Daniel Harple

Daniel Harple
Born July 23, 1959
Nationality American
Alma mater University of Rhode Island
Occupation CEO, Technology entrepreneur, investor, and engineer
Known for Real Time Streaming Protocol, VoIP, location-based social networking

Daniel Harple (born July 23, 1959) is an American entrepreneur, investor, inventor and engineer best known for his role in the creation of several Internet standards, among them, Real Time Streaming Protocol used in entertainment and communications systems such as YouTube, RealPlayer, QuickTime, Skype, and others. Harple has been called a visionary, an Internet pioneer, and a "serial entrepreneur", founding multiple technology start-ups and playing a key role in the development of technologies like collaborative groupware, Voice over IP, and interactive screen sharing whiteboards. Harple also holds a number of core technology patents for inventions in VoIP, media streaming, real time web communications, collaborative computing, and location-based social media.

He was co-founder, chairman and CEO of InSoft, Inc. which was merged with Netscape in 1996. He was also a co-founder of enterprise content integration technology provider, Context Media that was sold to Oracle Corporation in 2005. In 2007, he co-founded the location-based social network application provider, GeoSolutions, B.V. doing business as GyPSii.[1][2] He is currently CEO and managing director of Amsterdam-based Shamrock Ventures BV.

Education and early life

A Rhode Island native, Harple performed as a teenage guitarist in garage rock bands during the 1970s, admittedly fascinated by his band's various electronic equipment and the connections between it.[3][4] He studied Liberal Arts at Marlboro College from 1977 to 1981, and received Bachelor's degrees in Psychology and Mechanical engineering from the University of Rhode Island in 1982 and 1986, where he also completed graduate-level work.[1] Focusing on computer networking, he worked with the U.S. Department of Defense at the Naval Underwater Systems Center in the early 1980s, and later at companies such as AMP Incorporated and Ingersoll-Rand, where he became interested in applying principles of ergonomics to computer communications technology user interfaces in order to make it easy and convenient for the user.[5]

Influence

As both the creator of technology that became the backbone of multimedia and real-time interactive communication, and founder a number of influential, venture-backed technology start-ups, Harple has been called a visionary, an Internet pioneer in real time interactive communications, and a "serial entrepreneur".[2][5][6] According to co-founder of Vonage, Jeff Pulver, "If you use Skype, GoToMeeting or YouTube, among others, Harple's technology and its influence has touched your life." [7]

Harple’s founding of Context Media influenced Enterprise Content Integration. Context Media tackled the big data problem by building technologies to search, connect, and display content across large extended enterprises. The extensive of use of metadata was deployed in this effort, which also resulted in an invention and subsequent patent by Harple in this area of collaborative real-time computing. Context Media was seen as the leader in the segment and subsequently acquired by Oracle, while the company's main competitor, Charlotte, North Carolina-based Venetica was later acquired by IBM.[8][9]

Harple also championed a new dimension of the social media phenomenon: individually customizable, highly mobile, location-based experiences. "Rather than sitting indoors chatting to friends on an PC-based service - you can be out and about seeing who is nearby, what they are doing and where you could go - all in real time", he commented.[10] An early developer, investor, and advocate of mobile social networking technology, he saw it growing faster outside of the US, telling the New York Times in 2008, "I moved to Europe because I thought the U.S. venture capital community -- which I was a part of -- was myopic," he said. "They can't see the global significance of what is happening." [11]

Career

InSoft

Main article: InSoft Inc.

In 1992, Harple founded InSoft, a Grantham, Pennsylvania provider of distributed digital video solutions, desktop conferencing and videoconferencing applications. Harple had first met InSoft partner Richard Pizzarro in 1990 while working at AMP Incorporated, where they were involved in networking company workstations. The two men left AMP to co-found InSoft, with Harple acting as Chairman and CEO and Pizzarro as Chief Engineer and Vice President. They worked for months to create and refine a means to allow real time, face to face collaboration over a computer network by using software alone. Initial investments of $600,000 from family and friends enabled them to grow and their products to find popularity.[3][12]

In the June 1992 issue of SunWorld, the magazine characterized InSoft's network groupware application Communique as a "killer app" that incorporated such revolutionary features as collaborative whiteboarding that allowed networked users to share and manipulate graphic objects and files using simple paint tools.[13] Network World called InSoft's Communique "a pioneer in the desktop videoconferencing market" and featured it in the magazine's "Shortlist" of recommended products for 1994.[14] Communique supported as many as 10 users, and included a tool called InSoft Network Television that let users broadcast video signals to workstations using only software with no hardware assist.[15] The company's software was soon being adopted by manufacturers like IBM, Hewlett Packard and others, causing an industry marketer to remark that InSoft was "a mandatory checklist item" among computer giants.[12]

By 1995 they had over $7 million in annual revenue, a staff of 70, and a headquarters near the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Also in 1995, Harple saw a potential market for InSoft's products in the early Internet, which was viewed as a low-bandwidth, copper wire-based technology at the time. Despite his board's warnings that concentrating on such applications would "kill our direct sales", Harple empowered a "skunk works" team to create a low cost, mass market version of InSoft's software that would run over the lower bit-rate Internet, involving the invention of lower bit rate compression algorithms for audio and video signals and synchronization.[3][16] The Internet media streaming, telephony and collaborative applications originated by InSoft laid the foundation for development of the Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) standard.[17] Insoft also partnered in a number of joint ventures with technology companies such as AT&T, Digital Equipment Corporation, Newbridge Networks, and others. Harple served as the company's Chairman and CEO until InSoft merged with Netscape in 1996, for a value of $161 million.[3][18]

A chapter in former Wall Street Journal columnist Tom Petzinger’s book, “The New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who Are Transforming the Workplace and Marketplace,” is devoted to the story of InSoft during the early days of the Internet.[3]

Netscape

Following the merger of Insoft, Harple served as Senior Vice President at Netscape.[19] Harple's team used the collaborative computing and streaming media technologies created at InSoft as the basis for new Netscape products such as LiveAudio and LiveVideo. These efforts led to the creation of a number of internet standards, including Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP).[20]

Context Labs

In the mid-1990s, Harple became friends with songwriter and record producer Todd Rundgren, with whom he co-founded Context Labs, a media research company focused on exploring and developing new technologies intended to enhance and converge traditional media delivery systems for audio, video and music with the web. The company's name echoed Rundgren's and Harple's vision of "recontextualizing" the Internet by developing tools and products that helped process the vast amount of knowledge contained in it, "putting it into a context that derives the most meaning to each of us as individuals."[5]

Harple worked with Rundgren on many projects. Patronet embodied Harple's goal of a more personalized Internet experience where users could combine different parts of an artist or band’s web presence, such as video clips, band news or songs, to create an individualized context meaningful to them.[5][7][21] Harple's research and experience with Patronet and Context Labs led him to subsequently found Context Media.[20] Some time later in 2004, Harple acquired the pyramid stage set from Rundgren’s 1976 Ra (Utopia album) tour and installed it as a sculpture in a natural setting in coastal Massachusetts.[7]

Context Media

Harple founded Context Media in 1999, and described the company's goal to "create a fundamentally different way to matrix and share content between sites, and enable a new form of content commerce -- one where sites can become their own hubs of syndication and create content relationships based on context." [18] The company won numerous industry awards.[20] Products like Interchange Suite 3.0 allowed distributed and disparate digital asset and content repositories to remain distributed, while giving users a single, unified way to access the content the repositories contained.[22] During this period computer scientist Andries van Dam served as Chairman of the company's Technical Advisory Board, working with Harple to develop standards-based protocols that would give Interchange Suite users the ability to seamlessly interact with and manipulate content stored in differing locations by differing applications.[23][24]

Harple served as President and CEO of Context Media until the company was sold to Oracle Corporation in 2005. Context Media's content-integration software formed the basis of Oracle's collaborative search middleware product Fusion, that added content-management capabilities to application product lines.[25]

GeoSolutions BV

In 2006, Harple moved to the Netherlands where he co-founded GeoSolutions, B.V. (doing business as GyPSii), an Amsterdam-based company whose location-based social networking technology gained adoption through telecom companies in Asia, Europe and Latin America. GyPSii was designed so that carriers could choose to either install a GyPSii app on mobile devices or use GyPSii technology to build customized applications. Harple and co-founder Sam Critchley are credited with the initial creation of GyPSii.[26] The resulting startup was acquired and merged by GeoSentric OYJ, a NASDAQ-listed company in Finland, where Harple subsequently assumed the role of Executive Chairman and Group CEO. In September 2010, Harple resigned from this role to pursue personal and professional activities with Shamrock Ventures, B.V. He continues as a major shareholder and lead inventor/patent-holder to GeoSentric and its technologies.[2][27][28]

GyPSii

Main article: GyPSii

Launched by Harple in 2008, GyPSii's "social, local, mobile" application utilizes GPS to allow mobile device users to search and identify contacts locally or internationally and add a real time, location-based element to social networking. Harple assembled a Technical Advisory Board chaired by Andries van Dam, with members Dick Bulterman and Danah Boyd assisting with strategy for the venture. Shortly after its launch, Harple predicted GyPSii “could have more users in one year than Facebook had in three.”[11] By May, 2010 GyPSii reported it reached over two million users in its first year.[29]

GyPSii is compatible with other social networking sites, and the technology also lets users view blogs, news, events and social media content, filtered by location.[2][30]

GyPSii’s iPhone app was launched by GeoSentric in 2009, allowing user-created places and experiences to become Internet-searchable destinations that are available for friends and communities to share and comment on, not only in GyPSii, but also across other social media such as Facebook and Twitter.[31] China Unicom has also partnered with GyPSii, using its technology to bundle GyPSii on all iPhones in China and launch a China-based social networking application for the iPhone called Unispace.[2]

GyPSii allows mobile phone users to create user-generated content in real time,[32] and Harple described the GyPSii concept as "a record of your life in a digital way, so wherever you are you can record what you’re doing and you can share that with communities, your friends, your family.” He characterized the GyPSii Application programming interface and resulting User Experience as “a window into the management of your social fabric and your interaction with people, not just on GyPSii but on other social networks. It’s the management of all your social media, how you record it, how you share it, and how you search for it.”[31] GyPSii's underlying database of user information can additionally be used to target advertising, prompting Harple to tell Reuters that GyPSii was ideally positioned for carriers seeking an alternative to Google for mobile advertising, remarking, "Google is the fox, and they're in the henhouse".[33]

In March 2010, GyPSii launched Tweetsii, a real time app for the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry platforms featuring user created tweets, images, reviews, comments, checkins, and tips with the ability to build an index of places, with updates from Twitter users and other location-based services including Gowalla and Foursquare.[34]

Prior to Harple's departure, GyPSii oversaw a joint venture with China’s Sina.com to embed GyPSii technology at a platform level in its Twitter-like microblog, Weibo.

Shamrock Ventures BV

Harple is currently CEO and managing director of Shamrock Ventures BV in Amsterdam, offering strategic guidance to entrepreneurs to structure, start, and navigate companies from inception to liquidity events.[27]

Awards

Harple has received a number of honors, including Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, the Red Herring Watch Award, the Upside Hot Startup Award, the NEA Presidents Award, the University of Rhode Island's Alumni Excellence Award for Contributions to Science and Technology and also its 2000 Engineering Entrepreneur Award.[20][35][36] He has delivered presentations and keynote speeches at major computer industry events such as COMDEX, Networld/Interop, Internet World, and others as well as commencement addresses at universities such as Marlboro College and the University of Rhode Island.[20]

Academic boards

Harple has served on the following Academic Boards.

Harple is currently a 2012-2013 Sloan Fellow at MIT Sloan School of Management.[37]

Non profits

Harple is also active with a variety of non-profits such as the Slater Center for Interactive Technologies, and the Buzzards Bay Coalition.[1][38]

Personal life

Harple is the father of five children. His wife is Caren Brown Harple.[39]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Executive Profile, Dan Harple". Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Geron, Tomio (March 16, 2010). "Locating Latest Mobile Craze, Tweetsii Debuts At SXSW". The Wall Street Journal, Venture Capital Dispatch. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Thomas Petzinger (31 March 1999). The new pioneers: the men and women who are transforming the workplace and marketplace (PDF). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-84636-1. Archived from the original on 12 February 2012. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  4. ↑ DeKok, David (February 2, 1996). "Carving a global niche; Area firm OKs purchase by Netscape" (PDF). Patriot-News, The (Harrisburg, PA). Retrieved 11 February 2012.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Matkovich, Beth Ann (1996). "Visionary Creates New Meaning for Internet". MODEweekly.com, MODE Magazine. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  6. ↑ "Digital Hollywood Events at CES". 2008. DigitalHollwood.com. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 Epting, Chris. "Todd Rundgren's Utopia Found: The Great Pyramid of Massachusetts". Feb 7, 2011. AOL News. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  8. ↑ Darrow, Barbara. "Oracle To Buy Assets Of Context Media". August 01, 2005. Information Week. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
  9. ↑ McGarvey, Robert. "Getting Granular with Context Media". 24.9 (Nov. 2001): p54. EContent.
  10. ↑ "Nokia aiming to banish paper maps". BBC News. 11 February 2008. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  11. 1 2 Shannon, Victoria (March 6, 2008). "Social Networking Moves to the Cellphone". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
  12. 1 2 Petzinger, Tom (June 2, 1995, page B1). "Two Little Guys Wrestle With Giants Over Beloved Idea". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved Archived copy, 7 February 2012. Check date values in: |access-date=, |date= (help)
  13. ↑ Hall, Martin, L.W. (June 1992). "The killer app? Groupware - does Insoft have the answer?" (PDF). SunWorld Magazine. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
  14. ↑ IDG Network World Inc (31 October 1994). Network World. IDG Network World Inc. pp. 53–. ISSN 0887-7661. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  15. ↑ IDG Network World Inc (24 January 1994). Network World. IDG Network World Inc. pp. 40–. ISSN 0887-7661. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  16. ↑ IDG Network World Inc; Eckerson, Wayne (21 September 1992). Network World - Startup targets desktop Videoconferencing arena. IDG Network World Inc. pp. 39–. ISSN 0887-7661. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
  17. ↑ "Keynote Speaker: Marlboro College alumnus, Dan Harple". Persons School of Marlboro College. Marlboro College. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  18. 1 2 "Venture capital spigot starting to flow in RI.". Providence Business News. 27 Mar 2000. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
  19. ↑ "NETSCAPE ANNOUNCES NEW REAL-TIME AUDIO AND VIDEO FRAMEWORK FOR INTERNET APPLICATIONS". Columbia University Archive,. Netscape Communications Corporation, 1996. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 "GEOSENTRIC OYJ Bulletin" (PDF). May 2, 2008. GEOSENTRIC OYJ. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  21. ↑ DeKok, David (June 1, 1997). "VIRTUAL VENTURE // UNLIKELY PARTNERS AIM TO TAME THE INTERNET" (PDF). Patriot-News, The (Harrisburg, PA). Retrieved 11 February 2012.
  22. ↑ Kawamoto, Wayne. "Context Media Introduces Interchange Suite 3.0". Server Watch. IT Business Edge. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  23. ↑ "Context Media Introduces First Web Services Software Client To Provide Universal Access to Enterprise Content". PR Newswire, United Business Media. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  24. ↑ "Executive Profile; Andries Van Dam Ph.D.". Bloomberg Business Week. Retrieved 8 February 2012.
  25. ↑ LaMonica, Martin. "Oracle acquires content-management tools". CBS Interactive. CNET News. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  26. ↑ Ricknäs, Mikael. "Mobile Social Network Connects to Facebook, Twitter". May 7, 2009. IDG News Service. Retrieved 6 June 2012.
  27. 1 2 "CHANGES IN GEOSENTRIC OYJ'S MANAGEMENT". September 22, 2010. EuroInvestor.co.uk. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  28. ↑ "Genasys and GyPSii Sign Strategic Agreement to Offer Location-Based Social Media Solution to Telefonica’s Latin American Mobile Subscribers". February 12, 2010. Business Wire (Berkshire Hathaway). Retrieved 6 February 2012.
  29. ↑ "GyPSii Tops Two Million Users". May 19th, 2010. GyPSii.com. Retrieved 11 February 2012.
  30. ↑ "'Friend locator' could become next craze for social networkers". AFP News. Feb 12, 2008. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  31. 1 2 Salz, Peggy Anne. "One Mobile Search To Rule Them All? GyPSii CEO Dan Harple Talks Location Services, Open APIs & Cool New Ways To Record/Search The Real World On The Move". May 25, 2009. MobileGroove. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  32. ↑ Cieslak, Marc. "Rise and rise of the GPS mobile". Click, the BBC's flagship technology programme, Friday, 7 March 2008. BBC. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  33. ↑ Mika, Niclas (Feb 13, 2008). "Telcos battle as Net brands go mobile". Reuters. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  34. ↑ "GyPSii Launches New App". Wireless News, Close-Up Media, Inc. March 15, 2010. Retrieved 5 February 2012.
  35. ↑ "Engineering hall of fame". The University Pacer. University of Rhode Island. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  36. ↑ "URI to honor 13 alumni during ceremonies June 2". University of Rhode Island. Retrieved 7 February 2012.
  37. ↑ "Directory of Fellows". CambridgeFellows.com. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
  38. ↑ "Advisory Panel". Buzzards Bay Coalition. Buzzard's Bay Film Festival. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
  39. ↑ Harple, Dan. "Harple Family". Retrieved 12 February 2012.

Further reading

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, March 24, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.