10 new
slots to a personal computer for data acquisition and
control. Each slot can hold one of twenty-one
different types of input/output cards (analog/digital
conversion, digital I/O, AC power control, etc.). The
software controls the timing and flow of data streams to the
hardware.
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I learned a great deal about IBM PCs
and MS-DOS. I also learned that if you have shares in
a startup and an large fortune 1000 company buys it, you can
make a lot of money. |
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I wrote the credit, accounting and
billing software for Filene's (a large retailer New England,
and subsequently purchased by Macy's) to help a friend at
the company. The software was written in four months
and tested in three. Concord Consulting, Inc. was
started for legal and accounting reasons for this specific
contract.
I use Concord Consulting whenever I am doing hourly
consulting work. |
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Product Description
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This product was Filene's Time
Payment Accounts (TPA) billing system which records customer
(POS)
store transactions and generates monthly
statements. The system ran for more than 10 years,
recorded millions of transactions, and never lost a penny or
required a single bug fix. The system is a distributed
client server system running on IBM PC's.
The system automated a previously manual process and allowed
significant savings for Filene's by staff reductions.
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High Speed Database Engine
At the time, no PC database package could handle the
performance requirement of this application. I wrote a
database engine with reversible transactions support and two
phase commit. Even the overhead of MS-DOS was to high
for this application, so the software reads and writes
directly to disk sectors in a similar way Microsoft uses a
Swap file today for memory management. |
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I learned all about accounting,
account aging, credit authorization, collection, POS system,
SKUs, and all things retail. I also learned about
building production systems that have to run every day for
years on end.
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New Media Graphics was the leader in
video overlay and high-end graphics cards for the IBM
personal computer. Matrix Instruments, a leader in
medical imaging and high-end digital file production,
acquired the company. |
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Product Description
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PC-GraphOver II
The PC-Graphover II allows IBM PC graphics to be
superimposed on video from a video source such as a VCR or
video disk. The primary application for the hardware
is multimedia based Kiosks or training applications.
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Paint and Authoring Software
Software support included an authoring and paint software
and graphics library for use with 'C', BASIC, PASCAL and
FORTRAN. Extensive support was provided for
controlling external video sources such as VCR's and video
disks. |
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I learned how to manage a diverse
group of people and professions. |
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Product Description
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GraFlex
The product concept was to compress a high-end sun
workstation onto a single IBM PC card. The Motorola
MC68020 processor, 16MB of ram and the Hitachi ACTIC
Graphics accelerator chip were chosen to accomplish the
task. The graphics performance was similar to today's
64 bit graphics cards (but in 1987).
Extensive software was developed to allow developers access
to the MC68020. This included porting the GreenHills
'C' compiler, linker and writing a linking loader, creating
an extensive graphics library to support the Hitachi ACTIC
chip, adding multi-processor support and a Windows device
driver.
The product was a massive undertaking for a small software
engineering group on a show-string budget.
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Windows Video Device Driver
The worlds most unusual Window's device driver was written
to support this hardware. Windows running on the PC
would call the device driver to issue a graphics command.
The device driver would forward the command to the 68K where
it turn would issue the command to the Hitachi chip.
Not all functions required by Windows were supported by the
Hitachi chip requiring a lot of the standard VGA graphics
device driver to ported to the 68K environment. Of
honorable mention, the BitBlt routine was particularly
difficult.
The GraFlex product was the first example of Window's
Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP) (before Microsoft had even
considered it). |
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I learned a lot about electrical
engineering and that the level of effort in a product is
often not commensurate with the return on a product. |
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Product Description
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VERSACAD
Versacad, second only to AutoCAD in the PC based CAD market
was acquired by New Media Graphics to show off its GraFlex
product. The work done for this port later became the
basis for the Macintosh and and other 32 bit versions of the
CAD product.
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The Port from Hell
Moving this product from a 16 bit 8080 Intel architecture to
a 32-bit MC68020 processor was only one of the challenges
for this project. The source code was divided up to
take advantage of the dual-processors (the host PC Intel
processor and the 68020 on the graphics card). In
addition, the software was not layered well, and the display
engine (which would now be hardware assisted with the
GraFlex) had roots in all parts of the product. If
this wasn't bad enough, the Green Hills 68K compiler was not
Microsoft compliant and numerous issues such as compatible
libraries, pre-processor directives and general acceptance
of syntax make this some of the ugliest programming I have
ever done. |
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I learned working with legacy code
can be hell. |
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Product Description
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VIP Presentation Systems
The product is a multimedia presentation system for the
executive boardroom. I developed the product idea and
business plan. I was responsible for all hardware,
mechanical design, packaging, software, production and
marketing of the product. The budget for the product
was $2.5M. The VIP creation software was very similar
to today's Microsoft PowerPoint.
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An Amiga in wolf's
clothing
The heart of a VIP system is an Amiga 500 computer.
The Amiga floppy disk was replaced with an IBM PC 1.2M
floppy drive and associated circuitry. This allowed
the presentation to be created on any IBM PC, stored onto a
floppy and played back on the VIP. A 68K floppy disk
driver was developed which interfaced the Amiga to the new
IBM PC floppy disk hardware.
An Amiga application was also developed to playback the
presentation and used the remote control as the primary
input device. IBM PC based authoring software was
developed to create the presentations.
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I learned a great deal about
managing a large number of staff and different kind of
people and skills.
I also reinforced the earlier lesson on the value of stock
in a hot startup. |
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Product Description
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Software Rasterizer
This product built very high resolution bitmaps (up to 8K by
8K, 24 bits deep, 192MB) for output to film records and
thermal transfer printers. The software takes SCODL
generated output (used by file recorders) as input and
generates the images on low end IBM PCs with 640K of memory.
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Low Memory, High
Resolution
Since each image can require up to 200MB of storage, special
graphics routines were developed to handle the limited
memory conditions and the significant speed issues.
All the graphics primitives such as line, curve, fill,
bitblt (over 60 in all) where developed to work under these
unusual conditions.
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I learned a lot about basic graphics
primitives. |
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Level Systems, Inc, was
started initially with a contract with Gould/Modicon to
re-work their PLC product for Ford Motor Company.
Level Systems went on to be a leader in multimedia product design
and development. The company at its apex employed
roughly thirty software engineers, artists, and musicians.
Westwood Studios was our largest and only credible
competitor. |
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Product Description
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Graphical Ladder Logic
Editor
This product allows Modicon's PLCs to be programmed.
Modicon's PLC's are used in factory automation
to control assembly lines all over the world. This
product provides graphical (Ladder Logic) programming tools
to program Modicon's hardware. The completion of the
product allowed Modicon to win a 25M contract with the Ford
Motor Company.
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The software was written in
'C" and the Windows SDK. The technical challenge was
getting a graphical programming environment to run in 640K
in Windows 2.0. |
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I learned about the difference
between a consulting based business and product based
business. |
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Business Description
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This title was developed for
Mindscape, a software publisher out of Chicago, and now
owned by The Learning Company.
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Product Description
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Windows Chess
The timeliness classic brought to Microsoft Windows
2.0. The game features a graphical 3D perspective of
the board and chess engine rivaled by none.
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Windows 2.0
Mindscape licensed the chess engine for use in this product.
The technical challenge was getting the graphics intensive
user interface and the chess engine into 129K of memory. |
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I learned that I like business side
as much as the technical side. I also learned about
making payroll every month. |
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Business Description
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This title was developed for
Mindscape, a software publisher out of Chicago
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Product Description
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The Perfect Career
This product is a simple computer based alternative to
self-help books on career selection. Based on answers
to a series of questions about your interests and abilities,
the program takes you through the four fundamental steps in
career guidance: personal assessment, occupational
exploration, decision making and career planning.
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Virtual Terminal
The technical challenge for this product was to develop a
single set of source code that ran all platforms. The
product uses a high level API to get to the screen based on
a limited set of the Microsoft Windows SDK API. |
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I learned that products don't have
to be glitzy to make money, they have to have value to a
consumer. |
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Personal Computing recognizes seventy
people for their contribution to the computer industry.
I'm recognized for the software titles and for producing the
first sound card for the IBM PC.
At Level Systems, we demonstrate an early prototype of our sound
card using our games at various trade shows.
Unfortunately, we can't afford the 300K to move the early
prototype into production and I'm too naive at this point to get
venture capital. About 18 months later, the first
Sound-Blaster products are introduced (which pale in comparison
to our product, but the rest is history).
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Business Description
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This title was developed for Mindscape, a software publisher
out of Chicago.
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Product Description
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These are the continuing voyages of
the Starship U.S.S. Enterprise (on the small screen of the
IBM PC). The product is comprised of three arcade
games and an animated screen saveer.
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VGA Graphics Engine
This game was the first game ever published for the new VGA
graphics cards. Common wisdom at the the time thought
it was impossible to create a VGA game within the 640K
memory barrier of a PC. The game set a new standard
for color graphics in games. Special drivers were
developed for each graphics card to eek out every last drop
of performance. |
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Graphics Compression
This game has over 20MB of graphics compressed onto five
1.2M floppies. To achieve this compression, five
different types of compression routines (LZH, RLE, etc) were
developed to store the graphics. |
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I learned a lot about licensing,
related contract law and cross platform development.
This game like many of the others was ported across six
different platforms. |
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Business Description
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This title was developed for Mindscape, a software publisher
out of Chicago. |
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Product Description
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This product is a copy of the
popular stand-up arcade game. The product is comprised
of three separate arcade games with increasing levels of
difficulty.
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Four Voice Sheet Music
Player
The product includes a four-voice note player which is
capable of playing and mixing four different instruments at
the same time. A single digital samples is modified to
produce a range of tones. This technology is used in
all subsequent multimedia based development when
reproduction of sheet music is required.
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Device Independent
Bitmaps
This product also introduced the first of a set of tools to
manage bitmaps for different resolutions, color depths and
platforms (similar to Windows "DIBs"). The tools
allowed me to use a single set of bitmaps for CGA, EGA, VGA,
and TANDY and Amiga HAM graphic modes. These tools
also allowed me to manage/merge color palettes for animators
and color reduction.
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High Speed Tile Based
Graphics Engine
The graphics for this game was built by producing 32x32
titles. I built a display engine which allowed very
large virtual areas to be shown with a minimum of graphics
loaded into memory. The engine also included support
for sprites, multiple windows, high speed scrolling, menu
support, etc. The implementation of the game was
particularly difficult because the stand up version had
hardware assistance for graphics. We managed to
duplicate the speed on low end IBM PCs. |
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I learned a lot about game
development. |
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Business Description
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This title was developed for
Spinnaker Software, a software publisher out of Cambridge,
Mass.. Konami distributes the game and Spinnaker
Software (now Softkey) owns the license.
Level Systems produced 50% of Spinnakers' new products which
included a Window's paint program and several other games
(not shown on this web page).
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Product Description
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Riders of Rohan
Ride with Gandalf, Aragorn and the other Fellowship
characters against the armies of the traitorous wizard
Saruman. Riders of Rohan, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's
"The Lord of the Rings". The game genre was war game
simulation. Each conflict was decided by the outcome
of an arcade game. Five different arcade games, the
war game and an animated cartoon were developed for this
title.
The game design and product ideas supplied by Spinnaker.
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Complete Game Development
Tools
No new technology was developed for this game. The
combination of graphics drivers for the different platforms,
artists tools, sound technology, graphics engines, mouse
driver, tec. would enable me to focus on how to build and
sell a better game rather than the software engineering
work.
Creation of the game was now turnkey. |
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I learned about game design: It's all about the game
dude...technology is only a means to an end. |
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Business Description
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Echelon Development was a spin-off
company from Level Systems, Inc. with the sole purpose to
build and sell WindowCraft. The separate company was
required because of the need to find investors to support
the product development cost (a little over $3M US).
Several key Microsoft employees and several local angels
provided seed money to start the development.
WindowCraft was offered a bundling deal with the
Introduction of Windows 3.0 by Bill Gates. We were
asked to cover the cost of the floppy disks (at a cost of
$20M) which we could not afford. I put together a
co-marketing relationship with Microsoft instead.
The company at its at apex had approximately 15 employees.
Several companies including Apple, Ashton-Tate, and Borland courted the
company, but the shareholders of the company refused to
sell. It should be noted that many of the features and
the look and feel of Visual Basic copy WindowCraft.
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Product Description
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WindowCraft: HyperCard for
Windows
WindowCraft is a powerful, easy-to-use Windows-hosted
development system for creating Microsoft Windows
Applications. The product is 100% compatible with
Apple's HyperCard product in both file format and language
support.
WindowCraft competes with other authoring tools (Toolbox,
Plus, Authorware) where multimedia application development
is required.
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Object Oriented
Database/Memory Manager
WindowCraft allowed early users' of Windows 3.0 to
incorporate large amounts of graphics and data into
applications on a low end PC with limited memory. This
was accomplished with a very advanced memory manager and
object oriented database engine. The engine maintains
locks, dirty status, garbage collection, compression and
decompression, and a LRU (Least Recently Used) scheme that
freed in-memory objects that were not being used. |
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Double-Buffered Controls
For HyperCard compatibility, all the screen controls
(buttons, edit boxes, scrollbars, etc.) had to
be double-buffered. Windows doesn't support this, so
the standard Windows controls had to be rewritten from
scratch. This allowed special effects like
transparency to supported. |
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I got my MBA from the school of hard
knocks here. I also learned that your shareholders
should agree on the exit strategy before becoming
shareholders.
After writing WindowCraft, I could teach Petzold a thing or
two about Window's programming.<g> |
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Business Description
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GhostWriter is the first retail
software product that I took to market without help from a
publisher. All package design, marketing, sales and
fulfillment was done by myself. The software was sold
through retail outlets via Merisel, etc. and direct mail.
Millions of direct mail pieces were sent of behalf of this
product with a response rate that exceeded 4%.
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Product Description
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GhostWriter is a collection of over 1200 commonly needed
business and personal letters (from five popular books
licensed from Prentice Hall). The program allows the
user to do a keyword search to find a letter and then import
it into a word processor for editing. All letters from
five completed books were compressed onto a single low
density floppy disk. |
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High-Speed Inverted
Database Text Engine
Likely similar to Google's search engine, all the text from
the books is stored in inverted AVL balanced trees for quick
searching.. All 1200 letters can be searched by
keyword or actual text of the letter in less than a second.
This technology was expanded later in WindowCraft and Object
XBase for high-speed data retrieval in databases.
20MB of of text can be keyword searched in less than a
second on very low end computers. |
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This product took six weeks to
develop and less than 50K was invested, including the first
round of packaging and the direct mail piece. GhostWriter was very low-tech,
low cost and one of the highest return on investment: an important lesson. |
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Product Description
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GCP is a Windows graphics file
import and export conversion tool. The product also
allows the user to tune their graphics with options such as
dithering, over-sampling, choice of internal representation,
etc. The product was originally distributed as
shareware and was acquired by Echelon. I re-wrote the
product to support graphics larger thank 64K, added palette
support and added six new drivers to the product. All
of the drivers supported reading and writing of their
respective formats.
Format included:
| TIFF |
ALDUS (Adobe) |
| LBM |
Deluxe Paint/Amiga |
| BMP |
Windows 2.0 |
| DIB |
Windows 3.0 |
| ICO |
Windows Icon |
| CUR |
Windows Cursor |
| MSP |
Windows Paint 2.0 |
| MPT |
MacPaint |
| PCX |
PC Paintbrush |
| GIF |
CompuServe |
| PCL |
HP Page Command Language |
| EPS |
Encapsulated Postscript |
| JPG |
Joint Photographic Expert Group |
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Business Description
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The purpose of the company was to
sell it to large player in the dBase area such as Microsoft,
Borland or Computer Associates. After a year in
development, the technology was sold in essence at auction.
To sell the software, we attended ANSI meetings on dBase and
proposed extending the language in much the same way
Microsoft has for BASIC. We gave several public
demonstrations of the technology and soon the telephone
started to ring.
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Product Description
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Object XBase: dBase for Windows
Object XBase is a complete Windows hosted application
development system based on the dBase language. The
product was 100% language and data compatible with Borland's
dBase IV 2.0, dBase III+, FoxPro, and Clipper. The
product also allowed users to leverage their investment in
Visual Basic custom controls by allowing the custom controls
to be installed into Object XBase.
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dBase Language
A 100% dBase 2.0 compatible language was developed (over 400
dBase functions and commands). The dBase language was
extended to support events, methods, and properties |
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Sometimes not shipping a product
makes more money? |
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Product Description
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This product provided an online
version of the popular O-Neil reports used by Fidelity's
fund managers. The package allows the fund manager to
customize the fundamental and technical data displayed.
I took this job to once again help a friend out who was in
trouble with a deadline. |
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Technical Indicators
Over 40 different technical indicators (Moving Averages,
Bollinger Bands, etc.) were developed. The product
allows the user complete control over all the input
parameters used by the indicators. |
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Data Access Layer
The product allows access to many different data sources.
A data abstraction layer was built to insulate the product
from the many different different proprietary data
interfaces. |
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Charting with OLE
Annotations
A custom charting engine was developed to support all the
common charts used by the mutual fund industry
(High/Low/Close, Candlestick, etc.). The package
allows an analyst or fund manager to annotate each chart.
Several draw tools were provided to allow the user to draw
on the charts. |
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I learned there is no correlation
between a company's success and the job satisfaction of it's
employees. |
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Business Description
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SPAS II
Safety Performance Analysis System
SPAS II is a $56M dollar web based client server
application. The backend of the system is a web-farm
of over 60 PCS with over 3 Terabytes of information.
The application enables the F.A.A. personal (4500+ users)
high-speed access and analysis of data collected from the
airline industry on a daily basis.
The project's challenge was three fold:
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Take the requirements from SPAS I, a traditional
3 tier client server system written in C++ and
make it work in a web environment.
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Design an architecture that support 300+
simultaneous users with significant database
computational resources required for each user.
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Make the batch processes which process daily
data from remote legacy systems work within the
time frame of a single day.
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Fire Fighter and Technical
Mentor
My role in SPAS was several fold:
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Technical lead, responsible for getting the
project shipped out the door, on time and within
budget (which we did!).
- System Architect,
responsible for the overall design of the
system.
- Researcher, I often did
the initial programming for each component
before handling off to another programmer.
- Fire fighter: Any kind
of problem anyone was having, I would have to
parachute in, role up the sleeves and help fix
it.
- Technical Mentor for the
staff. One of the goals of the project was
to reduce the level of skill to build SPAS thus
allowing a wider range of job applicants and
lower overall project costs. The
offsetting factor was the amount of technical
management required.
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I learned about the Web when the web
was young. |
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Business Description
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In 1997, the contract for software
support services by the Department of Transportation is put
out for rebid (normally done every five years). Computer
Sciences Corporation (CSC) wins the contract over Unisys.
With Unisys failing to win the contract, all employment
contracts become null and void. I gather the technical
staff of the SPAS project and negotiate with CSC for the
services of the technical staff. As part of the deal
with CSC, Akunna Technologies is formed and given status as
a sub-contractor to CSC's contract with the government.
At the next rebid, Akunna
Technologies partners with CSC as full partner for the $190M
contract and wins the contract. Akunna Technologies is
still going strong and continues to win government
contracts. |
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I learned sometimes change is good
and it's not what you know, it's who you know. |
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Business Description
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Fidelity Investments had spent over
$10M and five years in a failed attempt to build a system to
automate state level compliance
(BlueSky) filings for their mutual fund
products; they create over 20,000 of these filings each
year.
I approached Fidelity with a proposal to outsource the
development they agreed. Because of the critical
function of the business area being automated, both Ned John
(majority stock holder) and Bob Pozen (President) had to
approve the project.
The deal with Fidelity provided funding to develop the
project. I maintained ownership of all intellectual property rights to
the resulting product. I put together a team of six
developers and two testers and completed the software within
six months and a fraction of the original cost. The
resulting application was featured as one of the Fidelity's
major technical successes for the year.
The resulting product and staff became Boston Compliance
Systems, Inc. |
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Product Description
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BlueSky98 is a product that
automates the filing of BlueSky securities filings with the
states. The application is very similar in scope to
automating state income tax returns for 50 states.
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Sales at the end of the first year exceeded $3M with a
profit margin of 72%.
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In addition to my technical
role of architecting and programming for this product, I
have all other responsibilities, such as product sales,
training, support, chief cook and bottle washer. |
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Ernst & Young release survey
of customer satisfaction of BlueSky vendors and suppliers
for the mutual fund industry. BCSI leads with 96%
satisfaction rating and the nearest competitor at 72%.
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Fidelity mutual fund customers save 10's of millions by
reducing their fees. |
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Fidelity saves millions each year in reduced head count with
use of product. |
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Thomson Financial acquires the
company in January, 2000. |
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I learned about patience and
customer support. |
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Business Description
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After the sale of Boston Compliance
Systems, Inc (BCSI) to Thomson, the company has largely been
kept intact as it was before.
Several areas of responsibility have moved to the parent
company such as accounting, payroll, etc. |
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BlueSky98, now called BlueSky Solution continues to sell
well with 40% of mutual fund industry using the product and
it continues to grow. Customers include
Fidelity, Scudder/Deutsche Bank, T. Rowe Price,
Federated Investors, American
Century Investments, and many many more. |
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I
started a new business area to outsource BlueSky compliance
for mutual funds. This area of the business took off,
with sales to exceed $15M in its first year and today has grown to $60M |
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Support agreements with every
major transfer agent and accounting system vendor. |
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Added production support for every major omnibus
account. |
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I learn how to grow a small business
into a medium size business. |
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Business Description
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Curo Systems, Inc. flagship product
is called ComplyPlus. The product provides
state-of-the-art compliance functionality for trading
systems and accounting systems for the mutual fund industry. |
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ComplyPlus
See
Curo Systems website
for information about the product. |
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I arranged for Fidelity
Investments to supply international business requirements. |
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I put together a coalition of various mutual fund compliance staff to
gather domestic business requirements. Staff from
Putnam Investments, Fidelity, PFPC, Bank of America and
numerous others pitched in to help. |
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Since
the software must work with a trading system, I focused sales efforts on trading system vendors who have poor
compliance support in their products. I managed to get two
of the larger vendors interested in putting together a
bundling deal. |
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I'm still trying to figure that one out, I let you know when I
do. |
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I don't really know. I'm
forty-six years old and still have lots to accomplish. I like to
spend several hours each day programming; my
current passion is Ray Kurzweil's Singularity. I'm
currently working on an A.I. engine to help speed his vision of the
future. While not programming, I'm building a house on lake
Winnipesaukee in NH.
Hopefully from this shameless promotional
page, I have managed to convey that my previous responsibilities have
not been limited to the programming arena. As a seasoned entrepreneur, I
have performed almost all job functions in a software company, from
working with outside vendors to bend sheet metal for cases, cutting
molds for plastic remote-controls, writing direct mail pieces, designing
packaging, brochures and full page adds, writing applications for
patents, working with musicians on the creation of original scores,
managing teams of digital artists, managing external contractors,
writing business plans, negotiating and papering all sorts of contracts,
writing production documentation,
day-to-day sales, tech support and being a booth bimbo at trade shows.
I love business and the joy of a successful
company and all the messy myriad details that come with it.
If you need a hands-on manager who
knows not only how to develop and ship a product on time, but knows how
to make it successful in the marketplace, and build a successful company
where others want to work, send an email. I'm always
interested in something new.
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