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Woz's New Startup
Several readers noted that Woz has a startup called Wheels of Zeus. He's come out of "Semi Retirement"
to work on a new wireless handheld sort of thing. Not a lot of details,
but it certainly could shape up to be interesting. Specifically
mentions GPS. Supposedly Woz.com
will have data eventually, but currently is just really slow
and redirecting to Woz's personal page.
That's the best name he could think of for the acronym 'WOZ'? I mean, there are so many other choices:
World Of Zippers
Watch Out, Zacharius
World Otter eZtablishment
Oh, nevermind...
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Maybe he can buy the rights to the Visor line and create a device called Odin. Or Loki. Or the Newton 3000i.
Maybe he should start work on the Apple IV.
I wish him luck, but isn't everyone and their brother trying to figure out how to integrate GPS, handheld PCs, communications devices, etc. into a handheld? And not a lot of people seem to be buying.
Oh well, I guess if anyone could come up with something truly innovative, it would be him...
but currently is just really slow and redirecting to Woz's personal page.
/. isn't going to help matters any. That and it's probably just the poor guys DSL line or something (I can't even get there to check that, however).
:-\
Oh that poor server. If it's already slow, having a link to it posted on the front page of
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Finally one of the great minds is back in action. I wonder if this new project will be contributed to by apple?
ender-iii
Guard your wheels, man! Don't let Microsoft steal your shit again...
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
This project is in its early stages. However, I wonder if and when the business/marketing plan for this thing is developed that woz will consider the lessons learned from Apple pricing themselves out of the market?
So you don't think you need to pay for things? Good luck with that.
For the love of God,
PLEASE INNOVATE!!! Don't do the standard all in one hand held, do something unique...well hell, something Woz like even
Sent from your iPad.
Im not trying to karma whore just trying to help.
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
Way to go. Knowingly posting a link to a site that was already slow in the first place. Do you hate Woz, or something?
BytesTemplar.com
You don't turn the device on, you power it up by saying, "WOZ up."
You don't find your scheduler, you say, "WOZ happening."
The reason you can't find anything at the website woz.com is because you didn't say, "WOZ it do?"
WOZ, I'm not funny today? WOZ the matter? WOZ wrong with you?
I wonder how this new wireless startup will interact/affect with his role at Danger, Inc. as a member of the board. Will WoZ work with Danger, compete with them, or be completely unrelated?
Cool, Now Apple Can Compete With Dell!
I can just imagine Steve Wozniak on TV in an elf costume as he shouts, "Dude, you're gettin' an Apple!"
Hmmm, OK, maybe not...
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
it will be interesting to see if this new wireless will be capable of multiple standards (802.11a-b, bluetooth, etc.) or if this will just be another competing standard.
~.Evanrude
Say, a watch that can help you navigate to the nearest pub? Maybe. Yet, this is The Woz. The guy who designed the Apple Computer. (Jobs is just a marketer, albeit a good one.) If anyone can come up with something truly new and cool, it's him.
Best Slashdot Co
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd love to work with the woz. Even though the woz has said his post plane-crash self wasn't as sharp, he's still a brilliant engineer. Wireless devices are useful, but only coupled with GPS and accurate location data. It's too bad the carriers are purposely holding that up. If the woz can manage to integrate a gps unit with the device and have it be under 200, he just might have a chance.
Does anyone remember Woz's last failed startup (at least the last one I heard about), which was also making wireless devices... these were big, complicated programmable remote controls.
The company was called CL9... you can read about it here in google's cache (since his site is slashdotted at the moment).
The devices and company were a complete failure as I recall... I don't think he's done any notably successful product since the Apple ][, so I don't hold out high hopes for this new venture either.
The Apple alumni have always been a creative bunch, I'm interested to see what he has to contribute.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Please hire me! I can clean your garage, shine your shoes and keep you away from civil aviation!
Seriously, I'd (almost) give my left nut to work for a real geek like Wozniak. Hell, I'd be happy working anyplace where, when you tell your boss it can't be done without a complete rewrite of the codebase and a change in hardware vendors, he doesn't look at you blankly and say, "So, this should take about a week, right?" or where QA was given more than 8 hours to test the new version of the release before it was sent out to the customers.
Oh, and back on target: I could also pick up your drycleaning, Steve. Hire me!
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
The new company will not initially announce what products it is planning and Mr. Wozniak said this week it was likely that it would not at first market its own products. It will instead seek licensing and marketing arrangements with other consumer electronics and related companies.
appears that unlike the first Apples, Woz plans on licensing these things at first. proving he has at least learned something!
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Haha, Wheels of Zeus. It's an acronym for WOZ. I feel so smart now. *eyeroll*
_______
2B1ASK1
help everyday people track everyday things.
... I'll just wait for "WozGizmo II"
More often than not I lose my everyday things (keys, wallet) inside the house, where GPS doesn't work.
Oh well
I think Waz burned through the green apples. Considering that this startup only raised 6 million and not a dime of it was from Waz himself, I think he's broke. An excellent engineer and architect, Waz comes up short as an investor. Remember those stupid concerts in the 80's where he took multi-million dollar baths.
Hmm... Why Wheels Of Zeus?
Must be some babe killer device, that you pop into your babe magnet car. Using GPS, the device automatically points you to your next laison, while spitting out details like her name, what persona you used to get into her pants, any offspring you might have sired with her.
Not what I expected from Woz, but hey, it might be a big hit.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
A report in the New York Times on Wednesday said Wozniak would not immediately announce what products he is developing. A spokesman for the company was not immediately available to comment further.
If he's interested in hyping up his GPS doo-hickey, perhaps he should tell us what it is.
If he's interested in hyping his stock, he should hang out with Dubya.
Goat sex free since 2001
(The article can be found here. Excerpts follow.)
.... By driving down the cost of G.P.S. technology, the company says, it expects to help "everyday people track everyday things." ... It is the first start-up venture for Mr. Wozniak since he closed his previous company, Cloud 9, a maker of high-end consumer remote control devices, in 1988.
...
... It plans to have its first products finished sometime next year.
While Mr. Jobs went on to found Next Inc., bought Pixar (news/quote), and then returned to Apple as its chief executive in 1997, Mr. Wozniak, now 51, has largely remained on the sidelines. That has made him unusual in a hothouse business and technology culture that is characterized by serial entrepreneurs, few of them walking away after either success or failure. Instead, he has occupied himself with private investments and has taught computer education for elementary through high school students in the Los Gatos, Calif., school district, where he lives.
The new company will not initially announce what products it is planning and Mr. Wozniak said this week it was likely that it would not at first market its own products. It will instead seek licensing and marketing arrangements with other consumer electronics and related companies.
He said one goal was to take technologies that are now costly and reduce them in price so they could be sold in consumer markets.
Mr. Wozniak said he had enjoyed simply being a consumer of new technologies for more than a decade. But last year, a friend visited and began talking about an idea that used G.P.S. in a strange way and he found himself excited by the prospects of doing something with this.
"Sometimes I say that and I'm not really serious," he remarked, "but this time I was really serious."
...
Mr. Galanos said his firm had been excited about both the company's technology idea and the possibility of backing Mr. Wozniak.
"After all how many times will Steve jump on something new again?" he said.
How low can you sink? Stealing hubcaps from greek gods
will definetly get you a lightning bolt in the head and a personal parking spot in Hades.
(Hades has a Kerberos authentication system, BTW)
Woz has done many creative things in life and will continue to do more.
(former member of the Palo Alto Homebrew Computer Club)
I'm sure slashdotting it will speed it up.
Milalwi
I always liked woz, he came off as a really nice person. I dont know how that will play out in the business world. The other steve is to arrogant (sp?) for my tastes. Still in the contest against Billy and Larry. I wish woz luck with this venture
First you link to John Romero's home page and now Woz's?
I feel like I bought one of those cheap "Homes of the Stars" maps roadside in Hollywood.
A Seqway intregrated with Wireless PDA support with a Wireless Flight helmet heads up display for an outdoor wheeled version of Quake on a specially prepared field or arena.
The First Truely wireless sports experience.
Thus: "Wheels of Zeus"
The wireless pda could be used to facilitate score keeping, etc.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Depending on how this goes, does anyone else see the potential for this:
WOZ-->iWalk (and know where I'm going)?
Maybe it's just me
Yeah, that's right, he will do a handheld in a wood box :)
He must have a great idea to start a company.
As far as I'm concerned Woz is a real hero of high tech. He did some truly revolutionary tech that worked at a human scale, found a partner who had what was required to get it to the masses, kept his sence of houmor and then took his winnings to become a volunteer teaching. This is a true winner.
Thanks Woz from a slightly jaded 40 year old engineer
Did anyone see the special on hacking that was on Discovery channel (I think -- my TiVo grabbed it) a couple weeks ago? Woz was on there, along with Mitnick and a few others. They were talking about "hacking" and its roots. They even had a re-enactment of the FBI nabbing Mitnick.
Based on looks alone, I don't think I'd want these guys near children.
Woz must using his Apple ][ as a server ;^0
Like a GPS device which interfaces to your Segway Transporter to drive you to the nearest pub of the preferred type?
Then when you're done with the visit to the pub, if you seem to be wandering aimlessly the device will make the Segway just transport you home while ignoring your drunken attempts at navigation.
(Notice that the Segway Transporter moves by detecting your body movement. Imagine what one will try to do with a tilting drunk on board.)
It looks like this is mostly a bunch of ex-WebTV types (staff/Board/Funding). Not sure what that means, but I hope Woz makes out OK from this.
Note to Danger, Inc. Don't fuck with Woz. We will be watching and we will remember who who are and how you treat him. Today you have funding and are your own masters, but tomorrow the table may change.
Your work continues to inspire and amaze. Thanks for keeping this my favorite website.
: )
Don't read this!
let it NOT be another Ginger.
Good luck to you, Woz!
The man is a brilliant engineer. And at making new technology cost-effective and so commercially realizable.
Whether that translates into a business windfall? Well, I just hope he's having fun and feeling creative. Technically, good things are bound to come of it.
I hope the interface (from physical to graphic) is really useful.
And, if you expect me to read anything significant off of it, I hope the display is decent.
When are we ever going to fix displays? We've got horsepower enough -- how about something easy on the eyes and with more than a piddly few lines?
What the hell, I don't care hearing about every dotcom/startup by every joe internet out there.
Woz didn't invent the computer. He didn't build the first computer. What he did was more important... he sparked a revolution by bringing the computer industry into the public spotlight. Perhaps he will do something equally important to the wireless world. We all know wireless has been around for a while, but it seems it really hasn't taken off. We have several different standards, and several different trying to invent what wireless *should* be like. Maybe Woz's new company will spark another revolution...
I remember reading in an interview with Douglas Adams that one thing he wanted to do was a PDA+GPS+wireless(possibly) and then use it as a Hitch Hikers Guide to Earth. That was one of the ideas behind the H2G2 project.
;-)
That idea always appealed to me. It would be very nice to be able to leave small virtual GPS caches around for other people. And to get current information about any place in the world.
You really wouldn't need all that frequent updates, stopping by at an internet cafe once a week or so would do it easily. (Could be problematic if you're visiting California though.
A few weeks ago, Woz was named to the board of Danger, Inc, which seems to be a totally separate entity from Wheels of Zeus.
Since both companies are interested in producing whiz-bang handhelds, isn't him being on the board of one company and having his own, separate company some sort of raging conflict of interest?
~Philly
Wheels Of Zeus = WOZ.
How clever.
why did that get modded down it is so true, if anything it should be modded +3 funny
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
People have mentioned mp3 playing in the all-in-one hand held. Add Ogg-Vorbis to that. AND, and recording. If the iPod had a mic/line-in jack and could encode to mp3 or ogg-vorbis on the fly, I'd buy one. How cool would 4000 minutes of record time be? (more for mono-low-bitrate)
So, of course I'd want this feature in the Uber-PDA too.
Start Running Better Polls
Woz was the genius behind the Apple ][ - but was he behind the Mac? It's the Mac that really launched Apple, not their old line which weren't any more or less revolutionary than the competition at teh time (ie, the Compaq and IBM PCs, as well as the Pc Jr). Remember folks - Apple computers had command-line interfaces!
I don't think that Woz will be the Wireless Messiah. There's no guarantee of success, especially since he has spent the past few decades out of the loop.
IMHO, his name lends his cachet only because of association to Apple, and Apple brings cachet only because of Jobs
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
I wonder if he had to purchase that domain from someone, or if it expired, etc.
What?
This means the return of the "US" festivals!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
My favorite story about Woz:
He was always a fan of interesting numbers, people who had addresses like 1234 Main Street. For a long time he wanted a phone number with all ten (or at least seven) digits the same, but couldn't get one. Finally when the 888 toll-free area code came out, he was able to get a cell phone with the number (888)888-8888.
Soon thereafter, he began getting mysterious calls on his new phone. The phone would ring and there would be just silence, or strange (but not particularly rude) noises. These happened several times a day. Eventually, in one of those calls, he heard a woman's voice: "What are you doing with that? Put that down." followed by the other end hanging up.
He figured out that it was babies who were calling him. If a baby or young child picks up the phone, one of the most likely numbers to dial is the same digit over and over. Kids were picking up the phone and mashing the 8 button constantly.
I read this in a Wired interview (doesn't seem to be online) which ended with the line, "...the babies of the world were calling the Woz."
You silly people! *Wheels* of Zeus. GPS. Get it?? It's a Segway that drives itself!!! You program in your destination, and hang on for dear life.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
There is a more in depth article about Wheels of Zeus at Maccentral .
Woz started Apple! Hardly a very open-source company, eh, moron?
Trolling just isn't your speed. Why don't you do something a bit more in your ability, like sucking cock?
Wait, I thought we weren't supposed to believe Reuters anymore. I'm give up...
Check out this company's products. They've already built it.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
We'll have a PDA/universal remote with awesome floppy controller drivers that can locate pay phones within 30 feet and allow it's user to make free calls by emitting a 2600Hz tone.
http://www.crazyapplerumors.com/archives/2001_12_0 9_crazyapplerumor_archive.htm
4th Grader Already Tired of Woz's Stories.
It's not even half way through the school year, and already 4th grader Mark Averill is tired of Steve Wozniak's stories of how he co-founded Apple Computer. Wozniak volunteers his time to work with children and support the computer environment in the Los Gatos, CA school district and often recounts his tales of the early days of Apple to eager audiences. But after three months of repetition, Wozniak's stories are wearing thin, according to Averill.
"The first day of class, Ms. McReedy introduced us to Mr. Wozniak, and he told us the whole story about the garage and Xerox and the mouse," a visibly bored Averill explained. "It was pretty interesting the first time around, but that was like, September." Since then, Wozniak has continued to repeat the same tales again and again. Fellow classmate Sabrena Harris agrees with Averill's assessment. "He's nice enough and he helps out a lot with the computers but jeez..." Harris complained. "Last week we had a problem printing from the purple computer and the whole time he was working on it, he kept blabbing about the time he wrote the first printer driver for the Apple II." Harris added "I just wanted to print my pony picture, not hear some dumb old-guy story about stuff that happened in the middle ages."
When reached for comment, Wozniak appeared oblivious to the students' reaction. "The kids love my stories!" Wozniak beamed. "The kids are great to work with and I think it's good for them to have positive role models! Just the other day I chatted with an impromptu group for almost 3 hours after school. It's rewarding to see them take their own time to learn about the early days of Apple."
Wozniak's enthusiasm was apparently not shared by the students involved in the "impromptu group". According to sources within the 4th grade that did not wish to be identified, students were either under the impression that they were required to attend or simply felt uncomfortable asking to be allowed to leave.
I've seen the same idea regurgitated several
times, though I used to work for a venture of
Draper Fisher Jurvetson called Inforocket (by
the way Keen got our idea from us, that sucked,
then we stole it back, after the CEO fired the tech team). Anyhow, this GPS idea of
storing location with data is a big idea everyone has, the problem is GPS is not precise and won't work in cities, but it will probably work out in the middle of nowhere on a ranch with no trees. There is still a need for a much finer grain location tracking system that might need to make use of distributed computing standards such as CORBA to establish location and management of ad hoc networking. Woz probably won't come up with this in a mind-fart. But he will be a great vehicle for the hype which is the propellent of VC-funding, hype the hell out of it then make something useful out of the hype. A bit backwards, usually you come up with the invention first then hype the hell out of it.
The iBot was designed by dekaresearch, which is the company behind segway as well... in fact, looking at it, u realize how the segway idea was spawned...
A crank is a little thing that makes revolutions
I own a PDA, a PCS phone, a TI-85 calculator, and a 2.1 Mpixel camera. I would like to have a portable MP3 player, GPS receiver, TV remote, and handheld computer (no, PalmOS doesn't quite cut it for general purpose software) as well. I am swamped with a multitude of electronic gadgets, with more to come, and yet my lowly mechanical engineering background leaves me unable to say why exactly these things can't all be done by the same device. By your use of the phrase "standard all in one hand held", I assume you know where I can find such a device. Please share this information. Thank you.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
A suggestion: get yourself a decent history of Apple, and read it. Not only did the ][ predate the machines that you list by several years, but it was an evolutionary improvement on its own predecessors, which were mostly hobbyist machines that were more like the build-your-own projects listed on Ars Technica, only much, much harder. Not to mention that Apple didn't invent the GUI, of course, but bought it from Xerox--and where did they get the money for that, or for developing the Mac? Why, from Woz' little "command-line interface" machine. Apple ][ revenue kept the company going for years before the Mac turned a profit.
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
Woz and I live in the same area, and I'm going to say that we need something that will remind people when their train gets to their stop. Those few Valley Transit Authority union drivers with the manners to announce their stops -- as they are being paid to do -- rarely check the continuity of their public address systems.
I didnt (intentionally) claim that the Apple ][ was competing directly against the other machines I listed. I said the Apple line was competing against them.
The buzz about Woz is misplaced IMHO because it was the Mac which really launched Apple as a Serious Contender in the consumer market, to really challenge {IBM|Compaq|etc} - the Apple I and ][ for all their whiz-bangery were still in the infant days of computing where only the elite had them.
Woz had nothing much to do with the Mac - which was a quantum leap ahead of the old Apple line. Yet teh buzz in the media seems to imply association where there isnt any.
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com