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.

Comments

I was wondering when this would happen

[ender-iii]

Finally one of the great minds is back in action. I wonder if this new project will be contributed to by apple?

Re:I was wondering when this would happen

[maniac11]

Not likely: I think I've heard the Steves are friendly, but not overly so. I can't find a reference right now, but here's a good Woz Interview.

A plea to Woz

[Em Emalb]

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

does anyone remember

[Syre]

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.

Re:does anyone remember

[garyrich]

Remote controls and "driving down the cost of GPS" got me thinking. I could use a GPS on my remote control so I could just find it. A really cheap and small GPS combined with some way to transmit its ID - and then a master device to tell me where the Hell it is. Expand that out to a small cheap widget that can be stuck to random objects to tell where the Hell they've gotten to and you may actually have a business.

garyr
and yes - I'm talking out my ass, but this is slashdot after all.

hmm

[perdida]

"Recent advances in global positioning software (GPS) systems and antenna technology coupled with the declining cost of processing power and two-way networking make the possibilities for new devices and services really exciting,'' Wozniak said in a statement.

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.

Good stuff, successful or not

[behindthewall]

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?

H2G2?

[Hast]

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. ;-)

Re:best wishes for success

[biobogonics]

Woz has done many creative things in life and will continue to do more.

(former member of the Palo Alto Homebrew Computer Club)

Considering some of his outrageous hacks, I would not be surprised. One of his early characteristics was to do outrageous things in hardware or software. Here are a few examples.

1. The screen memory on the Apple II was not laid out in a linear fashion but in a crazy quilt to lower the chip count on the motherboard. This resulted in headaches in converting a cursor address to a screen location.

2. Woz's Apple II parallel card didn't use a bit in a PIO to handshake with the printer, instead the handshake line *changed the addressing on a PROM* which toggled the executing code back and forth between active code and a do-nothing loop - talk about self modifying code!!!

3. One of the earliest cards for the Apple II was a modem with a "blue box" on a card. Obviously this was never produced in quantity.

4. Woz's binary to decimal conversion routine using the decimal addition mode of the 6502 chip is a classic. Unlike the 8080 and 80x86, which have decimal adjust instructions that are added after an addition or subtraction, on the 6502, the processor is put into and later taken out of decimal math mode. This made the 6502 lovely for controling devices using packed BCD (binary coded decimal), something that the 80xxx family does not do nearly as well.