Headworx

Entrepreneurship, in one form or another, has been my bloodstream almost forever. It is a way of life. Fueled by desire to create, and not really by the need to earn money. Really, spawning lasting creations that are meaningful to other people, is my ultimate goal and reward. Yesterday. Yesterday I was repairing my mother's car finding the battery was completely dead. I took my son to a local automotive parts shop to buy a new one. The shop has been there as long as I remember, with the helpful owner always at the desk. We paid and he printed the invoice. He is still using the point of sale software I wrote 20 years ago. He has been running his entire business for 20 years using the software I created with my own hands back in 1993. And he is still one of tens of thousands using this software. Just try naming any software (an "app" as we call them...) today that will be meaningful and used on a daily basis in 2033. With all due respect I do not see a candidate. I pr...

In July 2011 we started as a software company. But being in the area called today the Internet of Things, we've been increasingly more and more involved in hardware. Initially doing only reference designs and prototypes, now we are becoming a regular hardware vendor: in 2014 we plan to roll out several hardware devices. Hardware is difficult. As Ben Kaufman (Quirky) says: "The thing standing in your way is not money, it’s the whole process". I can only confirm this experience. In 2013 we've worked with several engineering companies helping us with hardware design and the manufacturing process but all cases the process has been painful, expensive, and ineffective. I've been in software business for 25 years and I've been observing the evolution of tools and methodologies. It's been the fastest evolution I've witnessed. The frameworks for software design, implementation, testing, deployment are simply incredible today. And so are the processes and ...

As a customer, I've never fully appreciated the industrial design. I mean personally, as a buyer, not as a seller. The soul of an engineer inside me has always wanted function first and foremost. Leaving the form irrelevant. Fortunately Adam, my co-founder, is exactly at the opposite end of the scale. To the extent he finds it difficult to fully embrace our current F&Home system, just because it is ugly. Well, may be not that ugly but not very attractive looking physical form. So I have hard time pushing him the "eat our own dog food" mantra, especially when I see his wry face looking at what we have on the table today. I say fortunately, because I do understand the industrial design matters a lot. We have fantastic team of design / partners working with us on the next generation design. It is hard to imagine a better company for the task. But I have to admit, I was a bit surprised last week, during a joint workshop, when I learned a flat, table-top form factor w...

Just as we've decided our users would never need the reset button , our competition comes with an alternative approach - they think reboot is used very often and put it on a remote control (see the photo). Intel calculates a family of four will move from having 10 connected devices in 2012 to 25 in 2017 to 50 in 2022 ( link ). I wonder what a family of four will use as a provisioning and management platform for 50 connected devices. Or will they employ a full time sysadmin? Two years ago I predicted autonomous planes would be put to service by courier companies before self driving cars hit the road. I meant UPS, FedEx, DHL. Certainly I underestimated Amazon who has just announced the Prime Air service . Anyone thinking WiFi is the right choice for Home Automation must be nuts. Last week I've spent three days trying to set up a set of Belkin WeMo sensor + wall plug. No success. I tried four different access points, iOS, Android. They just don't connect to any of my ...

I'm fresh from a short Winter break - a quick jump to the alpine slopes for a snowboarding session. There and back more than 2000 kilometers on the road in my friend's new Subaru Forester. The all-new Forester is IMHO the most perfect machine on wheels, especially the DIT turbo engine coupled with the CVT gear-less gearbox is a wonderful combination. It is the first auto transmission I've driven, which has virtually with no lag. And in the center of this wonderful package sits the all-new Harman Kardon multimedia console, which is - simply speaking - awful. The Forester is MY2013 and so is the console. But the GUI on it looks like an old 2003 passive-matrix no name phone. Poor resolution (in the retina days this one seems to be 240x160) and completely crappy graphics with no particular navigation logic. A button here and a button there, having nothing in common with today's standard set by the leading phone/tablet operating systems. And I'm not even touching thi...