INVENTION
I am an inventor. A large part of my professional focus is developing intellectual property. Some of my work has resulted in the patenting of my ideas. Most notably I invented the world’s lightest (by weight), brightest, most durable solar lantern called “Luci” and co-founded the MPOWERD the company that manufactures and markets the product. I have devoted an entire section to that work. You can learn more about my work on Luci by clicking here.
Apparatuses, Methods, And Systems For Code Triggered Information Querying And Serving
Sounds fancy huh? Many people refer to this patent - and the other filings associated with it - as the 'foundation patents' for mobile marketing. Things like Google Glass and Microsoft Hololens couldn't work without my inventions. Below is a link to the actual patent at the World Intellectual Property Organization.
From Physical World Connections to The Internet of Things
My work has focused on “physical world connections” to digital objects. Today we may call these activities and devices the Internet of Things or IoT. In 2004 I defined a Physical World Connection as using your mobile phone as a computer mouse. At that time, that was the best technology there was. iPhones were still years away.
I invented technology so that whenever we encounter an object in the physical world that we want to learn more about, we point our mobile device, and "presto!" information about that thing becomes instantly available. That information could be anything - the cost, how to assemble it, where to buy it, who else has bought it, how old it is, if it's safe to eat, where it has been, where it is going, the possibilities were limitless.
I have extensively worked with mobile technologies, computer vision, image analysis, and near-field communication technologies. Like my above example, the core concept of my work is about allowing mobile users worldwide to access contextual information and data for any physical world object by somehow engaging with that object. Sometimes, this notion is considered "object hyperlinking."
As an inventor, a big part of my work was expanding and improving on this ability. So, I invented a method without needing special software to be loaded on a camera-enabled phone or device. Everything happens auto-magically on the "back end." I also made it possible for this method to work with human-readable images, not just machine-readable Data Matrix (2D Matrix Codes), or Bar Codes.
Additionally, I added contextual relevance to the Physical World Connections by incorporating location-based services facilitating contextual inquiry and enabling the return of highly relevant and targeted information based on the fundamental principles of space-time.
Synthetic Worlds, Extended Reality (XR). Mixed Reality (MR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
In their simplest form, Synthetic Worlds have persistence - meaning when you stop playing the game or leave the chat or community, the experience itself does not stop. Millions of other people might still be "playing" or inhabiting that synthetic space. When I was leading Product Design for Yahoo! Music, we built a pretty amazing synthetic world.
I extended my patent work beyond the physical world in 2006. I explored augmented reality, virtual reality, and synthetic world environments. By employing the same fundamental principles for the physical world objects, I developed methods and systems that work in Synthetic Worlds - in particular, Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) so that the barriers between the physical and the synthetic could be joined.