SF Bay ACM: 20 July 2005

TechMasters Topics & Speakers

When the Core Innovation is Simplicity

ANTLRWorks
ANTLRWorks is a powerful IDE allowing advanced programmers and novices to leverage their work by easily building, interpreting and debugging ANTLR v3 grammars. ANTLRWorks has an integrated syntax diagram visualization, interpreter (with parse tree) and debugger to see how a parser is actually parsing a given input. ANTLR (www.antlr.org), ANother Tool for Language Recognition, is a language tool written by
Terence Parr that provides a framework for constructing recognizers, compilers, and translators from grammatical descriptions containing Java, C#, C++, or Python actions. ANTLR provides excellent support for
tree construction, tree walking, and translation.

About the Speaker:
Jean Bovet is currently a graduate student in Computer Science at the University of San Francisco. He works with Professor Terence Parr on ANTLRWorks (www.antlr.org). Prior to attending USF, he worked several
years in an robotic lab in Switzerland programming high quality 3D trajectory generator for 6-axis robots. He is also the cofounder and programmer of Arizona Software (www.arizona-software.ch), a company dedicated to creating high quality software for Mac OS X since 1989. He can be contacted at jean_bovet@mac.com and more information about his products can be found at www.cs.usfca.edu/~jbovet/.

When the Core Innovation is Simplicity
Many engineers have a hard time comprehending the blogging phenomenon because there is no new technology. The core innovation of blogging is simplicity of user interface, opening up publishing online to a whole new group of people. Building tools and services to be used by people in this environment presents a unique set of challenges. Changes to the system tend to remove barriers instead of adding features. This
presentation will focus on evolving tools in an environment where the dominating factor is simplicity.

About the Speaker:
Mike Rowehl (www.bitsplitter.net/blog/) has worked as a developer in startup companies for twelve years. He has an extensive background working with Linux and systems that blend mobility and internet services. Mike is currently working at Feedster as a software engineer and running a volunteer group called Mobile Monday in the Bay Area.

Micro Data Format
Incorporated in 2004 and privately held, WindSpring has developed next generation software technology to increase data storage capacity and provide the ability to manipulate data in storage-constrained environments such as cell phones, smartphones, PDAs and in-car navigation systems.

Unlike techniques currently used for dealing with large files in storage-constrained environments, WindSpring’s patented technology shrinks data to create a new data format known as the Micro Data Format (MDF) which not only allows for complete manipulation and transfer of data, but the data never need to be expanded to their larger, original data format. In contrast to traditional loss-less technologies, with MDF, application data always retain their smaller footprint since it does not need to be “decompressed” to seek, search, edit or display the data. In fact, MDF allows data to be fully manipulated and transferred in the miniaturized state.

MDF solves several of the most pressing problems currently encountered by mobile device application developers, network carriers, device manufacturers, and users, including:

Large file transfer to and from mobile devices
Growing data storage requirements on mobile devices
Increasing demands on bandwidth provision
Growing sophistication, complexity and size of mobile applications

MDF’s groundbreaking capability leads to significantly reduced data footprint, and dramatically faster manipulation and transfer of data while in the miniaturized MDF state, enabling users to store more, send
faster and send more.

About the Speaker:
Mark Arman is a seasoned management executive with strong entrepreneurial and executive leadership skills in the technology sector, including product development and deployment, sales and marketing, and venture financing. Prior to WindSpring, Mr. Arman was a co-founder and CEO of Conferserv, Inc., a US technology company that specializes in video conferencing over IP. Previously, Mr. Arman was a senior case and engagement manager with LEK Consulting, managing projects for major multi-national companies including British Aerospace’s defense software division, Philippine Airlines and Fenner Power Transmissions. Prior to LEK, Mr. Arman spent 12 years as an operational pilot, test pilot, and instructor with the Royal Australian Air Force. Mr. Arman has a Bachelor of Science degree with Honors, with a double major in Theoretical Physics and Pure Mathematics from Melbourne University, a Masters of Aerospace Engineering degree from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Melbourne Business School.

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