University of California, Berkeley

CEO SoTalented  -  Placing Top Tech Talent in High Growth Companies

Incline Village, Nevada, United States

SoTalented, a Division of Wildeye Inc.

CEO & Founder

Part of a small crack Toptal team, I helped identify numerous areas for massive gains in productivity, including saving $3M in lost developer and QA time for the company's Sydney Android and iOS apps. Developed core functionality for integrated health device tracking to improve user health.

Anthem, Inc.

Software Consultant

Technical advisory and consulting for Personal Communicator advanced wearable device.

PCOM

Advisor

Creating a paradigm shift for e-commerce, voice and conversational search.

Orderscape, Inc.

CTO and Cofounder

Lead engineer for premier sports media chat app platform for iOS, Android and chatbots. Added focus on performance, user interface best practices, product features relevant for cutting edge chat experience and robust Android asynchronous, threading, order to choatic, pubnub channel architecture.

GameOn Technology

Principal Software Engineer & Advisor

Developed advanced wine club marketplace that let wine connoisseurs create and promote their own wine favorites and collections.

Sippify

Cofounder, CTO

Developed feature enhancements for Woven, a leading photo sharing/experience app on Android.

Litl

Senior Software Developer

Designed and wrote to-be-released cutting edge Android app demonstrating 802.11s mesh networking technology, involving complex multi-device file distribution and synchronization logic, localized NTP time servers, more.

Go Factory

Senior Software Consultant

I gave a presentation about the design of Nook. <a href="http://www.cioretailsummit.com">http://www.cioretailsummit.com</a> and <a href="http://www.dailydooh.com/archives/52940">http://www.dailydooh.com/archives/52940</a>

CDM Media

Guest Speaker @ CIO Retail Summit 2011

Team lead on Nook™ and NookColor™ (<a href="http://www.nook.com">www.nook.com</a>), the company's eInk and color eReaders based on Android. Voted Best Gadget of 2009 by TechCrunch. First engineering hire at Palo Alto facility. Helped grow the division from zero to 30% eBook market share in 2 years. Co-led Advanced Technology Group "Nook Labs", looking at new technologies to enhance reading, buying, discovery experience and new user interfaces. Developed requirements, use cases, user experience and user interface components. Designed and implemented the Shop application, cover flow, sync and download services. Worked with cross functional teams in New York and Vancouver. Established infrastructure services for SVN, Wiki, JIRA bug tracking and more. Interviewed majority of candidates from junior to senior engineers and executives. Saw product through to completion and assisted with follow-up OTA updates. Multiple patents pending.

Barnes & Noble

NOOK Software Architect, Technical Lead

FohBoh was the world's first and leading social-business network for the $500 billion US Restaurant industry with a global following. Enhanced core Ning features with PHP and JavaScript for a customized user experience. Developed technology roadmap, trademarks, presentations and product requirement documents. Co-wrote business plan, presentations and help with contract negotiations. Assisted with business development and fund raising efforts. Served on the Board through 2009.

FohBoh Inc.

Talktiva sought to deliver the world's first voice entertainment network enabling consumers to converse verbally and interactively with famous virtual electronic personalities 24/7 by phone in multiple languages. Helped develop the business plan, architecture, technology roadmap, patent strategy, trademarks, presentations and product requirements documents. Put together star-studded technical advisory board with luminaries in speech technology and Silicon Valley from General Magic. Developed exciting, working proof of concept, TalkToSanta, using VoiceXML. Researched the market, evaluated numerous third-party technology providers, and assisted with business development and fund raising efforts. Developed strategy to digitize celebrity voices for TalkTo programs using leading edge voice tech companies at substantially lower cost.

Talktiva

Home of Pleo the Dinosaur. Pioneered lifelike robotic toy pets and personality AI using LifeOS. Helped bootstrap company from start-up to Series-A, serving in numerous capacities by developing the business plan, product concept, prototype, product requirements, company brand, market research, technology roadmap and engineering plans. Assisted with business development, trade shows, investor presentations and relations, along with sales calls to national retailers including Radio Shack and Sharper Image. Interviewed and recruited staff and vendors, including PR, engineering and design firms. Developed motion-control firmware and emotional response software in C, assembly language and Python.

UGOBE

Founder & CTO

Developed an amazing retail concept, Rocktonic Juice & Coffee with hip, jazzy branding. Designed a state-of-the-art beverage workstation integrated with a POS system enabling staff to churn out more than 100 smoothies an hour per line, which was at least 50% faster than comparable Jamba Juice production lines.

Rocktonic Juice & Coffee

Founder & President

Co-architected teleconferencing server using JBoss to provide fault-tolerant services interfacing with partner bridges. Developed presentation-audio synchronization playback and web presentation billing service using SOAP technology integrating with partner platforms. Developed technical strategy and architecture for company's new VOIP teleconferencing service to lower operating costs and increase competitiveness. Negotiated service contracts with Ubiquity, PointOne Communications and Peer 1. Managed consultants and performed industry research. Utilized Java, JBoss, J2EE, Oracle, Helix Server, JMS and other technologies.

Audio-Ex

Developed core features of the eMortgageAxis online escrow platform (in partnership with Fannie Mae), including complex fee calculations for HUD forms, proximity search algorithms and a search engine. Helped define/implement advanced XML SmartDoc standard in conjunction with Fannie Mae and MISMO to represent secure, electronic notes. Used Java, XML, XSLT, CVS, Oracle, regression tests and developed highly complex Excel spreadsheets.

Bridgespan

Principal Engineer

As the Company's first employee reporting to the CEO, built and managed engineering, QA and IT departments (staff of 31). Designed enterprise architecture for company's advertising and e-commerce service for gas pumps at service stations nationwide. Wrote marketing requirements and functional specs for 5-tier network architecture: WebLogic enterprise server with Java, Oracle Database, Ten Square's AMBOS station controller, client-based station controller and thin client gas pumps. Developed capital equipment budgets, handled purchasing, mocked-up user interfaces, and developed board and partner presentations. Developed unique coupon data packing method using 2D barcodes for POS. Evaluated and purchased ETAK GeoEngine for mapping and turn-by-turn directions. Evaluated and purchased Engage's AdEngine to manage ad delivery on thin client gas pumps. Assisted with business development efforts, technical due diligence and contract negotiations. Researched wireless market and technology to enable telematics and Internet access for vehicles at stations. Chaired company's Technical Advisory Board, handled investor/partner technology audits and worked with partners Chevron, BP/Amoco, Marconi, VeriFone, IVI Checkmate, Exxon and others.

Ten Square

Director of Engineering

SurveySez offered the first Saas embedded online survey application for companies looking to plug in real-time web-based surveys into their sites. The company also pioneered PowerAds(tm), banners with polling controls within them. Sold the company to ClickToMarket in 1999.

SurveySez Corporation

Developed anti-spam algorithms to cleanse Webcrawler's search index. Re-engineered entire search pipeline, streamlined database schemas and indices to achieve a 2x performance increase. Used NeXTStep, C, Oracle SQL, and Enterprise Objects. Developed keyword-based search-result advertising, the precursor to Google's AdWords. Independently developed ImageCrawler, a unique image search engine technology.

Webcrawler/Excite

Search Engine Developer

Developed XBAND, the first peer-to-peer video game network over phone lines for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Helped design entire embedded operating system on bare metal platforms, developing key libraries including resource manager, pattern allocator, image compressor and smart card driver. Developed call-waiting detection (US Patent #5,651,060) letting calls interrupt games then recover game play. Led development team on back-end player matching service, comprehensive national telephone database, top ten calculations and player statistics. Led research project to determine network performance for Internet gaming. Based on assembly language and C.

Catapult Entertainment

Senior Developer and Manager

Managed core team developing software for company's entire line of video products.
Wrote low level and application software for new line of MoviePak, video capture/playback products for Macintosh. Used C and assembly language, motion JPEG and MPEG standards. Interacted closely with LSI Logic chip engineers. Worked with Adobe Premier and Apple QuickTime team on protocols, drivers and compatibility.

RasterOps Corp.

Software Engineering Lead

Developed innovative graphics and media software for NeXTstation and NeXTdimension Color workstations, adding multiple frame buffer support and real-time image compositing functionality. Extended window server to support multiple displays (awarded US Patent #5,388,201 for multiple bit depth windows), developed live video media capture and wrote comprehensive 2D alpha compositing library to enhance Adobe's Display Postscript. Worked on real-time video recording and playback product support for workstations, writing low level drivers and high-level application examples. Contributed to Mach OS kernel development, wrote tablet drivers and served on department's performance team.

NeXT Computer

Senior Software Engineer

Wrote and consolidated Radius display firmware for Radius' entire line of large screen display products. Developed cutting-edge Tear-off Menus, a real-time screen magnifier, and comprehensive control panel software-all first-to-market product features. Used Macintosh C and assembly language.

Radius Inc.

Software Engineer

Developed custom compression algorithms for ideographic Kanji and Arabic fonts.

Apple Computer

Software Engineer Summer Intern

Developed a number of applications and games in high school and early college. 1979-1982: Consulted for a number of small businesses developing custom applications and reports in Basic, Pascal and assembly language. 1980-1982: Developed and licensed a number of educational games for Computer Advanced Ideas (CAI). 1981: created and sold BugByter, the most widely used, commercial, real-time 6502 debugger for the Apple II, distributed by CAI. Licensed BugByter to Apple for inclusion in its ProDOS development kit. BugByter was advanced for its time, sporting resizable windows, variable speed interpretive debugging, real-time view of registers and memory and more. It served as a model for the Macintosh's Macsbug debugger. 1984: Consulted for Professor Theodore Cohn (now deceased) of UC Berkeley's Optometry Dept. developing real-time assembly coded optical experiments testing visual acuity and reaction times. 1984: Developed Flappy with friend Greg Hale, a commercial game for Apple II sold by Unison Corporation of Berkeley, CA.

Ted Cohn

Ted Cohn