Word: allen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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While Apple's iPhone launch was absorbing all the available buzz this winter, two dueling teams of technologists were feverishly finalizing gadgets they hope will refocus the spotlight. The FlipStart, dreamed up and funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, launches in April. Its creators call it the first fully powered ultra-mini PC, or UMPC, that is satisfying to use. Meanwhile a team led by ex--Apple star Jory Bell has countered with the OQO2--a palm-size computer that stakes a similar claim with a slightly different approach. These aren't the only machines to claim UMPC status...
...Allen, 54, sees UMPCs as nothing less than a game changer. "We're going to see an explosive evolution of devices like this," he says, "because people want to carry their personal computer with them wherever they go." Laptops are too bulky for that task. Allen likens the FlipStart's prospects to the potential he saw in RIM's early BlackBerry. He says passersby once marveled that he could use it for e-mail. "Now everybody has some kind of mobile device like that." To feed their growing digital appetites, Allen says, consumers want something even more powerful that...
...last time Allen threw himself into hardware, he created a mouse in the early '80s to boost the fledgling software venture he had started with his school buddy Bill Gates. Allen and Gates met in 1968 at their Seattle private school, Lakeside, where they became protonerds. They spent so much time programming a primitive computer that they could teach their peers--and teachers. Both later dropped out of college to get Microsoft going, but after Allen received a diagnosis of Hodgkin's disease, he stepped down in 1983--the same year his father died...
Like Gates, Allen now devotes much of his time to giving away lots of money. He still has a fortune north of $15 billion and has remained active in the tech world, investing in a series of start-ups, from AOL to early wireless networks. He scored big with such outfits as DreamWorks and Ticketmaster, while some of his other investments have struggled, like Egghead Software and Purple Moon, a failed CD-ROM venture...
...Allen was wondering why laptops couldn't be more portable. And wonder can get funding in a hurry when its owner is Paul Allen. His R&D team, part of his Vulcan research group, started project Sybok, named for Spock's half brother. After a series of prototypes--with names like Dolphin, Eagle, Falcon and Gecko--the team members nailed a version in 2004 that met their goal of shrinking a laptop to one-eighth its size. But it was too hot for laps, so it was scrapped. A faster, slicker processor has since cooled things down. Today, however...