Suggestions
Jason Toff
Building Things
Jason Toff, Founder & CEO of Things, Inc.
Jason Toff is an experienced product leader and entrepreneur who recently founded the startup Things, Inc. in Allentown, Pennsylvania.1 Things, Inc. is behind the product rooms.xyz, which aims to revolutionize 3D creation and collaboration.4
Prior to starting his own company, Toff held several high-profile roles at major tech firms:
- Director of Product Management at Meta (Facebook) from 2019-20211
- Partner at Area 120, Google's internal incubator for new ideas1
- NYC Site Lead for Google VR/AR from 2016-20181
- Director of Product Management at Twitter from 2015-20161
- General Manager and Head of Product at Vine from 2014-20161
- Product Manager at YouTube from 2011-20141
- Product Marketing Manager at Google from 2008-20111
Outside of his tech career, Toff co-founded PALS Programs in 2004, a non-profit that runs summer camps and programs for young adults with Down syndrome.12 He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School with a B.S. in Management, Operations & Information Management, and Music.1
Toff recently moved back to his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania after living in tech hubs like New York City, San Francisco, and the Bay Area. He continues to work remotely for Facebook while building his new startup in the Lehigh Valley.3
Highlights
Wow. I agree with him for once.
I'm very excited about this release. From the start of Rooms, we've allowed you to add Lua code to things to bring them to life. Coding is excellent because it gives you complete control and near limitless possibilities. But it is not so excellent on mobile, where you have a tiny keyboard and limited screen real estate. With the majority of usage now on mobile, we needed to do something better. So, we created the Actions editor!
The Actions editor uses Lua code under the hood but presents it in an interface that's easy for anyone to understand, regardless of age or language, using emoji to represent actions and a live preview to let you see the effects of changing parameters in real time.
You can sequence actions to occur when a room starts, when you tap things, every n seconds, and/or when a signal is broadcasted (which you can broadcast from other things).
There's plenty more to do, but with this update, it's now easier than ever to create stories in Rooms, something I'm particularly excited about.
Rooms 3.0 is now out on iPhone, iPad and desktop web. I hope you enjoy!
