deeda - deeda Blog

The Brain, Semantic Web technology, and what it will mean for you!

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:36:00 +0000

I was recently watching a lecture by Jeff Hawkins titled, "Computing beyond Turing" and it inspired me to write something about the state of affairs between Computational Neuroscience, Semantic Web technology, and the future of Web, Desktop and Mobile applications. In the end, I hope this helps explain how we’re working to tie these concepts together with regard to the web, desktop and mobile environments at deeda Inc.

Although the link to this particular inspirational lecture is posted above, here is a quick embedded video primer on the subject. This talk is from TED 2003 and was also given by Jeff Hawkins. If you have some time, definitely try to check it out:

"Coaxing computers to perform basic acts of perception and robotics, let alone high-level thought, has been difficult. No existing computer can recognize pictures, understand language, or navigate through a cluttered room with anywhere near the facility of a child. Hawkins and his colleagues have developed a model of how the neocortex performs these and other tasks. The theory, call Hierarchical Temporal Memory, explains how the hierarchical structure of the neocortex builds a model of its world and uses this model for inference and prediction."

The above image represents the hierarchical data structure that the neocortex uses to store information about the world. The fundamental question we need to answer is how does this memory structure work? It turns out that the lower level of this inverted tree structure is where the widest range of visual information is first processed. You can think of this wide area as the point of first contact with sensory information. There’s a lot of it, and it can be seemingly overwhelming. However, the cells in this area have a very broad range of pattern recognition abilities. This is what allows them to make sense out of the data chaos. They are programmed to recognize spatial patterns that occur at the same time, as well as the sequences of these temporal patterns.

These cells then memorize what patterns are occurring as well as retain the ability to predict what patterns will follow - and then pass these patterns up to their parent. Each parent is looking at its child node, and in turn it is processing patterns of patterns. As you progress from the top down, increasingly broader patterns and sequences are being received. As you move up the hierarchy the temporal component of the patterns and sequences are becoming smaller. Each parent has the ability to pass down predictions on what pattern and sequence each child node should be receiving next. In the example of a musical melody, the prediction sent could be the notes that are expected to be heard next. Together, the 30 billion neurons in the neocortex are constantly managing, retaining, and predicting the inputs from various sensory systems.

There are three fascinating and wonderful components to this HTM model.

This model accounts for learning and prediction of events, patterns and sequences.
This model represents an entirely new way of looking at memory and storage.
These hierarchical systems represent a highly distributed computing model.

While silicon (hardware) representations of this type of memory and processing model are still under development, there are many ways this model has been successfully applied, developed, and tested through software. Jeff Hawkins' Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience (formerly the Redwood Neuroscience Institute) and his group at Numenta have already provided some great software tools for experimenting and developing systems based on the HTM model.

I love seeing examples of technology that are based on natural biological processes. It has always been my goal for deeda to help bridge the gap between the two, and to make real world examples that showcase the efficiency and value of such systems. In the mobile environment we're typically working with fairly small screens and buttons. Even in the touch environment not every handset can typically access Flash or other types of Web specific content. It is therefore imperative that our future handsets should have some level of intelligence that reduces the number of commands, websites, or information we have to navigate through to find what we need in a useful manner. Even if predictive analysis reduces the complexity of interactions it will be a great boon for mobile applications. Let's say I'm visiting Boston and I'm hungry. It's 10PM at night, and I'm in Copley Park. Why should I have to navigate to a dozen websites to find recommendations on restaurants in my area, then navigate to a restaurant's website to see if they are open? Sites like WhatsOpen.com will do all of the narrowing down for you, but is this what it has come down to? We have to wait for a website to come around that aggregates some amount of useful information so we don't have to waste time? Why can't we have a system that understands where we are, what we like to eat, what our friends have recommended in the area, as well as what is still open - and then show it to us - all with once click or tap?

Processing data in new and novel ways is only part of the solution. How do we get data to play nicely with each other? How do we provide context and understanding behind the data that is being analyzed? With respect to our work at deeda there is another component to this vision that I'd like to quickly discuss - The Semantic Web.

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, described the Semantic Web as follows, "The Web was designed as an information space, with the goal that it should be useful not only for human-human communication, but also that machines would be able to participate and help. One of the major obstacles to this has been the fact that most information on the Web is designed for human consumption, and even if it was derived from a database with well defined meanings (in at least some terms) for its columns, that the structure of the data is not evident to a robot browsing the web. Leaving aside the artificial intelligence problem of training machines to behave like people, the Semantic Web approach instead develops languages for expressing information in a machine processable form."

The fact that Tim wrote this 10 years ago is a testament to just how much work needed to be done before Semantic technology would be ready to be implemented in a meaningful and widespread way. While I wouldn't say that semantic markup or standards are widespread, there are currently a lot of great startups that are beginning to leverage the technology - And the real world examples and value of the semantic web are becoming more and more prevalent every day.

A great book that helps introduce the concepts and technology behind the Semantic Web is "Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist", by Dean Allemang and Jim Hendler. This book was recommended to me by Henry Story of Sun Microsystems (originally of BableFish fame), who has been studying and working on Semantic Web technology since 2004.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of becoming friends with Henry as well as get a chance to take a closer look at some of his work on the Semantic front. The first question most people have when the phrase “Semantic Web” is used is, “What exactly does it mean?” The short answer is that it is a model for making data shareable by machines in a meaningful way. What Hypertext did for linking related web pages of information, the Semantic Web does with Hyperdata – data that can actually be aggregated and linked in a meaningful way.

Another answer that is commonly given is that the Semantic Web is the model for making applications more “intelligent”. Ok, so now what does that mean? After all, the web is currently full of increasingly intelligent applications. Commerce sites can personalize information and deliver suggestions in uncanny ways (think of Amazon’s “other people who bought this, also bought X,Y,Z” feature). Search Engines have also become increasingly better at delivering intuitive and seemingly deep matches that are relevant to simple search queries. It would seem that “intelligence” is just a matter of building smarter algorithms, relational databases, XML stores, or object stores to make the data appear better connected and consistent. So when we say “Semantic Web” are we talking about a new web technology, a different type of Web infrastructure, or both?

The answer lies somewhere in the middle, and if not explained properly can lead to a bit of confusion. What we have accomplished today with intelligent applications is a reflection of the best we can do with the data available to us in the traditional HTML format. To allow smart applications to perform to their full potential we must improve the Web infrastructure to provide results that are not confusing, disconnected, or “dumb”. As Dean Allemang and Jim Hendler state in their book, “The Semantic Web doesn’t make data smart because smart data isn’t what the Semantic Web needs. The Semantic Web just needs to get the right data to the right place so the smart applications can do their work. So the question to ask is not “How can we make the Web infrastructure smarter?” but “What can the Web infrastructure provide to improve the consistency and availability of Web data?”

What's the rationale for such a system? Data that is generally hidden away in HTML files is often useful in some contexts, but not in others. We provide all this great information about ourselves to share, but we only share it in a humanly readable format. Machines have trouble processing the same information because it is seldom (often intentionally) kept out of their grasps. The problem with the majority of data on the Web in its current form is that it is difficult to use on a large scale, because there is no global system for publishing data in such a way as it can be easily processed by anyone. We don’t need a smart Web infrastructure, but we need a Web infrastructure that lets us connect data to smart Web applications so the whole Web experience is enhanced.

For a quick example let’s take a look at the current state of affairs on the web. Let’s say the majority of your personal profile information is on Facebook – including your work affiliations, group events, where you live, and maybe even your favorite books, and movies. When you visit Amazon it has no idea about all the latest books you’ve added to your Facebook profile. Maybe you recently moved to a new city, but the information in your Amazon account still says you live at your old address. You might find it helpful to share some of your Facebook information with Amazon so you can get some great suggestions, but the only way to do that is if you put all of your latest information into another closed, centralized system (Amazon). Amazon doesn't even have the same fields or profile setup as Facebook so doing this is hardly an option. Not only is this frustrating, but it's also an enormous waste of time. Wouldn’t it be nice if Facebook, or any major website you were a part of, acted as if you actually owned your personal data? You should be able to take your profile information with you wherever you go. And wouldn't it be great if other websites, like Amazon, allowed you to easily submit your relevant information? The end result would be applications that are intelligent enough to read this shared information in a way that is automatic, and instantly useful.

Since the value of centralized and closed systems like Facebook lies in hording all of your personal data (so they can increase their ad revenue), Amazon was forced to come to Facebook and build two Facebook applications – Amazon Giver and Amazon Grapevine. These applications allow you to solve the above problem while still staying inside the walled garden of Facebook. Amazon Grapevine will go through your favorite books, movies and other profile information, as well as look at people and groups you are a fan of, and then make suggestions for purchases. You can make all of your purchases through Amazon from within Facebook without ever leaving. As in the "I'm hungry" example, is this the best it's going to get? We all have to join Facebook, and then wait for all of our other favorite sites make a compatible Facebook application? Where's the freedom? Where are the choices?

On the surface this seems like an issue of data portability. But that’s mainly the ‘human’ side of the problem. The machine side is where the real challenge resides. If all of your data could merge and play nicely with each other, all web and mobile applications - not just custom Facebook applications - could be more intelligent and useful.

The main idea of the Semantic Web is to support a distributed Web at the level of the data rather than at the level of the presentation. Instead of having one webpage point to another, one data item can point to another, using global references called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). The Web infrastructure provides a data model whereby information about a single entity can be distributed over the Web. This distribution could allow Amazon to access what you want to share with it even though the information is distributed over websites controlled by more than one organization. The single, coherent data model for the application is not held inside one application but rather is part of the Web infrastructure. When you publish information about your profile it shouldn’t just be published a human-readable presentation of this information that is trapped on Facebook, but instead a distributable, machine-readable description of the data. The data model that the Semantic Web infrastructure uses to represent this distributed web of data is called the Resource Description Framework (RDF).

“This single distributed model of information is the contribution that the Semantic Web infrastructure brings to a smarter web. Just as the case with the data-backed Web applications, the Semantic Web infrastructure allows the data to drive the presentation so that various webpages (presentations) can provide views into a consistent body of information. In this way, the Semantic Web helps data not be so dumb.”

Up to this point I’ve tried my best to explain the concepts and ideas surrounding the Semantic Web. But Henry Story has gone a step further by creating a wonderful working example with his Beatnik AddressBook application. You can check it out here.

What Henry’s AddressBook does is aggregate the personal profiles (FOAF files) into a social network that continuously adds deeper and deeper information about your friends and colleagues. Location information is represented in a beautiful NASA mapping component, and makes visualizing where your friends are currently located much easier. Each person in your social network may have unique information about you, and as these files are aggregated a deeper and clearer picture of your relationships and your own profile becomes apparent.

Although this is still a work in progress, I encourage anyone interested in helping with Henry's project to contact him. Often times the best way to get the critical mass to move from the research field to the real world is with the help of an enthusiastic community of supporters. Since deeda has a significant focus on aggregating social graph data across the mobile, desktop and web environments we're also very interested in working with Henry to develop a Semantic Web solution that fits with deeda's vision.

Along these lines, where does all this ‘talk’ leave us? Whether it’s applying Neurosciene to computer science, or exploring the promises of the Semantic Web, the same questions remains: “Where are the applications?” “Where are the working examples?” “If this is so much better, why isn’t anyone else doing it?”.

“There are so many things the Web might usefully do in the future, that it is sometimes hard to see how we can get there from here. W3C's RDF has been around since 1997, yet while it has been adopted in a number of applications (for example by Mozilla, Open Directory, Adobe, RSS 1.0), people often ask why there is as yet no killer app for RDF. While we're not sure that 'killer app' is the right way to think about the problem, it is true that there is relatively little RDF data 'out there in the public Web', in the way that HTML is 'out there'.”

To quote and paraphrase Dan Brickley, 'The (soon to be "Semantic") Web, if it is to reach its full potential, needs to become a lot more automatic. We hope that it will be able to do things (offer us services) based on combining data and services scattered around the Web. It might, for example, be able to find the phone numbers or AOL screen names of all your friends and professional collaborators. Or show you the photos, names and recent publications and shared bookmarks for everyone attending the next party in your deeda calendar. Best of all it should be able to deliver these services instantly across mobile handsets, and allow you to automatically reference your current location as a node in the Semantic data hierarchy.'

Where HTMs and Semantic Web technologies overlap, we see a very valuable model begin to develop:

A Model that helps people communicate
A Model that explains and make predictions
A Model that mediates among multiple viewpoints
A Model that is spread across a distributed system
A Model that represents a new structure for memory

But for people to adopt these features deeda must make its system as easy to understand and operate as possible. In fact, it should "just work" out of the box. From the development standpoint we must provide:

An ontology modeling module
Intuitive web interfaces for everyday people for managing ontologies in a collaborative mode
Ontology import and export modules
Truth and Reasoning Maintenance, Reporting and Editing modules

From the user's standpoint everything should be as familiar as it currently is in a traditional centralized system (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon etc). Rather than force average people to learn RDF, FOAF, OWL or other Semantic formats, we must do the conversion of their data for them - quickly, efficiently, and in the background. Furthermore, skilled users should have access to their raw RDF/FOAF files for editing, storing, or transporting elsewhere.

Handset companies have traditionally been 'hardware only' companies. With Apple on the scene they are reluctantly trying to catchup and understand the importance on the software side. Personally, I believe the real wake up call for handset manufacturers was when RIM appeared on the scene with their Blackberry handsets. Blackberries are one of the best examples of how custom, purpose-built Network Operations Centers (Infrastructure), Middleware (RIM Enterprise Software), and Handsets (with RIM software) are what lead to an exemplary user experience. Most companies however are too afraid to risk investing on all three fronts, and typically see their value in only one of these three areas. This is what leads to handsets and applications that never quite live up to their full potential.

deeda understands the value in optimizing data across the web, desktop and mobile environments. We hope you continue to support us as we develop our solutions and understand just how much is at stake. Unlike most applications, there is quite a bit of thought and hard work that is going into our system. We hope to have something fun for you to test and play with by the end of the year.

deeda Desktop - More than an "iTunes" for Android

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:25:00 +0000

"Where's your iTunes?"

This was the famous question that Manuel Camarena from Toshiba's Storage Device Division asked us when we were building Pi. And initially we looked at that simple question with a bit of wonderment. Well people could use Rhapsody, Napster or any number of services to buy music - we didn't need our own iTunes, did we? I mean we were a young startup, and it was hard enough to develop our own devices. Did someone really expect us to roll out our own music store in the process? How would that even be possible?

Then came the realization that a desktop application like iTunes was more than just a portal to purchasing legal music and videos. It was an anchor that made managing a device easier. We did need our own iTunes, and as we continued our work we christened our application deeda Desktop.

What's really exciting today is that we have the ability to provide a desktop application that manages everything on the upcoming Android handsets. While Android's emulator has significantly improved since its debut, we realize that it's not just about providing great tools for developers. Everyday people deserve to have a simple application that allows easy configuration of their future Android handsets.

Multimedia management, device preferences, deeda.com integration, online and offline social network access - with deeda Desktop, it's all possible. We hope to have a beta of our deeda Desktop application working with Android handsets by the fourth quarter of this year.

For more information on deeda Desktop go here.

iPhone SDK, Android, and the Release of Pi

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 06:38:00 +0000

"When will the deeda Pi be released?" This is the single most common question we receive at deeda Inc. And although the above pictures and title may appear a bit ominous, we assure you that you'll be excited about this news.

First, a little background on our handset efforts with Pi:

Here's a quick excerpt from an email between our founder and Jeff Rozmus of Wolfson Microelectronics from 2007:

"...The obvious problem is that we can't finalize our specs until this (funding) is complete - we've been in a holding pattern since 2006 - For example, last year the best camera option that worked with our BOM pricing was a 2.0 megapixel model from Alps Electric - this summer we were able to upgrade it to 5.0 megapixels for the same price per unit...

Assuming we cannot secure manufacturing capital until the second quarter of next year, we will continue to make such final adjustments to our device components in order to maintain the most competitive product possible. In our last conversation (December '05), when I sat with you in your Cambridge office,our discussion centered around our need for ICs that incorporated touch screen controllers - at that time I showed you our device design for our capacitive touch screens and inquired if Wolfson would be able to supply us specific integrated chip sets related to our design - You mentioned that Wolfson was developing an IC for January or February '06 that integrated a few of our requirements including a touch screen controller - you also mentioned that there would be other ICs available through your '06 schedule that would fit our specific needs. (This included Audio/Video codecs - specific controllers - and power management solutions (our main concern at that time was power management and device hardware controllers, since we were running a 3.6" screen) You also asked about with processor we were working with and we had settled with the Freescale MX family of processors (depending our device model we were using various MX processors - with Pi getting the best of the MX family)

The initial cost estimate by Design Continuum was $1.5 Million, but we've held off on this investment until we know we can immediately follow up with a product in the market. As I'm sure you know the minimum cost to manufacture and distribute a handset through Foxconn or Flextronics is around $25 Million. Had we invested with Design Continuum, today we would be left with a considerable amount of additional cost to redesign our PCBs, device components and other hardware layers for the latest ICs or other chipsets - Thus wasting a considerable amount of capital for a non-manufacturing spec. set of devices.

Therefore, we believe the best investment of our capital is to roll final integration and development costs into our pilot builds (that can then be used as prototype/demo models) and then continue with large scale device manufacturing and distribution. So our ugly dev boards and breadboards aside, we've been caught in a holding pattern until we can reach these investment goals. Being such a young company, securing the needed funding has been considerably challenging. I'd like to point out that it's important for us to keep an open dialog between our companies during this process, as we still intend to be loyal to using Wolfson Microelectronic solutions for our products..."

November of 2007 introduced the world to Google's Android OS, and this month we've been introduced to the iPhone's SDK. Without going into our specific approach with each of these platforms in this post, let's take a closer look at what we've decided to do with the device side of the deeda ecosystem.

Google's Android appeared on the scene as the doubleganger of the original deeda device OS. Linux + Open Source, Open Platform - Android, in many ways, was a great blessing for us. There's so much everyone in the industry can learn from Android. As we struggled with our funding issues to large scale device manufacturing, when we first looked at Android late last year, our answer was simple: Build on it. So at this time we have been busy developing a deeda-on-Android solution to compliment the device component of the deeda ecosystem. Our goal is simple: Ensure that users have access to their content anywhere at anytime.

If this can be accomplished through a wireless device running deeda-on-Android, and if our user's are interested in purchasing such a device, then we must make a concerted effort to provide a solution that will work with Android. For this reason, we've been quietly working on this effort since the start of this year. We will release more details on our work and progress in this area as details become available.

Apple's iPhone SDK - The bittersweet option. While various "closed" features on Apple's early SDK may make an ideal deeda-on-iPhone solution a little less robust than we would like to see - once again it is our duty to our community to explore every viable option for the device side of the deeda ecosystem. In many ways seeing our application running on a full-screen capacitive-touch device will be really sweet.

With "project deeda" originally being born under the internal code name "Apple Juice", it is understandable how all of us at deeda taste a bit of bitterness in our mouths as we discuss this option. However, in the end the facts cannot be denied - even with a 2 year lead, and our own IPs, designs, and development partnerships - deeda Inc. was still unable to beat Apple to market due to a lack of funding. A year after the iPhone debut, our funding challenges for large scale manufacturing of Kiku, Menx and Pi remain. However, our commitment to create a seamlessly unified web, desktop, and device ecosystem remains focused and strong.

Whether the device component of deeda's ecosystem will be completed through Android, iPhone SDK, our own devices (or all of the above) - we promise that we are working hard to ensure that our customers will have the broadest options for devices that will work with our community.

Meet the deeda Team

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:58:00 +0000

The deeda Team

Atif K Khan

Atif is the CEO and Founder of deeda Inc. His vision of a unified ecosystem for web, desktop and devices began with his graduate work in Neuroscience at Harvard University. Atif's research focused on "Proustian Memories" - the kind of memory, where an unexpected re-encounter with a scent from the distant past brings back a rush of memories. How does the brain create and maintain such complex links between such seemingly separated senses? More important, why don't we use this type of contextual interlinking between data and content in the real world? We keep our pictures in our picture folder, documents in a document folder - on the web we similarly isolate visual, auditory and text based content in separate sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, etc. There must be a better way to organize, link and recall such diversely related content.

Atif's hardware solutions were initially developed into marketable solutions through Brevisys Technologies, which he founded in 2001. Atif left his graduate work in 2006, and moved Brevisys Technologies to Chicago to be closer to Alps Electric, their primary device development partner, as well as to be closer to various supporters at Motorola. Shortly thereafter Atif incorporated Brevisys Technologies into deeda Inc. The word deeda originates from “Dynamic End-to-End Data Aggregation”, the contextual mapping and data linking technology developed by Atif to bring Proustian Memories to the web, desktop and wireless device environment. Today, deeda Inc. is the corporate face for our set of Open Platform products: deeda.com, deeda Desktop, deeda Devices, and deeda Adbundles.

As the developer and advocate for capacitive-touch devices with wireless device-to-device capabilities, Atif has had his hand on the pulse of this rapidly developing area of technology. Many aspects of his independent design and development work can be seen in technology that was eventually validated through Microsoft’s Zune, and Apple’s iPod Touch and iPhone. His work in developing wireless capacitive-touch devices and systems began in 2004 and can be independently verified by the Boston Globe as well as through patents filed in this field. These include application 60/668,650, filed: 04/05/2005, as well as applications 60/881,815, and 60/881,808, Filed: 01/19/2007. These patents also cover Atif's contextual mapping and data visualization models for dynamically sharing and retrieving content across a web, desktop and device ecosystem.

Atif’s vision for building wireless devices and web systems on an open-platform Linux based OS, along with an easily accessible open-development platform, have been further endorsed through strategies recently adopted by such industry stalwarts as Google and Facebook. Atif plays a principal role in all aspects of deeda’s web, desktop and device designs, as well as actively designs and develops all of the applications that run across the deeda ecosystem. As the principal architect of the deeda system he is also responsible for maintaining deeda’s intellectual property. Accordingly, his roles and functions at deeda Inc. are extremely diverse. When not managing and developing deeda's suite of products, Atif loves working on his second passion - Classic Muscle Cars.

Original SolidWorks renderings - 2005:

Dylan Schiemann

Co-Founder Dojo/ CEO Sitepen – As CEO of SitePen and co-founder of the Dojo Toolkit, Dylan is best known for building Web applications that make use of JavaScript/AJAX, Dojo, Comet and other Web development technologies. He has helped develop Web apps for companies including Renkoo, Informatica, Security FrameWorks, and Vizional Technologies. Dylan has been our friend and advisor from a very early stage. From advice on web hosting solutions to ‘big picture’ development strategies as well as inviting us to various Valley networking events, Dylan has been an extremely valuable asset to deeda Inc. Today Dylan and his team at Sitepen are working to help complete our products and realize our vision. deeda Inc. is also a client of SitePen.

John M. Hann

John is deeda's Director of Engineering and is a Web 2.0 developer and evangelist, pioneering DHTML and Ajax techniques while leveraging Open Source tools and languages to deliver world-class products that are impressive yet usable, rich yet responsive. During his career as a programmer, team leader, and CTO, Mr. Hann has successfully delivered more than 65 enterprise-class, web-based Internet or intranet applications. Notable projects include a Web 2.0-class product created in 2000 (US Patent 7,016,751) and several Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) as far back as 1996 (using browser plug-ins before 1999 and hidden IFRAMEs until 2004). Mr. Hann graduated cum laude with a Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts.

Chris Ash

Restless and always with an eye towards a challenge, Chris is usually found doing what he always has ... going in several directions at once. Having been involved with developing Rich Internet Applications since 1996, he has spent time as a consultant, developer and inventor. A long time proponent of what later be known as Web 2.0 and "Cloud Computing", he has helped develop web applications and solutions for many of the Fortune 500 financial and telecommunication companies. Chris Ash is deeda's Lead Developer responsible for understanding and developing solutions for the data flow between deeda and various third-party APIs. As with everything Chris has done in the past, he is also capable of working with every aspect of our development needs.

Casey Hill

Casey joined the deeda Team in May 2007. After receiving his engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Casey joined Motorola in 1985 as a sales engineer in Atlanta, Georgia. He has held technical and management positions with Motorola in engineering, research, marketing, standards and product development. Casey has contributed to a broad range of Motorola business units in Georgia, Florida, Texas and Illinois, and he has led several start up ventures within Motorola, including a location based services business and a cellular handset applications business. He is currently Senior Director of IPR Strategy and Corporate Licensing in Motorola’s law department in Schaumburg, IL. Casey is a published author in technical journals and publications, and is the charter chair of the IEEE Atlanta Vehicular Technology society. He, as a representative of Motorola, earned the Licensing Executive Society Deal of the Year Award in 2005. He was a member of the Motorola Science Advisory Board, is an elected Dan Noble Fellow, Motorola’s highest technical honor, and currently holds 37 US patents.

Casey moved on to Research in Motion earlier this year and is now their new Vice President of Intellectual Property Strategy.

Casey’s roles at deeda Inc. include guiding corporate strategy. He champions a strong vision of future location based services through the deeda ecosystem and also provides us with significant experience from his time at Motorola, and now at RIM, in building and deploying such strategies.

Representation:

Advisory Roles

Dr Mark Granovetter (Stanford University)

Mark Granovetter is an American sociologist who has created some of the most influential theories in modern sociology since the 1970s. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of information in social networks known as "The Strength of Weak Ties" (1973). Dr Granovetter is working with deeda to help us develop models for analyzing our aggregated social web data. Our goal is to help empower our users by offering a deeper understanding of their social graph information, strong and weak-tie social influences, and something we've coined, "Personal Analytics".

The strength of weak ties

Dr Granovetter's most famous work, "The Strength of Weak Ties", is considered to be one of the most influential sociology papers ever written.

In marketing or politics, the weak ties enable reaching populations and audiences that are not accessible via strong ties. The concepts of this work were later published in the related monograph "Getting A Job", an adaptation of Granovetter's doctoral dissertation at Harvard University's Department of Social Relations, with the title: "Changing Jobs: Channels of Mobility Information in a Suburban Population".

Economic sociology: embeddedness

In the field of economic sociology, Mark Granovetter has been a leader ever since the publication in 1985 of an article that launched "new economic sociology", "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness". This article caused Granovetter to be identified with the concept of "embeddedness", the idea that economic relations between individuals or firms are embedded in actual social networks and do not exist in an abstract idealized market (a concept originally described in Karl Polanyi's book The Great Transformation). He is currently working on a book provisionally called Society and Economy.

"Tipping points" / threshold models

Dr Granovetter has also done research on a model of how fads are created. Consider a hypothetical mob assuming that each person's decision whether to riot or not is dependent on what everyone else is doing. Instigators will begin rioting even if no one else is, while others need to see a critical number of trouble makers before they riot, too. This threshold is assumed to be distributed to some probability distribution. The outcomes may diverge largely although the initial condition of threshold may only differ very slightly. This threshold model of social behavior was proposed previously by Thomas Schelling and later popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point.

Security influence

Dr Granovetter's work has influenced some researchers working in the field of capability-based security. Interactions in these systems can be described using "Granovetter diagrams", which illustrate changes in the ties between objects.

Associate Professor in Radiology, Harvard Medical School
Assistant in Radiology, Mass General Hospital
Affiliated Faculty, Harvard-MIT-HST
Professeur Boursier, EPFL

During her post-doctoral work in Sweden, Nouchine Hadjikhani used positron emission tomography to scan the visual cortex of the brain. It was the first time she got to peek into someone’s head. “I was trying to understand how vision and touch are connected,” she says. “When you put your hand in your pocket and you feel your key, you know which one it is even though you don’t see it. The question was, how can you visualize what you feel with your hand?”

In 1995, she had her first encounter with MRI. “That was quite something,” she says. “I was in the magnet myself and they showed me an image of my own brain. It was a very impressive moment. Suddenly you can have somebody alive and look at different things in the brain. There’s no danger and you can repeatedly get data about how the brain is organized.”

Today, Hadjikhani also studies the brain’s perception of facial and body expressions. What part of the brain recognizes fear, aggravation or anger in someone’s stance? Hadjikhani and Dr. Beatrice de Gelder, a colleague at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, are trying to find out.

“There are more people looking at faces now and the amount of literature is amazing,” says Hadjikhani. “But you don’t normally see a face alone, you see whole bodies.”

Today, Nouchine and Atif are hard at work developing the contextual mapping, linking and retrieval abilities of deeda to mimic what our minds do on a daily basis. Nouchine is working to ensure that deeda will benefit both medical research as well as human interactions across the web, desktop and devices.

Joshua Schachter - Joshua released the first version of Delicious (then called del.icio.us) in September 2003. The service coined the term social bookmarking and featured tagging, a system he'd invented for organizing links suggested to Memepool and publishing some of them on his personal linkblog, Muxway. On March 29, 2005, Schachter announced he would work full-time on Delicious. On December 9, 2005, Yahoo! acquired Delicious for an undisclosed sum. Prior to working full-time on Delicious, Schachter was an analyst in Morgan Stanley's Equity Trading Lab. He created geoURL in 2002 and ran it until 2004. Shortly after leaving Yahoo! this year Joshua met with Atif to provide some advice and guidance to deeda Inc.

Tony Palcheck –Motorola Ventures – Tony Palcheck is an Investment Manager at Motorola Ventures, based in Schaumburg, IL. In this role he is responsible for identifying and executing strategic, minority-equity investments, at early and later stages, in start-up firms to accelerate access for all of Motorola's existing and future businesses to new technologies, new markets and new talent. Tony actively engages in intelligence collection and strategy generation for various Motorola business sectors, as well as serving as a key interface to Motorola Labs. As a deeda Advisor, Tony tirelessly focuses on solutions that will aid deeda in building and maintaining value while ensuring we’re actively pursuing the most viable strategies to monetize our products.

Jim O'Connor – MVC Capital – Mr. O'Connor is a senior investment professional with over a decade of private equity and venture capital experience. Prior to joining TTG Advisers, Mr. O'Connor held senior management positions within Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT). Jim was Managing Director and Co-Founder of Motorola Ventures the venture capital investment arm for Motorola, where he led numerous global transactions. In his most recent role, Jim led Motorola's Technology Acceleration Program where he worked closely with a global team of technologists, to prioritize technology programs, create value from intellectual property, and guide creative research from innovation through early-stage commercialization. In 2006, Jim was named to the American Ventures Magazine (AVM) "40 UNDER 40" list. Before Motorola, he worked for A.T. Kearney as a management consultant and the U.S. Treasury Department in the areas of Domestic and International Finance as a White House Fellow. Additionally, he held roles at Ariel Capital Management and Sidley & Austin. He is Co-Chair of the Chicago Entrepreneurial Center (CEC) and a Board member of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, the Chicago Urban League, the Big Shoulders Fund for the Archdiocese of Chicago's inner-city school fund and serves as a Trustee on the Board of the Field Museum of National History. He holds a BA (Government) and JD from Georgetown University and an MBA from the Northwestern University J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Jim is actively involved in helping deeda advance its funding and management goals.

deeda moves to Palo Alto!

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:59:00 +0000

If you've been following our work over the past two years, then you know how hard we resisted moving out to Silicon Valley after our early days in Boston. Instead, deeda decided to settle in Chicago in January, 2006. Our goal was to bring our capacitive touch devices to market while also completing our web, and desktop ecosystem. But why did we move to Chicago in the first place? The answer to this emotion-based decision lay in two areas:

1. Our founder, Atif Khan, was born in Chicago. Chicago was therefore a natural return to home after a long educational journey that helped develop the technology behind deeda's products.

2. Many people have asked if it's possible to succeed without being in "The Valley". In fact, we asked this question after reading this article in Business Week:

So Chicago lost a great opportunity with Marc's then little startup called Netscape. The rest is history. But we honestly believed that we could reverse this trend with Kiku, Menx, and Pi. All we needed to do was go out there and make it happen. Yet, even with all of our hardware development work completed, we still needed to find the right financial support to complete our products. 2006 led us down the struggling path of people who either "didn't get it" or were simply not plugged into the same tech startup mindset we desperately needed. Some of the comments we heard throughout the year were: "We don't invest in consumer products" - "We don't invest in hardware" - "If this is so much better then why isn't Apple or Microsoft doing this?" 2007 brought us the iPhone and the tremendous realization that Chicago had simply not matured since Marc Andreessen's early struggles.

However, Chicago did give us a lot of great deeda Team Members and advisers that came on board from Motorola - Casey Hill, Art Paton, Tony Palcheck, Tim Krauskopf, Mike Suman, Francis Jatico to name a few. Building a strong team is half the battle for any startup, so we're very thankful for their advice, participation, and undying support. Jeff Poon, our main guy at Alps Electric who worked with us on developing our capacitive touch hardware, also joined our cause.

But 2008 was the year we decided we needed to make a lot of big changes if we were serious about being successful. Our biggest decision was to finally embrace the community and environment that San Francisco and Silicon Valley had to offer. While it's never easy to just pick up and move, we closed out our final IP applications, wireframe development, and headed out West.

Today, we are located in the heart of Palo Alto. Dylan Schiemann of Dojo and David Weekly of PBwiki fame have made us feel right at home. The fact that the weather here has been sunny and in the 70's compared to Chicago's 20 degrees and snowing - has also helped a lot.

We should also apologize for the dark period over the past 3 months. As you can see there were a lot of big decisions going on here and we needed to time to make sure everything worked out properly. Our goal is to provide you with the unique services we have promised you from the start. We hope you see our efforts in relocating to continue our work as a sign of our serious commitment.

Before ending this post we would also like to thank you all for your wonderful emails of support. It means a lot to us!

deeda Commercials

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 04:14:00 +0000

As a part of our call to our community to help us with our advertising and marketing efforts, we bring you three great examples of commercials for deeda.

Anyone can make an ad for deeda. Just post it up on YouTube and send us a link to it. If you've spent your life being passive about your complaints towards technology companies, then it's time you got in touch with your aggressive side. As long as it's not vulgar or inappropriate we'd love to see what you can come up with!

Original deeda Inc. Launch Video

Fear of Freedom

Walter Payton Inspiration

Have any other ideas? Lets see them!

feedback/at\deeda/dot\com

Believe...

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 07:32:00 +0000

A little inspiration can go a long way...

The New deeda.com

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:43:00 +0000

We've remained under wraps long enough. Today we're launching our new and improved deeda.com website --- while it's nothing spectacular, we still think it will do a better job explaining whats been going on at deeda over the past year. This is only a temporary location to learn about our company and products until the actual deeda.com beta is ready to go live. Until then:

We're moving full speed ahead with our roll-out procedure:

Building up our DEV Area
Finding new coders for completing deeda.com
Final deeda.com Design and Testing
Finance Rounds For Funding

We're excited to get an actual beta out in the open so you guys can play around with stuff and tell us what you like, what you think sucks, and what needs to be fixed or improved. Building something like this from scratch is always fun and exciting. We hope you guys get behind us and support our vision of the next generation of web, home and device ecosystem.

The Drive To Build

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:16:00 +0000

It doesn't matter if you're a hardcore engineer or just an average user that interacts with basic technology--here is a story that I hope you all find inspirational:

The Empire State Building

A Few Quick Facts:

102-story Art Deco Skyscraper
Stood as the Worlds Tallest Building for over 40 years
Since 9/11, it is once again the Tallest Building in New York
American Society of Civil Engineers named it one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World
Completed in just 410 days
Start Date: March 17th 1930
Open For Business: May 1st 1931
Total Workers: 3,400
Number of Deaths During Construction: 5

So why am I talking about the Empire State Building and what does it have to do with technology development?

Here's what we were able to do:

We built the first building in the world to have more than 100 floors--that contained over 100 bathrooms---6500 windows---64 elevators---70 miles of pipe---2,500,000 feet of electrical wire---it stood as the World's Tallest Skyscraper for 41 years, and it stood as the World's Tallest Man-Made Structure for 23 years... But what you should keep in mind is that this was all completed in exactly one year and 45 days.

And if you want to focus on design as it relates to technology, here is a quote from Wikipedia:

"Long-term forecasting of the life cycle of the structure was implemented at the design phase to ensure that the building's future intended uses were not restricted by the requirements of future generations. This is particularly evident in the over-design of the building's electrical system."

So now lets get to my point. What's happened to us? Why were we able to do this in 1930, but today it takes us over two years to design and build a new handset? What gives? Don't believe me? Here--check out the Blackberry Pearl Website and click on Inspiration.

Now don't get me wrong---I love the Pearl---its was finally the perfect balance between size, sexiness and simplicity I had always hoped RIM would get around to---but 3 years? Really? AMAZING!! We could have dug holes in the ground and built 3 Empire State Buildings with running water, electricity, and all the other intricate details that go into making a building functional, in the time it took you to make a handset. I mean do you really think it's more challenging to get engineers together to work on a handset then it is to get thousands of iron workers, contractors, designers, architects, lawyers, engineers and God knows what else in place to accomplish erecting a building?

I know there is a difference between these two sectors and projects, but my point is that I know we can do better. We should remember what we were capable of doing 77 years ago--and if we come together today I guarantee you we can make some amazing things that people will be just as proud and amazed by.

This is what I want deeda to make possible--rapid turnaround of amazingly innovative ideas. Unfortunately, we were ahead of the curve with our designs and products, but behind on the funding side. After all, it did cost $40,948,900 to build the Empire State Building---so money is what it is---a necessity---but without passion and drive, even a billion dollars are worthless.

You have to believe.

If you're still looking for some motivation... here you go, the speech is titled: "Go For It!":

Our Boston DNA

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:31:00 +0000

We love talking about our years in Bean Town and nothing explains what it's like to be in that city than a Playoff game at Fenway:

Game 2 ALDS 2007

Bottom of the 9th, 2 outs, Game tied 3-3, Manny Ramirez Steps to the Plate...

April or October - This is what it's like to be at Fenway Park. Whatever you do in life - always remember to Believe...

The song is "Dirty Water" by the Standells, recorded in 1967. It's the song the Sox play after every win.

Mike Suman and deeda

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:14:00 +0000

This is a quick post announcing a new member to the deeda Team. Mike Suman has extensive experience in the wireless technology sector (read deeda Device buddying technology) from his years at Motorola. Since then he's moved on to work at Warner Brothers and is now moving on to even bigger and better opportunities. Mike's time at WB makes him a great fit for us on the content as well as the tech side of life, and we hope we can quickly find a way to expand his role at deeda Inc. We'll be updating this post with more interesting facts on Mike, but in the mean time:

"Welcome aboard Mike"

Why We Can't Afford to Fail

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 06:34:00 +0000

Tough competition.... Crowded "space"... Everyone wants to get in... we've all heard it before. Recently, someone took things a bit further and said the chance of deeda succeeding was 1:400

Which reminded us of this:

While anyone who's ever joined or worked with a Startup knows the odds of success are not great, it goes with the territory to 'Keep The Faith' and Believe in even the smallest of chances. Right now, as you're reading this, someone else is thinking about your idea --- get over it --- now, it's all about execution. Can you execute better and faster than your competition? And do you have the guts to keep fighting even when your back's against the wall?

Why deeda shouldn't fail is because there is a very important statement that needs to made when it comes to the future of technology companies and the millions of users who interact with them. deeda is dedicated to truly being a technology company that is built "by the people, for the people." There is so much that is unexplored in this area. We've worked with open source projects --- we've worked with open platform communities --- but when it comes to hardware, software, and a true community interactive Technology Company --- we're still floundering around hoping to catch bits and pieces of whatever we can get our hands on.

Here's OpenMoko. If you haven't heard about them, they're a pretty cool company with a handset based on an open-source OS. So this is a bit closer to what we're hoping to achieve at deeda, albeit on a slightly grander scale. By grander we mean having more integrated parts (web, desktop, devices). With these three components we can do anything --- and best of all we're not going to have to rely on Dell or others to provide us with OS (Linux please) options we want to see on our desktops and laptops. We loved it when Dell introduced their Idea Exchange, but once again, the opportunity for us to become our own Dell, Apple, Microsoft, or Sony --- from the ground up --- is so much more appealing.

We can't fail... because Failure Is Not An Option.

Stop thinking about what can't be done and focus on accomplishing the impossible.

"TLI"

Casey Joins The deeda Team

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:58:00 +0000

We're really excited to announce that Casey's officially a part of the deeda Team. Along with sharing great advice on restoring our classic Mustangs, Casey also brings a lot of experience in the handset and technology sector. We couldn't ask for a better match for deeda Inc. Here's your chance to get to know him a little better:

Casey Hill

After receiving his engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Casey joined Motorola in 1985 as a sales engineer in Atlanta, Georgia. He has held technical and management positions with Motorola in engineering, research, marketing, standards and product development. Casey has contributed to a broad range of Motorola business units in Georgia, Florida, Texas and Illinois, and he has led several start up ventures within Motorola, including a location based services business and a cellular handset applications business. He is currently Senior Director of IPR Strategy and Corporate Licensing in Motorola’s law department in Schaumburg, IL. Casey is a published author in technical journals and publications, and is the charter chair of the IEEE Atlanta Vehicular Technology society. He, as a representative of Motorola, earned the Licensing Executive Society Deal of the Year Award in 2005. He is a member of the Motorola Science Advisory Board, is an elected Dan Noble Fellow, Motorola’s highest technical honor, and currently holds 37 US patents.

Casey's Mustangs

From Left: 2000 GT, '65 Convertible, '68 California Special

Wireless Japan 2007

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 06:07:00 +0000

We just returned from our trip to Wireless Japan 2007, and to say we learned a lot about the Wireless Industry would be an understatement.

Here are some pics from the event as well as pics from the Japanese All Star Game that Sophia Groups' CEO, Yuuki Iida, was kind enough to take us to.

Sophia Groups is interested in bringing Menx to Japan, and we're interested in learning more about the Japanese market. Over the course of a week we were also able to meet with a few prominent VC firms including Ant Factory.

Incorporating social networking into our devices is one of the goals of the deeda Ecosystem. Mobile social networking shouldn't be something that's done through cellphone web browsers or even Java apps. The culture of the community and its features, services and applications should be custom built into a handset. The hardware platform of the cellphone should be used as an extension of what you can accomplish in your social network. One of the firms we met with likes our approach with our deeda community but wants us to build something specifically for Mixi, Japan's largest online social network.

At this time we want to focus on the US market before being fully committed to Asia, but it's nice to know we have friends in high places when the time comes to enter the Asian market.

SoftBank, Sharp, Toshiba, Willcom, and NTT DoCoMo are just a few of the companies we got to see and learn more about. We'll unveil our plans for how we intend to be successful in this notoriously closed and difficult to enter market when the time is right.

Casey At The Bat

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:55:00 +0000

I recently had the privilege of being introduced to Casey Hill through Art Paton at Motorola. Casey Hill has been with Motorola for over 22 years, and as fate would have it, Casey's not only agrees with the importance of our Ecosystem approach, but is also a rabid Mustang fan.

In fact, Casey has 3 Mustangs:

A '68 California Special, a '65 Convertible, and a 2000 GT!

We can't wait to talk more about Mustangs and Mobiles with Casey, and we promise to keep you in touch with our progress along the way.

Meet Georgia's Sister

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:45:00 +0000

Last year we told you about Georgia's sister who was saved from a barn in Ohio... well here she is after a year of work. She sports a brand new interior, fresh interior paint, new rims and tires, a fresh wet-sanded paint job, a new brake booster, brakes, HiPo headers, new exhaust, Shelby-style taillights, a new rear end, new heater core, and radiator.

If you're interested in seeing how far this car has come go here.

Meet Georgia

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:29:00 +0000

So here is a look at what's been going on with deeda's Mascot - the '67 Mustang. As you know - '06 was the start of our "Mascot" project which began with the following endearing quotes:

1. "This thing is being held together by the roof."
2. "If you drive this car you will likely die from any of the following:

Car will explode due to leaking and crushed gas tank.
Front and Rear rails and sub-frame have rotted so badly the car can break in half over a bump.
The entire front clip of the car can come off at any time.
Whoever installed (insert any vital car part) was an idiot.
Your fuel pump is sitting on the exhaust.
Your brake lines will crumble if you touch them.

By our deeda.com launch over New Years Eve we had corrected all of the above issues and finally had a running vehicle. We grew used to the fact that the car had no power steering (no really we did) since driving it this way matched its looks. This car is seriously tough and mean, and overcoming all these major hurdles made her feel more at home on the road. It was as if we rescued her after decades of neglect and abuse, and now we were being rewarded for all our attention and doting.

And the sound... we'll have to save that for a later post... but it has to be the most intoxicating engine scream any of us have ever heard.

However, by February she was acting like my girlfriend and leaking oil everywhere. Err... well okay --- not really like my girlfriend --- but she was being temperamental nonetheless. What we ended up having to work on was:

Leaking oil from the rear gasket seal
Need New Brake Lines
EFI ECU is acting erratic - Fuel is cutting on and off as engine heats up.
We blew the T5 transmission and need to rebuild a new one
Overheating causes radiator fluid to dump out of the overflow can

We spent February through April fixing all of that. It was a nightmare at times, but we got through it with some great help from the guys at Atomic Transmissions in Villa Park. By the way, it was Chris over at Mustang Restorations in Dundee who helped us last year with the extensive frame work that had to be done. Joe would have helped out a bit more if he wasn't busy working on deeda's sister car (a black '65 Fastback)-- more on that later.

Anyway, aside from all of this work getting done the spring ended with me wet sanding the paint to a brilliant shine. Like everyone else who looked at our car, the famous quote: "I don't know how to tell you this, but..." applies to the paint as well. It turns out the morons who originally owned this car never got around to finishing the paint. They just sprayed clear coat and went for a drive. However, after a day of careful wet sanding the original Wimbledon White body with Guardsman Blue stripes have come to life.

Here is what we have today:

In honor of where we found her, she has been christened Georgia.

What's left on our list of things to do this winter:

Shelby Rear Tail
Shelby Upper and Lower Air Extractors
Side Exhaust
Hood Pins

Open Platforms Rule

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 06:33:00 +0000

Open platforms are the heart of deeda Inc., and we want everyone to be able to benefit from them.

Everyday users should be able to access great applications that seamlessly work at home, on the web and in their pocket.
Developers should be able to tweak and modify current applications as well as create entirely new ones.
3rd party companies should be able to deploy applications that seamlessly integrate across home, web and device that help spread their brand identity and grow their business.

So how do we accomplish this and still maintain control? Control is what has turned the technology markets into a sinkhole. It's like playing with a bunch of two year olds that keep screaming "It's MINE!" We always say, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, and deeda Inc. does need to control a few things:

Security
Safety
User Experience
Accessibility

Our mission is to ensure our platforms are secure so open development doesn't mean open maliciousness. Safety of our children, personal information, and data also goes hand-in-hand with this philosophy. Finally, we need to maintain a fair and equitable platform that gives equal access to everyone regardless of funding or size, while also maintaining a uniform user experience that is never ruined through our open development approach.

That last part should be read as 'opt-in only' for 3rd party applications, and requirements for where on each of the three ecosystem areas applications can be built.

But the days of closed platforms and proprietary-only systems should remain in the past. deeda Inc. intends to build a great core based on proprietary technology that has a beautifully open and free development platform on top. You should be in control. And in return, that is where our power resides.

Mustangs and Motorla

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Wed, 30 May 2007 05:53:00 +0000

What do you do when your back is against the wall and you need to find some someone who will listen to you? If you said, "Go bang on some doors," then you're right, and that's just what we did. The door we went to bang on however had 4 lanes and looks like this from space:

Once we got in all we had to do was find someone in this general location who would listen to us:

In case you haven't figured it out, this is Motorola's world headquarters in Schaumburg, IL. What I went in with was a few basic deeda device and ecosystem documents that Joe had helped put together and of course, our Georgia.

Georgia got us into the main gates without having to say a single word. In fact, we pulled up and the security guard just looked over, smiled, gave a thumbs up and then opened the gate. So far so good...

What we were on the hunt for was, the ever elusive, Motorola Ventures office. This clandestine Motorola operation usually comes and finds you instead of the other way around. A fact that became immediately obvious when the first engineer I came across just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Motorola What?" He proceeded to check out Georgia, and talked about how he always wanted to get a classic car. "I've been thinking about getting an old Camaro, but the wife... kids... you know how that goes." He smiled and then offered to walk me to his building so I could speak to the front desk at the Innovation Center.

Sweet.

The front desk has to know what we're talking about, right?

Wrong.

"Motorola What?", was the response.

"Motorola Ventures. You mean you've never heard of them? Really?" I said this almost as if to test and see if this was something they were trained to say to strangers.

"Yeah, I just work at this desk. I'm not really sure where that is. I'm pretty sure it's not in this building. Are you sure this is the address?"

The engineer was still standing next to me trying to help with the situation, but nothing was really happening. Finally, the lady at the font desk said, "Oh! Maybe it's in the 1303 Corporate Tower Building?" I had a sudden flashback to MIT... Building and class number please...

She gave me a map, circled the building number and the entrance number, and then ended with, "The Corporate Tower Building has a lot more security. You probably won't even be able to get this far over there... but it's up to you if you want to try."

The odds of success were getting smaller by the minute, and I almost felt like just giving up. Basically, here's the scene:

Since the 1303 was nearby I decided to give it a try. Pulling up to the enormous Corporate Tower I immediately noticed what the front desk attendant was talking about. Aside from various entrances, the building had a huge glass covering that led to the main door I was supposed to go in . After parking Georgia I got out and looked at the gate, entrance, and building. How was this going to work?

On the way in I came across a few people that were entering and exiting the building. Building up some courage I asked a woman with a smile on her face,

"Excuse me, Is this the building with Motorola Ventures."

"Motorola What? Sorry, I've never heard of it.... Motorola Ventures?"

Another lady picked up where she left off,

"Ummm.... I'm not sure... I think so?... try asking at the front desk."

Basically, things were going down hill faster than ever, but I still managed to make it up to the front desk where I was greeted by an eager attendant who seemed confident I couldn't ask her anything she didn't know.

"Motorola What? I'm sure I've never even heard of that. Are you sure that's the name?"

Finally I just blurted out what was on my mind, "Look, there's an entire website with the name and address for Motorola Ventures. It actually has a really snazzy website. Can you go on the web from your desk computer? You can see that I'm not making this up."

Sure enough she pulled up the website and agreed that this was the building and the right address. Maybe she could do a search on her computer for people who were in that department or office? Bingo! 3 names came up! We were finally getting somewhere!

In Shanghai, China....

What?!

"Yeah, there's nobody listed in the Schaumburg headquarters. I can get you the names and addresses of the people in Shanghai though..."

"...I wouldn't even know what to do with those...", I said with a confused look on my face.

I mean, here I am at the World Headquarters of Motorola but the only people who can help me are the Motorola executives in China?!

In the 30 minutes that this was all going on, about a dozen people were leaving the building to go home for the day. In my head I kept asking myself, "Why didn't I just take a chance and ask one of them?" Finally, I decided that I'll ask the next person that comes out of that door, and if I get the standard, "Motorola what?" answer, I'll just leave...

The next person that walked out of the door was Art Paton. Dressed in perfectly pressed dark suit and carrying a standard issue corporate briefcase with multiple sections and zippers, he looked like a true Motorola executive. Hesitantly, I asked, "Excuse me sir, I'm sorry to bother you, but I've been having the hardest time trying to find Motorola Ventures. By any chance have you even heard of them?"

I'll never forget the smirk that came across Art's face at my question, "Yes. I actually know Motorola Ventures very well."

The lady at the desk pulled out a beaming smile. "Oh great! See someone who can help you! For some reason I could only find people in China for him."

Art kind of shook his head and then continued, "Well, I know all the people at Motorola Ventures. Who do you need to speak with? What's this all about?"

And so the conversation about deeda began... Art and I slowly walked outside and then stood in the front of the building talking about deeda, our devices, and our ecosystem approach - we talked about why I believed Motorola should listen to us - why I moved my young company to Chicago instead of the Valley - and why all of this was so important to me. What I thought was going to be a 5 minute conversation turned into a conversation that lasted close to 40 minutes. Art had a lot of interesting things to say that seemed to mesh perfectly with our approach and ideas, but was also fairly direct about how Motorola was focused on remaining a products-only company. Ecosystems seemed to be in Motorola's past.

Our conversation however, appropriately ended with Georgia. The topic had come down to relating design to products, why we both believed that design inspires customers to believe in a company and its future products, and why design as a first point of contact with your customers is so critical. Wanting to point out examples of this even outside of the technology market, I pointed across from where we were standing and said,

"You see that car over there in the lot?"

"That '67 Mustang?"

Before I could even complete my first sentence about how Georgia epitomizes this, and why she's been such a major inspiration for our company, Art started to walk towards it while reciting stats about the car. It was as if this seasoned executive had turned into an excited little kid right before my eyes.

"I used to race these when I was younger you know. Back in the late 60's... I even went out to Carrol Shelby's airport hanger at LAX and got to take a GT40 out. This car is something special though... man is this thing awesome.... you redid the entire interior? Can I look under the hood?"

This is passion. And this is what we need to see in every person who puts pencil to paper before designing another technology product for consumers. It's not just about cars - it's about everything. Whatever you do in life be passionate about it and great things are sure to follow. Most importantly, passion can't be faked, and people congregate around those who are passionate because it makes them believe in something bigger and greater than themselves. Cars like the '67 Mustang have that passion trapped in their DNA, and even 40 years later they still inspire and leave people in awe when they first look at it.

At this point Art mentioned another gentleman at Motorola that he felt we should meet.

"You know who you should talk to? Casey Hill. He's a huge mustang nut. In fact, he has three of them! One of them is a really rare 1968 California Special. I'm sure he would love to talk to you about Motorola and your company's ecosystem approach - plus you guys can talk about Mustangs too! He has to see this car."

I offered Art to take Georgia out for a quick spin but he responded with, "I would love to, but I'm already 40 minutes late for a meeting. But maybe some other time!"

40 minutes late for another meeting? I was so impressed with Art's kindness and was surprised to find out that I had inadvertently made him late for a prior engagement.

We parted ways in the parking lot knowing that Art would be out of town for the next two weeks, but that he had my information that I had given him. Things couldn't have gone better, and so on the way out of the Motorola labyrinth, I found the main road that led to the exit; stretching almost a quarter mile straight ahead of me.

I dropped the hammer and let Georgia wind up till the tach light burst with a hot yellow glow. Second gear. The crescendo became deafening, to Motorola gates seemed to be running towards me... hot yellow... one second more of that beautiful scream... third gear... and then the second coolest thing of the day happened to me. There, all alone at the end of one of the parking lots that butted against the main road I was traveling on, sat a bright red 1969 Corvette Stingray. Its owner (a Motorola engineer perhaps?) was running towards his Vette and waving his arms in the air like a little kid. As I was passing by I could see he already had his door open, a huge grin from ear-to-ear, and a thumbs-up sign in the air. Mustang guys don't really like Vette guys - it's like the Yankees and the Red Sox - you pick your poison for life. But at that point we both 'got' each other. His car looked awesome, and at another time it would have been a race or maybe just a cordial exchange of glances at each others rides. But either way, the day ended with what deeda is all about:

Beauty, Passion, and Inspiration...

Don't let anyone tell you Motorola is in trouble. They've got some amazingly brilliant and insanely cool people working there. I think they just need to find the right inspiration.

Today was a good day.

"Domo arigato, Mr. Yuki Iida"

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:58:00 +0000

We were recently contacted by Mr. Yuki Iida, the CEO of Sophia Groups in Japan. He was kind enough to introduce us to his new Japanese wireless company, Sophia Mobile which was launched in Japan this February. Mr. Iida would like Sophia Mobile to carry deeda's Menx VoIP handset. So when Mr. Iida decided to drop by to visit us all the way from Japan this week we were more than happy to discuss our current development and manufacturing status as well as introduce him to our 3 part ecosystem approach to our handsets.

Over the next two days we were able to show Mr. Iida around our beautiful city and even catch a White Sox game. (The wrong Sox you say? - We filled-in Mr. Iida on our obsession with the Red Sox, our interest in Dice-K this season, but we were also more than happy to take a trip to the South Side to see how Iguchi was doing with the White Sox.)

deeda is Dugg

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:27:00 +0000

Bad luck followed by Bad Press... This isn't good.

So if you've been following the state of affairs of deeda Inc., you'll notice that we got delayed on getting our products to market because of the funding side of things. That would be bad enough had Apple not introduced its iPhone 9 days after our designs went fully public. Ugly dev-boards and proof of concept interface applications waiting to ship to our ODM for final integration and manufacturing spec builds don't quite stack up to a nice shinny gadget sitting in Steve Job's hands.

So while we were trying to stay quite since January, and figure out how to adjust to the juggernaut that is Apple, something rather interesting happened - deeda.com and our online device demos were Dugg and all kinds of chaos ensued.

Even more interesting is that instead of innovators at the top of the game, we've been reduced to mere copy cats. It's rather sad. And to make things worse, in a grueling rush to travel around the globe for talks with investors, our site has remained unchanged. No updates or new info since December 31st makes us look really bad. For now, it's time to circle the wagons and come up with a strategy to turn things around. Nobody here is giving up, but everyone is looking for some serious leadership during these tough times.

We're going to make this work.

Step 1: Believe.

Understanding the Ecosystem

noreply@blogger.com (deeda Inc.) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 06:21:00 +0000