General Magic

Darin Adler has been programming computers since 1976. He loves to do it. His first major professional experience was at Apple Computer. In 1988 he led the team that rewrote the Macintosh Finder in C++. Before that project was completed, he was shanghaied to be the technical lead for the System 7 project (these days they would call it "Mac OS 7"). The group he formed to help him do that, the Blue Meanies, is still a legend in the Apple community. Since Apple, Darin has worked at General Magic as an architect of the Magic Cap OS, used the moniker Bent Spoon Software to do consulting, and helped start Eazel, a company that worked to make Linux easier to use and developed the Nautilus graphical shell for GNOME. Since 1997, he has worked from his home in Los Angeles, CA, collaborating with clients and coworkers in other locations. He prefers to use and program Macintosh computers with C++. But work on the GNOME project is best accomplished with a non-Macintosh PC. (That's why Darin is sitting in front of two computers.) The other people working on the GNOME project don't like C++, so he's writing a lot of C code these days. The picture shows him hard at work with his C++ guru, his daughter Sophia.

A principal of Colla Voce Consulting, Matt Prather is a musician and actor by education and training, a teacher, writer, and editor by background, and a voice-interface designer by well, by design. Matt completed undergraduate studies with a magna cum laude B.A. in Music Education, a minor in Theatre and Spanish, and a desire to see them all come together in his profession. After graduating, Matt worked as a teacher and an actor in the Seattle area, before becoming interested in the emerging world of personal computers in the mid-1980s. This led to a career change in 1986, and Matt found himself submersed in the world of personal computer interfaces, as a documentation writer and editor. Gradually, he came to be more and more interested in helping shape the interfaces people used, rather than simply writing instructions for interfaces others designed. In the 1990's, Matt was fortunate enough to work on the Microsoft Windows Sound System, an early forerunner of much of what is now standard functionality in Microsoft Windows-based computers. In 1994, Matt took a position with Borland Int'l, to learn to dovetail the emerging world of the World Wide Web with his interest in speech applications, and to put to use his growing interest in product usability. From there, Matt has put his VUI-design, writing, voice-over, and project management skills to use at such notable voice-application firms as General Magic and ScanSoft, as well as independent consultation. Matt now holds a Graduate Certificate in Management of Technical Information from UC Santa Cruz, and a summa cum laude MS in Technical Communications (HCI) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.