1. How long has your company been around?

Established in 1997.

2. What inspired you to start in this line of work, or, how did you get started in the iPhone accessory industry?

After the iPod was launched, we saw an opportunity in this area and changed the company direction (from conventional type of electronics) to accessory business.

3. What has your relationship been like with Apple and its Fans?

As an official licensee of Apple, we have been working closely with Apple on MFI and WWI products. We have been listening to the consumers to delivery products that they need and the response has been great.

4. What effect did the leaks of the new iPhone have on your business?

It was an opportunity for us to confirm the new design.

5. From idea to production, about how long does it take you to bring a product to market?

From three to six months depending on the product (accessory / audio/ etc). Our core competency is to bring the product out in the market fast. Speed to market is the key for our success.

6. Which of the accessories that you make is your favorite, and why?

I like all the accessories we make but like the audio/video products the most as we try to bring innovation to these product lines.

7. Which if any of your products do you personally use?

I use the iMM190 and iMM178 alarm clock at home, use the iAD115 and iAD10 to charge my iPhone in the car and use the iPhone case (iCC79).

8. Besides the design, what’s else is different about of your new products for the iPhone 4?

The difference comes from quality. We spend a lot of time and effort on quality assurance to make sure we bring top quality products to the consumers. I am also proud about our packaging. The new iPhone 4 case packaging clearly stands out compared to the competition.

Related posts:

1. Interview: OtterBox
2. Interview: Grove
3. Interview With Kaya Kaplancali the CEO of Bioserie

1.  How long has your company been around?

Grove was founded conceptually about a year ago by Joe and I. We started working towards making the best iPhone case in the world. Due to our relentless pursuit of perfection, it took us nearly 9 months from concept to creation to release our 3G case.

2. What inspired you to start in this line of work, or, how did you get started in the iPhone accessory industry?

I am a furniture designer (www.tomitadesigns.com) and Joe runs a laser engraving business (www.engraveyourtech.com , www.engraveyourbook.com). Making a bamboo iPhone case and using a similar business layout as his engraveyourbook series was Joe’s idea. We decided to partner because I am an expert in working with bamboo and could help execute the product design part of his vision.

3. What has your relationship been like with Apple and its Fans?

We love the fanatical love that Apple fans have towards their products. We thought that since apple fans care so much about their apple products, they would appreciate a niche company pushing the limits of product design.

4. What effect did the leaks of the new iPhone have on your business?

The leak of the iPhone4 ironically was on the same day we released our 3G case. It probably affected our sales on that product because people started thinking about the 4 much earlier than “normal”. I’m sure Apple lost millions of dollars on 3G sales as well. We are not bitter about that though. We are very excited about our 4G case and are happy to be able to offer a very reasonable price-point for a custom handmade product.

5. From idea to production, about how long does it take you to bring a product to market?

To develop the overall design and figure out how to make it in bamboo took us 9 months. We really pushed the limits of the material to make the thinnest, most ergonomic case possible that would be durable as well. It was very very difficult to execute but we gained a plethora of expert knowledge in the material and case design. We put a lot of time into our package design and overall creating a product that is to the highest standards of quality. That experience has transferred over to future products such as the iPhone4 which we will be able to develop much faster. In general, we don’t release products until we believe they are the best possible. We don’t believe in releasing products early just to make money. We want to be proud of what we do first and foremost so that will never happen.

6.  Which of the accessories that you make is your favorite, and why?

We only have the 3G case out right now but are coming out with an iPad case soon.

7.  Which if any of your products do you personally use?

I started out with an natural/black tree and then Nando Costas design in Amber/blue. Now I have a sumi case with green bezel with the tree. I like the sumi cases with colored bezels myself.

8. Besides the design, what’s else is different about of your new products for the iPhone 4?

The 4 case is carrying over similar features from the 3. The design is intended to compliment Apple’s new design direction with more rectilinear lines and chamfers. The iphone 4 is so thin that are case comes in at under 1/2″ thick. It only adds .07″ thickness to your phone. I think this is especially important on the 4 because part of its appeal is its extreme thinnness. A new feature on the 4 is the brushed stainless steel bezel option.

Please remember most importantly: Grove strives for excellence in product design and ethical business practices beyond conventional thinking. We do not outsource but rather make everything ourselves with pride in Portland, Oregon to insure the highest standards of quality.

Related posts:

1. Interview: OtterBox
2. Interview With Kaya Kaplancali the CEO of Bioserie
3. Interview With Adam Behringer Founder and CEO of BeeDocs

How long has your company been around?

We have been around since 1998, and working hard to serve our customers ever since.

What inspired you to start in this line of work, or, how did you get started in the iPhone accessory industry?

We initially started with a line of waterproof boxes. Customers loved the rugged protection the generic boxes offered and requested something similar they would be able to access their PDA through so we created a custom case for PDAs, moved on to include BlackBerry devices and have expanded from there.

What has your relationship been like with Apple and its Fans?

The cases we offer for any Apple product are always atop our best selling list, we have a really strong customer base made of up true Apple lovers which means they are obsessed with their devices and need the best protection for them.

What effect did the leaks of the new iPhone have on your business?

The new iPhone is obviously on top of the priority list for us, among a few other hot devices on the market. We are working really hard to make sure those iPhone 4 users don’t have to go too long without protection. The scandal of the leaked iPhone was more entertaining for us than helpful I think. However it did create a lot of buzz around the device and get people talking about it – if they are going to get one and what case they are going to choose for it.

From idea to production, about how long does it take you to bring a product to market?

It depends on the series, the Defender Series is more complex than a Commuter or Impact Series design and it also depends on the device. Our first design for a slider phone, the Palm Pre, took longer than expected because of the convolution of how to make the two pieces – one protecting the front and one protecting the back – slide in tandem. Idea to production is generally several months. A lot goes into each design because they are so customized, not a lot of other cases are that way.

Which of the accessories that you make is your favorite, and why?

My favorite line is Defender Series line. I think its ingenious, I wish I had come up with the idea. It is by far the most reliable protection you can invest in for any device and offers so many benefits – protection for the screen and keyboard/keypad, covers ports and plugs, protects from drops, among other things. Its what we’re most well known for and the case line OtterBox customers love! Everyone Defender Series user has an incredible story to tell about how OtterBox has saved their device.

Which if any of your products do you personally use?

I use the Commuter Series case on my device because the Defender Series is not out yet. I also use the OtterBox 1000 for my digital camera and a few other dryboxes for things around my house and garage.

Besides the design, what’s else is different about of your new products for the iPhone 4?

I honestly don’t have that info yet. All I know is we are making an Impact, Commuter and Defender Series case for the new iPhone.

I’d like to thank Kelly and the OtterBox crew for making excellent products, and answering our questions quickly and effectively.  There will be more such interviews with other companies coming in the near future.  If you’d like to learn more about OtterBox and their current offerings, visit them on the web.

Related posts:

1. Review: OtterBox Defender for iPhone 3G/3GS
2. Interview With Kaya Kaplancali the CEO of Bioserie
3. Interview: DriveSavers

Drive Savers is a data recovery laboratory – so you can imagine that they had some pretty useful insights on the matter!  This is a very lengthy interview, and we had an excellent discussion.  Even though, the text below is edited for length.  To listen to the full audio transcript, just follow along to the bottom of the post.

If you want to find out more about DriveSavers after reading my interview, please feel free to visit them on the web at www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/

Q: What can you tell me about your program?

A: We are a professional secure data recovery laboratory – we provide a service – which is data recovery. We don’t sell any software or hardware – we are an engagement by crisis, engagement by need laboratory solely for the purpose of data recovery.

Q: What types of recovery do you offer for, for instance, the iPad, which I see you specifically support.

A: We service all data storage mediums, including the iPad – We have worked on all types of media, including the 5.25 inch hard drives which are now obsolete. Whether it be rotating disk, solid state, optical media.

Q: What do you charge for a typical user or incident for this type of service?

A; All costs are based on two metrics – the capacity of the media to be recovered, and the service level, or time frame in which they need the service completed. We have a variety of offerings to accommodate all customers, from a priority service in which we work around the clock on the device (We are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), to less rapid services. Standard service time is 1-2 business days, where the economy package has about a week turnaround.

Q: So, let’s say I have a laptop with a 320GB hard drive. It got caught in a fire. I’m not in a big hurry, I’ve got a few days to wait, what sort of figures would I be looking at?

A: Great question. Sounds like one of the 10,000 or so phone calls we get every month here at our call center. You might be an excellent candidate for our evaluation service. This is for any user who realizes the value of their data, but is also cost and time sensitive. We set up an in-laboratory free evaluation to determine the cost, which we facilitate by sending you a re-paid shipping container. We then provide the in-la evaluation, and contact you within 3 business days to let you know if, or how much data is recoverable, as well as the cost of recovery if we can recover data. At that point, the user can then let us know if they’d like to move forward with the recovery. The standard cost of recovery for 330GB using this method is typically between $1000-$2000. This is determined by the complexity of the recovery, how long it takes to perform the recovery, as well as the success of the recovery. Further, if we fail to get back the data you were looking for, you pay absolutely nothing.

Q: That sounds like a pretty good guarantee.

A: You know, while you mentioned guarantee, we cannot guarantee data recovery. We can guarantee that the best effort by the most secured professional laboratory is going to be executed upon the drive, but if we fail to deliver the results that you, as the customer, have requested of us, well, you shouldn’t be responsible for paying for it. And that’s why we offer the No Data-No Dollar policy on that service. Those other services – I informed you a couple of minutes ago about the priority service and standard service and these services are for people who are more time sensitive, but consumers through professional enterprise use these services. If you’re calling me with a different scenario where your business was failing today because your storage was offline and you needed the data yesterday, which is also a common call for us, you’d be more likely a candidate for our priority service or our security based service, for example. But, yeah, with your request as it was that’s a very common call in the consumer space for us.

Q: Mm-hmm. So, if I’m like most users, I probably watch shows like CSI and other crime related shows and they might occasionally show somebody diligently trying to recover data from a hard drive of some criminals or something of that sort. Now, how representative is that to reality?

A: Well, the CSI example is commonly used, I think, to kind of, well, as an analogy for DriveSavers to those people who don’t really understand what’s going on in the laboratory, although I think CSI and the ten different derivatives of that particular program do a very good job of over-glamorizing it. A lot of those technology that you see being used is probably not unlike technology you see in an ISO 5 certified cleanroom, like we utilize here at DriveSavers. This is really high technology stuff. The laboratories look just like the fabrication facilities of chip or hard drive manufacturers. I don’t know if you’re – how familiar you are with cleanrooms, but the type of the environment that we work on should they work in is not only certified at a particular level of cleanliness, but we’re required to work in those environments to preserve warrantee on any of these devices that we’re working on.

So, you know, in the field, I think a lot of users have – I don’t know if they have a very clear understanding of the type of things that we are doing in a laboratory, nor should they necessarily have a very clear understanding of that. An analogy that a lot of our users use just like that CSI analogy is the emergency room. And the reason of that, you know, as really crisis response, which is what we’re doing to any customer who calls us, who looses data. It’s very much like calling 911. You don’t ever want to call it, but you surely want to know that someone’s is going to pick up the phone quickly when you do.

So, that’s how we’re engaged. It’s, you know, there’s a fire burning. We need you to have put it out. Our business is going under water, you know, we’ve lost the photos of our home-birth of child, any of these things are all critical to each individual user as it is the perception of the value of that data to the user. And so, we treat all of them the same as if they are the highest priority customer coming into the emergency room and they need help now. And we really extend that same effort to, you know, recovering the images in a digital camera through the big enterprise professional who is sitting on 20 terabytes that are offline. They all need help and they all need it right away

Q: How long have you been in business and what got you started?

A: Okay. DriveSavers started in – back in 1985, and the data recovery industry did not exist at that time. The market was really about the production of hard drives and in fact the repair of some hard drives because hard drives were quite costly back in that day. And well, for reference, if you were to try and find a data recovery provider back in 1985, you surely couldn’t Google it because I think Larry Page and Sergey were 10 or 12 years old at that time when DriveSavers started. So, there was no way to search for it unless you’re part of a BDS or some service organization that knew about DriveSavers. The company was actually started and the principles of the company came from a hard drive manufacturer. That hard drive manufacturer actually went belly up and the concept of what you do about all those customers that you’ve stranded out in a field with product, they have no one to call. So, we required the technical support telephone number of that hard drive manufacturer and sure enough, customers started calling saying, “hey, I want my data back.” And that’s how DriveSavers was really born

Q: Wow, great. What’s the worst case scenario that you have ever seen?

A: What is the worst case scenario that we have ever seen, well, let’s see. That’s a very good question. I mean, everyday see some pretty ugly things. Worst case scenario. Well, I can tell you a fairly recent story about a particular unit that was recovered in a fire. About a month ago or so, there was a computer that was involved in a very significant office fire and it was documented post-fire for us with walls melting literally, equipment melted to table tops and a particular computer that had been badly destroyed in this high temperature fire ended up. So, we were called in – it seemed like there was no hope for recovery of the device whatsoever. It came into our laboratory, and within a couple of days, we had 100 percent of the data recovered for the user and they were extremely pleased with that since at the onset of it, it surely appeared to be an unrecoverable scenario. And we run into a lot of these types of calls everyday here at DriveSavers and we actually kind of trademark a term for it and that term is disk-aster. You can – yeah, you can go and see it on the web and you’ll see it on our web page and a disk-aster is simply when a disk and a disaster come into contact with one another and data loss occurs.

Q: Sure. Okay, so what advise then would you give to people with sensitive data? So, I mean, of course, disasters are always going to happen, but, you know, as far as back-up, what do you recommend users take as precautions and, kind of, as a follow up to that so the unthinkable don’t happen and, you know, a terrible fire occurs or an earthquake or some kind of disaster, are there things that a user can do to minimize the damages?

A: The reality is just that most users aren’t conscious enough to ask these questions, although we educate them about it as part of the process and we’re helping them. And I think we really enlighten a lot of people about the vulnerability of their data and the requirements of security so that moving forward, you know, after we’ve helped them recover their data, they have a heightened awareness about their confidentiality, their own data security, back-up of their information and really how to protect it. And that all starts with, you know, the unfortunate awareness that comes when their media fails and then the subsequent engagement with DriveSavers through the resolution of the data recovery and kind of this education we provide to them. You know, ideally the user leaves not only with their data intact, but with a lot more knowledge about how to, you know, prevent this from ever happening again.

These are all good questions. Let me see if I can tackle each of them. Okay, so the first question was about the awareness and how customers, you know, should be protecting their data. Well, we haven’t yet talked about encryption, but encryption is a very popular topic these days and in my own personal thinking is in three to five years from now, encryption will be the default for most storage configurations. By the way, the solid-state drive market in many ways is going that way with self inflicting mechanisms as is the hard drive market right now. So, although encryption, I think, might be a little intimidating to some users, the reality is that encrypting one’s data is one of the most critical steps in protecting it if it’s out of that user’s possession. And, you know, encryption when properly deployed and managed is an excellent solution. And as I said, I think it will be the standard, you know, default configuration for most people in the future. Imagine, you know, yourself. I’m not sure what storage you carry. I’m sure you have a phone, laptop, maybe a couple of USB keys, digital camera, and desktop computer. You have probably have all of these things and I don’t know if you’re currently running encryption on all of these devices, but what would happen if something was stolen from you or went out of your possession or, you know, you never used that. You never know what’s going to happen. So encryption is a great stuff. But that’s only one part of, you know many-step process to protecting oneself and it leads to the next logical step of back-up of the data.

You know, back-up strategies can take many forms depending on what’s required for a particular user. You know, the simplest form of back-up of course is a duplicate copy of the data in another physical location that can be something as easy as CDs or DVDs or copies of photos sent to, you know, the Kodak Library online or something like that. But, you know, real back-up strategy incorporates multiple peers of storage, you know, online storage a back-up has connected to your system, possibly a nearline storage device, the thing you’ll see in facility, but that’s not connected at all times. An offsite back-up, which is geographically isolated from the facility you’re in, just in case something happens such as fire or flood, for example, in a location that’s protected, that’s securely monitored, that’s environmentally controlled and, you know, that’s three different levels of backup I just described there that do a pretty good job of protecting somebody, although it might sound like overk to some users, it surely doesn’t – I can assure you – sound like overkill once we help them out with a data recovery and they say, how can I prevent this from ever happening again? The real key is to have multiple copies at multiple locations, all secured in someway. I’m, you know, not trying to intimidate users. We’re just trying to educate them as to how to protect their information. And the last part of your question, I think, was about minimizing damage?

Q: Yeah, you know, kind of the notion of, you know, if still a fire does occur and your hard drive is damaged, or an earthquake occurs and your hard drive is smashed, are there things you can do to sort of minimize the amount of damage done to that.

A: Yeah, great question and I’ll be answering – this is one question we wish we could get the message out to more users on because from the initial point of failure of any storage device until we actually get involved with the resolution, unfortunately, problems often get much worse and I think you’re kind of assumptive in your question and you know users can exacerbate a problem, basically. And so best practice is in the event of any type of a failure of a storage device is, the first thing is really, literally hands off. I mean get your hands off the keyboard. You know, you have to evaluate whatever failure has occurred and the irrational response to quickly trying to reboot the computer or download the cheapest piece of software where you can find, or start testing the disc for example, any of these things are quick in reactionary solutions that we understand people just want to get their system back up and running quickly and they just want an access to their data. However, if the storage device is suffering a failure and over 75 percent of the devices that come here to DriveSavers have an electromechanical malfunction that means the hardware is breaking. The best and safest things any user can do is to power off the system and contact us. We’re 24 hours a day with live humans on the phone and we will advise the user what is safe or not safe to do in the best interest of preserving the data on that device. The risk involved with someone continuing to work with a drive or any type of storage device that has lost data is that the problem will get worse as they are attempting to resolve it and they may in fact cause it to be unrecoverable through their efforts as good as their intentions maybe.

Q: Are there certain inherent differences between rotating and solid-state media? Is more susceptible to damage than the other?

A: That’s an excellent question. In fact, it’s asked to us quite often today in the context of, you know, should I move to solid-state, you know, from rotating hard drives. And for many people that question is automatically answered by a function of their purchase, right? The iPad for example, just like the iPhone or the iPod Touch, is a NAND-based solid-state storage device using no spinning disc. In your new MacBook Pro or your new MacBook Air, of course, you have the option of choosing solid-state disk versus hard disk and the reality today is that there is a lot of growth in that solid-state market, although it’s still makes up a very small percentage of the global storage pool. The perception in the market is of high performance, high reliability, low power consumption, long battery life, etcetera, with solid-state drives.

And the reality is that some of that information is true. The other reality of it is that we are dealing with a fair amount of failure in the field right now of solid-state storage devices and we are seeing twice field than in the laboratory here. Someone in the industry recently said to me, you know what the good news is about solid-state drives and data recovery? And I said, what’s that? And he said well, you do away with all the problems of having crashes and failed motors and mechanical issues. And I said, well, what’s the bad news? He said the bad news is you got a whole slue of new problems to figure out, right. You know, solid-state technology as far as real drives go is maybe about three years old and, you know, FAT based storage technology on the consumer side is, what, maybe about 10 years old, if you think of USB keys and things like that, you know, roughly.

Yeah. The hard drive market is about 53 years old and quite mature with a lot of skilled data and a lot of resources out there to the reliability of devices. You know, I think what we’ll see is a continued growth in the solid-state space with a continued growth in the magnetic no rotational disk space, increased reliability, you know, from both sides of it. But today, a consumer really has to decide if the solid-state is the right choice for them, given the fact that, you know, it’s 5 or 10 times the cost of rotational media. So, kind of a take-home message is, you know, this solid-state stuff, you know, you’re dealing with something that’s in it’s relative infancy in the industry and – so, there is a lot to be learned and of course dramatic improvements to be seen in the coming years.

Yeah. I believe that to be true and I am not sure that the manufacturers of SSD devices would necessary phrase it that way, but, you know, I think that you’re barking off the tree there.

I guess, I – in closing, I would say this is that our experience at DriveSavers has shows us that regardless of what technology you’re using for storage, whether it would be magneto-optical storage, whether it would be tape technology for back up tapes, whether it’s hard disk, whether it’s a RAID system, or whether it’s solid-state based storage, the one guarantee is that all is going to fail at some point. And the question is not really if, but when and are you prepared for it? So if you are using the greatest – latest greatest state-of-the-art, you know, solid-state devices where you’re gotten eight year old, you know, ATA driving your system, you should protect the data on both of them because they’re both going to die at some point and you’re probably going to loss the data from both of them. So, a back up is still the best hard drive out there. No matter what anybody says, you always need to maintain a bit verified back up of your critical data.

Interviewer: Great. Well, we certainly appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and provide this information! Thank you very much.

Audio for DriveSaver’s Interview

Related posts:

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All it took was one pass of Clarence Clemons’ sax through our Shure SE530s for us to tell you that you need the DPS Plug-In. Anytime you decide that you are going to somehow make the SE530s better, we are going to call you names and make fun of you, but if for some miraculous reason you do acheieve what you set out to do, all we can do is tip our hats and swallow awards. Case & point: the DPS Plug-In. And remember, if you don’t believe us, there’s a free trial.

What was your background before Bongiovi?
I’m a musician first and foremost. I started as a musician when I was thirteen and that was in 1967, so I’ve been in the music community for quite a long time. I started my recording studio here in Port St. Lucie in 1996 as a development studio and that’s how I met Tony (Bongiovi) and how this whole thing with Bongiovi Acoustics got started. I worked with a couple of national acts and that’s how we got together. Concurrent to that I also do systems development. I’ve always been in the technology field, doing consulting for that community and I always had an interest in digital recording and all things digital…so my background is multi-discipline in this regard and I’ve done audio engineering in my studio.

How did Bongiovi Acoustics get started?
When we first started this company, it originally was an entertainment company since everyone in our company has a music industry background as either a player or engineer. We started back in 1999, as an entertainment content company and as of course as we all know, the record industry is a mere shadow of what it used to be. In 2003, we revisited the analog circuit that eventually became the Digital Power Station plug-in, the originally analog box that Tony had built in 1982 when he had this concept. We pulled that box out of the closet and cranked it up and we found that it did amazing things to audio. At the time when Tony was originally developing it, the DSP technology was really in its infancy and it wasn’t until the late-1990s/early-2000s that the DSP technology really came to the fore with enough horsepower and built-in math functions to really make it an economically feasible platform to do the processing that we do. We embarked in that mission in 2003 and we started with automotive because we figured that was a good place to start because everyone complains about their car stereos and we branched out from there. As part of the development process for our various platform products, the plug-in was a natural byproduct because it gave us the ability to test these various profiles.

How did you guys decide to expand into the medium of computer audio (from car audio)?
It was by accident. The concept is relatively different in that we assume that the mechanical pieces (speakers, amplifiers, etc.) can do a function, regardless of what the function is. From zero to x, somewhere in there is the quality spectrum for a speaker/amplifier combination. As you know, most people agonize over the engineering of the components. Tony’s vision, when he engineered this, was the reverse of that: let’s take and adapt the content (the program material) to the environment, rather than the other way around. Most manufacturer’s view this as taboo because everybody assumes the thing that you hear on the disk is the artist’s vision. That’s true. However, we all know that they listen to them on expensive studio monitors in a pristine environment that few people can replicate that in their home – so there is always some form of alteration of what the artist heard in the studio to what gets played back in a typical home system, whether it’s the most expensive or the cheapest thing you can buy. So, given those assumptions, Tony was looking for a way to, in real-time, essentially to do what the mastering engineer does when he is fine-tuning and mastering the final product – to match the product to the medium. So that was the premise the product came from. Once we had the analog box with all discrete electronics, circuit boards and that kind of stuff – it was far too expensive to manufacturer. I think the component price was somewhere around $2500 if you had to buy all the pieces: the resistors, the capacitors and the ICs. It was just too expensive to commercially manufacturer for the average consumer to plug into their system.

We picked cars because, at the time, Tony was doing some consulting for 3M for marine acoustics products that he developed and was traveling quite a bit. He has a very unusual background, he is a recording engineer, an acoustic engineer and a record producer rolled up into one package and it’s a very unusual combination. It was by virtue of the acoustic engineering discipline that he was doing consulting and renting a lot of small cars to drive to the various consulting jobs. He was renting various small cars like a Dodge Neon or a Chevrolet Avero – and finding that the stereos were horrible. You probably have had rental cars or small cars and don’t pay any attention to the stereo system. So, he thought this would be a really great place for this technology because the only alternative is to go to Best Buy, Sound Advice or some high-end stereo place and spend $1500-$2000 to get a nice stereo system. So we picked cars, took the analog box, put converters in a rental car and had to deal with all kinds of noise issues – it was quite a challenge, but it worked. We got interest in Detroit and that was when we decided to make the jump to digital – we had interest from a market – it was cars. We designed a circuit board and at the time based it on a TI DSP, a mirror of what the analog box did and we contacted a digital programmer in Gainesville, Dr. Glenn Zelniker. He started in the whole digital realm when it was in its infancy. He was a professor at the University of Florida and he is also a mastering engineer in the musical field. A lot of digital software tended to be kind of harsh back then because it was still 16-bit it was more sort of stair steps then a curve when they were redoing the frequency regeneration. He was able to prototype for us on this piece of hardware. But we found it kind of cumbersome to work with. He said, how about if I give you a computer interface to tune and prototype with where you could just feed an audio stream either from the Mac hard disk or from CD or other sources; process it using the Intel processor in the Mac computers and then spit it back out in the speakers or the headphone jack. We said fantastic because it would give us a portable platform that gave us a consistent and repeatable interface from which to work. So it was kind of the precursor to what the plug-in became. As we began to branch off from cars into other fields, we would use this tuning program for pretty much everything. We’ve tuned everything from cars to transducers for overhead headliner systems; we’ve even tuned coffee cans with transducers because the technology has so much power. You have something like 60 dB in cut or gain in any one frequency and 16 bands of parametric EQ to play with and 120 different calibration points between dynamic sections and ways that we can manipulate the audio signal coming in – so we can have surgical precision in the tunings. So we have experimented with lots of things. One of our fun demos was we had a pair of speakers we bought from Radio Shack for $4 each, mounted them in cardboard boxes and put them on the table and use the tuning program to demonstrate how good we could make them sound. If you take your time and you tune your speakers, you can make them sound like several hundred dollar speakers. By subjectively listening and knowing what you are listening for, you can tune them quite well.

Anyway, the plug-in itself was sort of a byproduct of that tuning program because we kept using it everywhere and since it is patented, we wanted customers to be able to experience the difference with their own devices to better understand what our value proposition was with the product we built-into to their devices. We developed the plug-in as something that we could leave because it worked with pre-existing profiles that we did for that particular device, and it could be toggled it on or off anytime as desired. So we just kind of glossed it up a bit to make it more stylistic for a demo platform. We have a lot of young people in our office and studios who use Macs and they told us that this would be a great product for their computer as well. So we said, let’s go with it and see if we can commercialize it. We then added a nice wrapper and modified the interface to provide the user with a complement of tools to manage their plug-in. We also started looking into how we wanted to handle the multitude of different devices (speakers and heaphones.) We decided that we could develop a library of profiles over time depending on needs. If someone says, “hey, I got a pair of JVC VM361 headphones” and if there’s enough interest for that device – we’ll go buy a pair, we’ll tune them and now that’s part of our permanent database. There is a feature in the plug-in tool menu that allows the user to check our on-line database for new profiles. These custom profiles take best advantage of those headphones/speakers and then for those who aren’t as discriminating to what they are listening to, there is a series of universal ones.

Okay, time for a shorter question… What’s your favorite part of the DPS Plug-In?
It’s portability. It depends on how you are asking me. As a business person my answer is: it’s a great way I can show someone what my technology can do. My personal listening: it’s flexibility. Because I have a bunch of different devices (speakers/headphones) that I listen to here in my office. The fact that I change it on the fly and use the same interface and screen this and the fact that I can just chose what profile I want is magical. I love that. I can then make it be anything I want it to be.

How would you differentiate the DPS Plug-In from other iTunes plug-ins like SRS Labs’ iWow?
Before we decided to launch this as a commercial venture we looked at the competition out there and of course SRS was pretty much the one and only product except for the EQ you get in iTunes. We found that most these processors, once you’ve set it, is passive sort of one size fits all. There is a very different mixing paradigm when you mix a movie versus mixing a record. A record is mixed on my stereo, close proximity monitoring and all that. A movie is done in a large movie theater with a console to hit the sweetspot and you have a lot of room for air and sound to fill up and then you put it on a DVD and then you stream it, movies go to heck in a handbasket pretty quick because it’s not designed to be played back in a small space. So with iWow and others, it’s fairly passive – it doesn’t do a lot of adapting to content. You find something that works, like a Swiss Army knife. It works generally well and that’s about that. Since we are actually readapting the content to the listening environment we have a much broader base from which to work and the results can be more profound. We are not only providing perceived audio enhancement, but also are able to work with the leveling control. Since we are tuning it subjectively, our baseline are certain records that have digital maximum – we kind of set threshold where our loudest piece in a theoretical record. So we are doing a leveling as well as an EQ to adapt the content to what the speakers are capable of doing and at the same time also making sure that the speakers do not exceed their mechanical limits.

What is the future like for the DPS Plug-In?
We are working on an audio product that can work at the full system level. There is a lot of content out there in different places other than iTunes. So we have identified that in our roadmap and the next release will be a broad-based plug-in that runs on all audio on the Mac and also for Windows as well.

What was the product that you noticed had the biggest difference with the DPS Plug-In?
The 17″ is really profound compared to on and off. We are very fortunate, one of our engineers works in New York City. It has a relationship with a company that sells a lot of Apple computers. We were able to sit down with every notebook, Cinema Screen Display and the whole nine yards. That’s how we did all of our original tuning for Apple specific devices. It was neat to hear them all in the same day. They are all very different. The unibody machines sound very different then the Titanium ones like the MacBook Pro while on the 13″ MacBook the speakers are just so small. The difference is notable, but not as dramatic as the MacBook Pro. One of the things we have always had discussions on in-house was: What do people listen on more? The machine itself or external devices. So we’ve been experimenting with a bunch of external portable speakers. Personally, I bought the iHome IHM79 $49 capsule speakers. I found that for the price they are very effective portable speakers. If I were asked what would I want to have for a traveling companion for the field, it would be: a MacBook Pro (17) because it has three speakers – two speakers and something near the front you could call a speaker and then those iHome speakers for the price. It’s got really nice low-end and real nice characteristics and they are very portable because they are very small.

How do you use the DPS Plug-In on a daily basis?
When I have to do demos, I use a regular Samson headphone amp that you would use in a studio just to match the impedance because often times what happens when you do a closed turning system like we do on the Mac, the minute you move away from devices specifically designed to work off the headphone/speak port (such as conventional eight ohm speakers) weird things happen. You probably saw the same thing when you pulled the audio out and directed it to an external amp, you can get some variations due to the mismatch of impedance and such things. So, I use a headphone amp because I’ve used it in a studio and I’m comfortable with it. (Joe then tries to find it) It’s got two channels in, what you would use as a headphone mixer, I’d use it quite often when I’m profiling exotic materials. I’ve got automotive headliner material that I sticky tape transducers to and then play through iTunes and it sounds phenomenal for a piece of foam backed cardboard. The design of the foam that is attached to the cardboard part of the headliner is very constant in terms of structure so it resonates low-end very consistently across the surface. I typically use a pre-amp to get enough power these digital cardboard speakers.

I don’t know if you noticed or not in the iMac, there’s a limiter built into it. When you get to a certain point in volume, there’s a hard limiter in there that starts clamping down on the audio and makes tuning a real nightmare because as you are trying to apply gain in a controlled manner it’s pushing it down in an uncontrolled manner. So I found that the most consistent thing to do with the Apple products (since they do have some sort of protection built into the circuitry anyway) is to stay in their closed loop i.e. products designed as headphones/speakers for a computer, this way you get predictable results. If you go outside the closed loop, you can lose the predictability and you have to be more sophisticated in the sense that you need to tweak it to accommodate any differences you may run into.

How long does it take to make a profile?
The algorithm is the same regardless of what device you use. Typically there are two parts to the profile: controlling the gain structure, which is determined by the amplifier side of things and the sound sculpting. We have a dynamic section that we use to breakdown the material from audio to voltages and deal with the gain issues. Then we rebuild it and so that we can accommodate the playback device. When you are in a world like the Mac, the circuitry is fairly consistent in terms of the amplifier, however the number of speakers (and placement) vary. So once we have the device, (when we are doing something in the Apple family) usually we can tune the it within an hour or less because it’s pretty much fine tuning something that we are already familiar with and adjust from there. We also always A/B (process on, process off) as a reference. If we are doing a set of cup headphones for example, if you are just tuning them straight by themselves it’s hard to know what you are shooting for – you don’t have a goal. The rest of the process is a subjective thing. We tune to a broad section of music (usually to urban or dance because it’s the most bass intensive) and that’s usually the biggest challenge. With this type of music, you have a load of frequency response to deal with and care must be taken so that we can tweak the low-end to be solid, tight punchy and not compromise anything else (mids, highs etc). Focusing on the mids and the highs is the easy part, while the low frequency, particularly in a small device like an earbud, becomes more challenging because the speaker can’t move very far and is constrained by its container. Tuning external speakers is a little different, because with some of the wireless speakers the bandwidth of the transceiver becomes a limiting factor. Rarely do we agonize about something for more than an hour and a half. Usually it’s that last two percent that you are agonizing over. If it’s a very exotic piece like a DJ rig where you have a lot more volume then you might agonize a lot more as there is more to work with relative to the speaker’s ability to perform.

How can user’s get there device added to the list of profiles?
If there is device that a user would like us to profile, just ask. We will consider tuning just about anything within reason. We have a set of SE530s on order. I’m hoping to have them on tomorrow. (Charlie then brags about the SE530, talks about the SE535s, later in the week Bongiovi uploaded the profile. Joe does refer to them as the “holy grail”) We thought about going out and buying 50 or 60 pairs of headphones. But then we thought, we could spend money until we explode until we get everyone’s wishes done. So we did a series of ‘universal profiles’ as benchmarks and then said let’s see what kind of feedback we get from our users. That’s why we love the forum we can find out what people are actually using and we get a request that makes sense we’ll happily go out and buy them and put them up the next day. Hopefully by then, we’ll be able to fill all the holes of what people are using both high-end and low-end. Obviously, the low-end is a lot easier to get, high end ones become a bit more challenging because of availability. That’s how we wound up doing the Dre Beats and the Gagas because someone in France asked if we could do them. But if someone asks we’d be happy to do what we can.

The rest of the interview was a discussion of the recording industry, Charlie’s love of KRK studio monitors and a lot of other audio things that you may or may not be interested in.

We thank Bongiovi Acoustics, particularly Joe for all of his time. Most of the headphones that we review in the future should have profiles for the DPS Plug-In.

Related posts:

1. Video Review: DPS Plug-In by Bongiovi Acoustics
2. Review: Bongiovi Acoutics Digital Power Station Plug-In
3. Interview with Matt Engstrom

My interview with Jordan Reiss after the jump…

Hello Jordan, please introduce yourself to our readers

Hi Dan. Thanks for the interview. Happy to introduce myself. I’ve been living and working in San Francisco now for over 10 years – developing and managing various B2C Internet businesses. My e-commerce career started in 1999 after hooking up with the owners of Timbuk2 Designs – the bicycle messenger bag company. They wanted to take their business onto the Internet and I was brought on board to figure out how to do that. We ended up launching an award-winning site featuring one of the first e-commerce-enabled product configurators on the Internet and I had the pleasure of then managing the web business.

Timbuk2 was a total blast – being able to connect consumers directly to our San Francisco factory floor via an entertaining web interface, watching hundreds of custom made bags go out the door every day and then seeing them all over the streets in cities all around the world. It was a really fulfilling end-to-end experience for me. We ending up selling the company in 2003 and in the process I met Brett Lovelady, the owner Astro Studios – one of the top product design firms in the country. I was way into the B2C business model and Brett was looking for a way to do more with his company’s product design capabilities. Astro Studio’s pedigree in the video gaming space was well known and it didn’t take long for the idea of Astro Gaming to crystallize. We wrote a business plan and got the company funded a little over three years ago behind a pretty simple concept – to make the world’s best gaming peripherals and to actively support the lifestyle & culture of video gaming. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few years.

Please describe your experience working at Timbuk2 and the reason why it became so popular

When I joined Timbuk2 in 1999, the company was a ten year old cult brand with hundreds, if not thousands, of small retail bike shops and outdoor stores selling their bags around the world. The bags sold well, the company had tons of happy customers, but retailers weren’t tapping into the real unique aspect of the brand – the customization and build-to-order capabilities the owners had spent so much time perfecting.

Retailers didn’t care about the fact that we could crank out a custom-made $100+ messenger bag in any one of a billion combinations of colors, fabrics, features, etc. They just wanted the lowest common denominator basic black, blue or green bag and didn’t want to be bothered with custom orders.

Luckily the Internet and e-commerce had started to take root and the retailers’ loss was our gain as we were able to offer a personalized shopping experience that put the power of product design into the hands of the customer. And I think that was key – giving consumers some say in the design of the product they’re purchasing, and then being able to deliver that custom-made “unique to me” product in a day’s time.

Of course in the success you can’t overlook the fact that the Timbuk2 brand had ten years of real grass-roots brand authenticity behind it and the product itself was a great product. That’s the real difficult part, in my opinion – making great product and creating an authentic brand. The purchase experience and delivery mechanism are both important, but you’ve got to be able to deliver on your product and brand promise otherwise you don’t have much longevity in the consumer products business.

After selling Timbuk2 in 2003, what was the process you went through with Brett Lovelady (Founder of Astro Studios) to create Astro Gaming?

When I met Brett in 2003 we hit it off immediately. He had been running Astro Studios for over 10 years and he was looking for a way to do more with his business. I was totally jazzed by my experience at T2 and wanted to create a new consumer-centric business and here was Brett with a team of really talented product designers cranking out amazing product concepts for some of the biggest brands in the world. You should look at their portfolio – it’s amazing – Nike Triax Running Watches, the Compaq IPaq, Alienware Computers, the Xbox 360, HP Blackbird & Firebird…. As far as video gaming hardware is concerned there can’t be another independent design firm in the world that’s done more iconic products than Astro.

Brett & I started talking about how we could harness some of his team’s creative horsepower to proactively create our own products. Given Astro’s pedigree in the gaming space it quickly became an obvious decision for us what we needed to do. Video gaming had transformed from a slacker hobby for kids into a multi-billion industry – bigger than Hollywood and music as far as I can tell – and some gamers were even making six figure incomes playing video games. We felt that gaming peripherals were severely behind the maturation curve of the industry so decided that we’d leverage Astro’s expertise in product design and pioneer our own brand of high-end peripherals. As Brett likes to say – we want to develop products that improve the “sport” of video gaming

How is Astro Gaming different from other companies such as Logitech and Turtle Beach?

I think there are a lot of differences between us and other companies in our space. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. One of the biggest differences that I see stems from the fact that we don’t sell through retailers. We’re 100% direct to consumer. This enables us to put so much more build into our products because we don’t have the 100%-200% markup inherent to the multi-tiered retail distribution model. Having no retailer in the mix also means that we’re able to design our products purely with the gamer in mind – versus trying to hit some retailer’s artificially created price point. That almost always leads to a neutering of the product down to some lowest common denominator version of what the gamer really wants.

I also think we’re taking the time to set the foundation for a real lifestyle brand at Astro Gaming. We spend the vast majority of our discretionary marketing dollars supporting gaming events and tournaments – we’ve been the Official Licensed Headset of Major League Gaming (MLG) for three years now… it’s these grass roots activities that we think are critical to creating the long term value in the Astro Gaming brand.

You demoed the first prototypes during the 2006 2007 MLG seasons with Str8 Rippin and Carbon, what was that experience like?

Talk about a fun product design experience. During the early phase of our initial product development program we had the fortune of meeting a few members of Str8 Rippin’ – one of the top MLG pro teams. They helped us understand the audio and communication deficiencies inherent to their in-person gaming tournaments so we created a prototype of a “team mixer system” consisting of a 9-channel mixing board (5 voice channels + 4 game audio channels) and five custom headsets. We then showed up at one of their tournaments in Orlando Florida to put it through the paces with them – with $20k of prize money on the line.

The mixer unit was an eye-catcher to say the least. Housed in a milled-out block of aluminum with all sorts of LED lights, powered by 12 D-Batteries, it weighed close to 40 pounds and had over a dozen different wires to connect to get it running. As you can imagine it was the talk of the show as one of the top teams was using this crazy device to help them with their game play and from their reactions we knew we were on to something.

To make a long story short, I found myself playing a one-man pit crew for Str8 Rippin for the rest of the 2006 season. Having to run ahead to every station they were playing at to set the monster up, then break it down, run to the next station, set it up, break it down… Then when the 2007 season started we added a second mixer to the equation for Carbon – the 2006 Champions, and I then found myself at one event carrying two of these crazy devices around the MLG events bouncing around like a pinball ahead of these two teams.

Luckily the devices ultimately got banned from competition until we had commercially available product to sell. So halfway through the 2007 season we were able to put the prototypes to pasture and focused ourselves on getting the final products ready for customer shipment, which happened with our product launch in April 2008 when we became the Official Licensed Headset of Major League Gaming.

Once you officially launched the A40, what was the reaction like?

We couldn’t have scripted the reaction any better. By the end of our first “official” season with Major League Gaming in 2008 we had just about 100% usage by all of the top teams, we’ve received dozens upon dozens of awesome reviews from various gaming magazines and websites… and we’ve done some special edition collaborations with folks like Konami, Penny-Arcade, Upper Playground. We’ve even got some of the industry’s biggest game developers outfitting their studios with A40’s to provide their developers with a best of class audio experience as they create the next generation of video games. So it’s been a great introductory product for the brand. No complaints whatsoever.

Congratulations on the release of the new A30s, what was the goal behind this new headset?

Thanks. We’re stoked on this product. The idea behind the A30 was to create a gaming headset that could be used across different gaming platforms while at the same time serve as your go-to headset for all your audio and communication needs. Most gaming headsets are purpose-built for the living room – big and bulky or with custom cables that don’t work on anything but gaming consoles… But today’s gamer isn’t just sitting in a living room playing games – he (or she) is out and about, using rich-media devices and connected to the internet at virtually every waking moment. We wanted to create a headset that supported that lifestyle, and the A30 does just that. It’s a gaming headset first – but it’s so much more…

What has the reaction been like for your recently launched UK branch?

The UK is one of the biggest gaming markets around and so far we couldn’t be happier with our launch there. There isn’t a big Console league like Major League Gaming in Europe, so we’re getting involved with more smaller events as we build the brand….and so far so good. Europe represents a good chunk of our business right now and given the reaction to date we’re investing now in expanding our European operations and eventually will add more foreign language support as we grow.

Many people right now are not sure what the new A30 headset is, can you describe how it is different from the A40?

The A40 was purpose built for the professional gamer using it in a LAN environment. It’s an over-the-ear headset with an open-back construction – so it doesn’t block out much outside noise, but you can wear them for 12 hours straight and your listening fatigue would be minimal. This is a critical element for the tournament gamer playing in matches all day and night for days on end. Also the audio of the A40 is tuned specifically for gaming – with less emphasis on the lows and highs and as the mid-range is so critical to game play sounds.

The A30 is an extremely light weight, on-ear closed back headset. While it’s lighter than the A40, it’s on-ear design and closed-back construction creates more of a seal around your ear and hence more noise isolation than the A40. So you can use the A30 out on a noisy street or in an airplane and not have your audio drowned out by the background noise. In addition, the audio has been tuned for more multi-purpose use – still with an extremely accurate mid-range, but with a little more support at the lows and highs – providing a little richer sound quality when listening to music. Last but not least, the A30 comes with an in-line microphone built into the headset cable – so when you’re out and about and you don’t want to have a big boom mic protruding in front of your face, you still get voice communication capabilities. Personally I use my A30’s almost exclusively with my iPhone and laptop and use my A40’s at home when gaming on a console.

So two pretty different headsets, although both with a heavy dose of the same Astro Gaming DNA.

Why is it that Astro has yet to release a product that doesn’t have an extremely attractive look? What are your design standards like?

Well first off, thanks for that compliment. It’s hard to describe what makes good design. But given that my co-founder, Brett Lovelady, is one of the leading figures in the product design world, I guess it’s not a surprise. I certainly can’t take any credit for it – that’s all Brett and his team of designers. I can tell you that Design is a C-level function within our business – meaning it’s on par with Finance, Marketing, Engineering etc. It’s an easy discipline to ignore, but you can see how valuable it is when Design is incorporated throughout the process.

What can we expect from Astro Gaming in the upcoming years? (A50?)

Oh man – we’ve got so many products on our roadmap right now. There are just so many product categories in the gaming space that need shaking up. We’ll continue with audio products of course, but at some point we’ll be adding wireless products, controllers too – you name it. We’re going to be doing this for a long time and have really barely begun the task at hand.

Thank you Jordan for taking the time to talk with us.

Related posts:

1. Astro Brings Us the A30s
2. Review: Astro A30 Cross-Gaming Headset
3. Review: Astro A40 Audio System

Our interview with Tony Arnold after the jump.

Hello Tony, please introduce yourself to our readers.

Hello readers! I’m Tony Arnold, and I am an Xcode-a-holic. I spend my days (and some nights) writing Mac and iPhone apps both for my own business – The CocoaBots – and for other companies. I live with my partner Leah in Newcastle, Australia – an active port city about 2 hours north of Sydney. Most of our free time is spent renovating a beautiful old home we bought two years ago.

How did you get into application development?

I’ve always been interested in computers. I was that annoying kid who broke absolutely every machine I ever touched because I just needed to know how things work – many a mac LC lost its ability to boot under my curious fingers and impatient clicks. My first foray into ‘proper’ development started when I was in high school – I was sick and stuck at home for a month, so I borrowed a book on CodeWarrior and proceeded to make myself very, very confused. I don’t think I ever actually wrote very much using CodeWarrior because I was introduced to the BASIC programming language not long afterward (and at the time it was all gobbledegook to me, so less confusing gobbledegook was a good thing!). I spent a few years convincing myself that knowing BASIC was enough before “The Real World™” kicked in, I finished high school and went off to get a job doing web development (which, like brown onions on belts, was the fashion at the time).

I released a bunch of smaller apps for managing modifications to Unreal Tournament on the mac (I think it was called UTLrX or something equally teenager-centric), and then didn’t really code much of anything on the mac for a few years. Around 2005 I got serious about mac app development when I picked up development of VirtueDesktops – an open source product. It was a tour de force of learning, and the best professional decision I ever made. I screwed up big time while I learnt, and caused all sorts of calamity early on, but it was public, it worked and I quickly worked out up from down. By the time I stopped developing VirtueDesktops in 2007, I could proudly put my name to an app that many people loved.

I didn’t really stop after that.

What did you do before you created applications?

I have over 10 years professional experience as a web developer and team leader. I coded, designed, managed, cajoled and caressed a massive web site with hundreds of authors, and managed a small, smart development team. Doing web development is my other passion, and I still try to pick up web work where I can – there’s something strangely calming for me about working with web-based technologies.

I’ve also done a lot of work over the years in digital production, and I once started a degree in visual communication (but didn’t see it through).

What led you to create Hyperspaces?

Originally, Hyperspaces was just an experiment. I wanted to know if I could make something like VirtueDesktops work under Spaces when it was released. Most of the calls from Tiger that let Virtue do its thing were still there in Leopard, but some of them had shifted enough to make it more effort than it would have been worth. Virtue had also turned into a kitchen sink product – it did everything. People had setup their entire workflow around features that I didn’t even think belonged in the app. VirtueDesktops was also licensed under the GPL, which meant that it could not be used in commercial or otherwise licensed apps. I’m against viral licenses like the GPL – I believe they work against the free use principles of open source software. You’re either with the license, or you’re against it when you use GPL. That’s just wrong – open source is more about community to me, and it meant that other great apps couldn’t integrate with Virtue.

So I started fresh – building from the ground up. I had two goals in mind when I started:

Whatever I did had to remain as simple as Spaces;

If possible, I wanted to augment Spaces, not replace it. I was not building my own virtual desktop implementation.

After a couple of months investigating and coding some proof of concept versions, I began to realise that there was enough demand to justify an app that people would pay for. So I dug my heels in when I wasn’t at the day job and started writing the shell of what would become Hyperspaces.

What is the story behind your companies name?

It was a joke between me and a few of my workmates:

We all loved Cocoa/Objective-C and the mac;

We also loved Transformers (because they are seriously kick-ass).

Combine Autobots with Cocoa, and you end up with CocoaBots!

It gave me an excuse to walk around the office hollering out “CocoaBots – transform and roll out!” whenever we needed to go to a meeting, get coffee, get lunch… you get the idea.

I liked the way the name sounded, so it stuck.

Where do you find inspiration?

Mainly in the work of my peers. There’s rarely a day that goes by now that I don’t see something that another mac or iPhone developer has done and think “Oh, wow – that is really something new and unique!”. Using an application that has received real love and attention from someone pushing themselves to do better is inspiring to me.

I’m a firm believer in working on things that you will love and use yourself – I’m not interested in writing hundreds of applications for the sake of making money. Being passionate and happy with what I do is far, far more important to me.

I also draw inspiration from beautiful, tactile, digital design that makes your brain explode when you see it. Tumblr has turned into a fantastic haven for the most bizarre and beautiful mix of layout, words and images I’ve ever seen – I’ll often get lost there for an hour or two each week just exploring.

I do the same with Github occasionally – there are so many wonderful pieces of cast-off code that make my life so much easier.

What is your favorite Mac application?

Oh, that’s hard! Do I have to pick one? Here’s a few I absolutely could not live without:

The Hit List – my life is organised in here (Andy, you don’t ever have to update this app – it’s perfect as it is, mate!);

Anything by MacRabbit – Jan’s apps are a major inspiration to me. His codez are perfect;

iChat – I spend most of my waking life on iChat;

Dropbox;

Safari – WebKit has single-handedly wiped the floor with all of the other browsers, and it has made developing web sites downright fun.

I could give you a list of utilities that I think everyone should have installed, but we’d be here for days.

What should we look forward to with Hyperspaces?

I have a couple of minor point releases coming this year – I blogged about version 1.1 a month ago, and at this stage I’m still in the process of adding support for setting different customisations for every one of your displays. This is something that should have been there for 1.0, but it wasn’t ready in time. I’m also aiming to localise Hyperspaces to a bunch of different languages, but I expect that’s something that will take a few updates to complete.

Looking at my ‘investigate this’ list for Hyperspaces 1.x in THL, I can see scripting, light/motion/multi-touch input, and Quartz composer backgrounds. There’s a bunch of others too, but I’ve got to have something up my sleeve

Further down the track, I’d really like to introduce some more advanced window and application management features – I’ve sorely missed being able to hover my cursor over a window and flick that window to another space without actually going there. Of course more eye candy These will probably end up being version 2.0 features.

Do you have plans for future applications?

Yes, definitely! I’m currently working on another mac app that the previously-employed-by-the-man me would have loved: something to do with looking after very large web sites. It’s early days for that app right now, so I don’t want to say anything just yet. I’m aiming to have something to show by the middle of the year.

I’ve also got a couple of utilities for the iPad in prototype stage. Stuff I’d use day-to-day to manage my business, but again it’s all very early days! My focus really has been on Hyperspaces lately.

There are other ideas in my multitude of sketch books, but nothing that has grabbed me the way Hyperspaces has (yet).

Thanks for taking the time to talk with us!

Not a problem – it has been a pleasure! Thank you, Daniel.

Related posts:

1. Review: Hyperspaces
2. Christmas in February Part 1: ColcaSac & Hyperspaces
3. HyperNumbers! (Hyperspaces Giveaway)

Our interview with Kaya Kaplancali follows after the jump…

Hello Kaya, thanks for joining us today. How did Bioserie begin?

I was already developing another brand focused on mobile phone accessories including for iPhone for the past 2 years. Business was not as brisk as we hoped for and I was looking for a breakthrough or “hero” product. I started researching for untested materials and concepts and decided on incorporating bioplastics into our products; it seemed like an interesting and ethically advanced idea, with good commercial prospects. To cut the story short, I ended up spinning off the bioplastics project when we couldn’t agree on the business plan with my previous partners. Luckily I was able to find new partners and investors willing to back up the project, and we quickly established a new company to focus on bioplastic and environmentally friendly consumer products. We then proceeded create a suitable brand from scratch, which ended up being “Bioserie”.

What did you do before you worked with Bioserie?

I have an MBA and a PhD in Management. My early working years were spent in our family companies, involved in manufacturing textiles, mostly for industrial and technical uses. Although I have a business education background, the years I’ve spent in the technical textiles business gave me a good grasp of advanced materials and manufacturing processes. In 2003, I accepted a job offer and moved to Hong Kong to set up the operations of a first tier accessories supplier to a major mobile phone brand. In 2005, I took a new job in a well known American case and bag brand concentrating on Apple carrying accessories. In 2006, I moved on to establish my own business, and continued to work on Telecom and IT accessories business.

What was the journey like when developing this eco-friendly iPhone case?

It was fun and interesting, and since bioplastics is a new and growing field, it’s intellectually very stimulating but also challenging. We received a lot of help, both technical and marketing, from NatureWorks LLC, the producers of the Ingeo biopolymer we use. NatureWorks were very supportive of the project from day 1, and stuck with me throughout the difficult start. Majority of the creative people we worked together on the branding, marketing, and content development aspects found the subject interesting and ethically rewarding, so it was a very pleasant and productive working relationship from the very beginning. An interest point is, we actually ended up underselling the product to optimize packaging message for markets worldwide; although the whole product is almost certainly biodegradable and compostable, we’re not advertising this aspect at the moment.

How long did I take to develop this case?

Because of the material and new production process development aspects, it took more than 6 months to achieve the level we felt comfortable with. Since bioplastics is a very new field, our raw material development continues to this day, and we’ll be releasing an improved formulation product in Q3 2010, which will far exceed the product requirements. If we had to start from the inception of the idea, it would be more accurate say the whole process took one year. We’ve spent the last 6 months making sure the brand identity, written and visual messages match our brand vision; I think this was necessary to put the brand on a sure footing and help us expand the product line effectively.

How are these cases created? What is the process like?

Firstly, we’ve developed our own special bioplastics material formulation to reach the product quality we wanted. We collaborated with several world-class biotechnology and plastics companies to develop the formulation, and I believe we have acquired significant technological edge throughout the process. We operate on a strictly outsourced model, and we used this model to our advantage by collaborating with excellent freelance design talent, expert manufacturing partners and boutique creative agencies. Focusing on a single product at launch – which seemed contrary to business practice – helped us to create a superior product with real design, material, and usability innovation. We plan to continue on this uncluttered and focused product assortment path.

What can we look forward to from Bioserie?

We’re planning to continue developing bioplastic and truly environmentally friendly accessory products for Apple Inc.’s mobile devices throughout 2010. We’ll be adding iPod touch and iPod nano based accessories to our product line soon, and a product for iPad is also possible in 2010. We have ambitious plans for long term, and we want to continue developing bioplastic and best-of-class environmentally friendly consumer products for the future.

Thanks for taking the time to take with us.

Check them out at their website located here!

Review coming soon…

Related posts:

1. Bioserie’s iPhone covers are now available
2. Interview with Keith Pichelman CEO of Concrete Software
3. Interview with Oliver Breidenbach Co-Founder and CEO of Boinx Software Ltd

Our interview with Bruce is after the break…

Hello Bruce, please introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m the author of Thinking Home, an application for making your home interactive and smart.

Thank you for inviting me today.

How did you get into the world of developing?

I’ve been fascinated since I first saw personal computers, but really knew Apple was on to something huge when I saw the first Mac demo.

What did you do before you developed applications?

Electrical engineering mostly.

That’s still fun.

What led you to create an application like Thinking Home?

I started tinkering with remote controls and X-10 home automation and realized there wasn’t much available for the Mac. This was especially true for making the home interaction smarter, like adding a little logic with scripting. The software that was available with scripting could not store a schedule and let you turn off your Mac.

Have you hit any major speed-bumps in your journey?

Not really. There have been many challenges, though. Most hardware has some idiosyncacies or just plain bugs. They are often not documented, so finding them and working around them can be difficult. Overall, though, it’s been fairly good.

Do you plan on creating future applications? If so what kind?

First, I’ll be adding even more hardware models to Thinking Home. Eventually, I might look into writing a FileMaker/Bento sort of app to use with MySQL. Every MySQL app developer seems to think that a plain table is enough. Anyone who has used FileMaker or Bento knows that databases can be much easier to use by normal people.

What is your favorite Mac application and why?

Hmmm, a lot of good candidates there. OmniGraffle is outstanding. It is very well designed, powerful, yet easy to explore and use.

What advice would you tell someone who is thinking about getting into the developing business?

Master object-oriented programming. The concepts lead to much better software design. As a result, you end up with better software faster and can more effectively build on it and maintain it.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with us.

It’s been a pleasure; thank you for inviting me.

Related posts:

1. Bruce Sewell to Join Apple as General Counsel & SVP – Daniel Cooperman to Retire
2. Review: Thinking Home
3. Interview with Keith Pichelman CEO of Concrete Software

Hello, Dene thanks for taking the time to talk with us.

No problem. I don’t get out much these days, so doing this is the closest I get to human companionship. I’m so cooooold…

So, what led you to join the app making world?

For some years I’ve felt frustrated with what seemed to be an increasing gap between what I believed I did for a living (make games) and what I actually did for a living (sit in meeting rooms and argue the toss over character motivation with other frustrated people).

There comes a time when you’ve got to put your money where your mouth is, or end up one of those embittered developers you see nursing a pint in dark pubs muttering to themselves.

What did you do before you created apps for the iPhone?

Before I started Fluttermind I was the creative director for the Microsoft’s Fable studio. That meant that I was the ‘keeper’ of all things Fable, the world, the characters, the creatures, spells the story – all those things that go to make up a coherent and enjoyable world. Some years ago, I stopped actually making those things myself and ended up reviewing other people’s work instead. It was fun for a time, but not so much in the long term.

What would you say you have enjoyed more, the large gaming industry where you came from, or the app business?

The business side of the app world is tough – really tough. It’s incredibly hard to make any kind of an impression on the public due to the massive quantities of software being released daily. It’s incredible. However, I’m drawing, writing music, coding and designing things myself these days and I wouldn’t swap that for anything. I’ve had the well-paid executive job – but in my mind, going it alone and coding small games again is a step up!

Now, lets talk about your app Flaboo, where did you come up with the idea?

Flaboo started life as a game called ‘Bounce’ which I wrote for mobile phones many years ago. It was an experiment based on minimal interfaces and control methods. On the mobile phone you only had one button for ‘flap’, no tilt and that was it. The chaos and variety came from the patterns of the clouds and the fact that they were curved.

Where did you find inspiration for Flaboo?

Flaboo’s main character is Fat Chick – he was inspired by a weird Korean toy that a friend of ours bought ages ago. It was huge. We made some jokes at the time that there was no way that thing would ever fly unless it lost a lot of weight.

Also, my brother, a fellow developer – the infamous Simon Carter – once lost his temper in a meeting, and we started talking about how he was ‘hopping mad Simon’. The original version of Bounce featured him for quite some time.

What were some issues you ran into while creating Fluttermind?

Seeing as how I’ve actually not done anything myself for nearly a decade, I had to learn everything from scratch again. Web design, asset creation, XCode, objective C, how to take a video of an app, how to upload it on Youtube in under a year… everything was new to me. On top of that, there’s all the company rubbish, like organising corporation tax. If there’s anything that makes me want to play Russian Roulette it’s tax forms.

Have you enjoyed creating apps for the iPhone OS?

Bar objective C’s idiosyncratic syntax, programming for the iPhone OS has been a breeze. When I started out back in 1985 (gulp) there was no form of help or support anywhere. If you got stuck or didn’t know how to do something, you were stuffed. You might have to travel to London just to look for a book. These days, the community is so vibrant, and so full of intelligent, helpful people that it’s a much nicer experience.

The iPhone itself is also ludicrously powerful, with (at least until recently) pretty unique hardware. I couldn’t have done things like ’shake off the goo by jiggling the phone’ and ‘pop bubbles with your finger’ in any other medium.

Do you own a Mac?

I do. I own a MacBook. Not a fancy one, a slowly yellowing white one.

After using your Mac, have you remained a loyal PC fan, or do you prefer Macs now?

I still use my PC a lot for development of assets. I bought a lot of software over the years, some of it really rather expensive, and it only works on PCs. If I had the option to go back and do it all again, I’d probably do it differently. There’s a certain ethos in the Mac world which I approve of. If the user doesn’t need to do something very often, don’t force them to wade through that crap to do what they really want to do. I’m lookin’ at you Windows…

Thanks for your time Dene.

No problem. Now, where’s my money? Come on! Hey! Don’t look at me like that! I have a wife to feed. Do you know how many Flaboo!’s I’m going to have to sell to keep up the mortgage payments? DO YOU?!!!

Related posts:

1. Interview with Keith Pichelman CEO of Concrete Software
2. Interview With Adam Behringer Founder and CEO of BeeDocs
3. Interview with Oliver Breidenbach Co-Founder and CEO of Boinx Software Ltd