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T&T Q&A with Jeff and Karen Siegel How did you come up with the concept? What’s in the future from ActiveCaptain? Five years from now, what will the next big thing in electronics be? What’s your background and expertise in technology? |
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What is your background and expertise in technology that enables you to offer all those wonderful services and products? Jeff and Karen Siegel: We're entrepreneurs. We've been building high-tech companies since the 1980s, generally in the medical device field. Jeff is the software developer with 35 years of experience. Karen is the MBA marketing person, having worked for Apple previously. We work really well as a team. Jeff comes up with hundreds of ideas. Karen weeds out the dreams from the potential products. If an idea gets through Karen, it's worth pursuing. Our first company, Evergreen Technologies, developed the first software product to receive an FDA approval for clinical diagnostic use. The product, MedVision, connected to CT, MRI, nuclear, and ultrasound devices and used PCs and Macs as viewing and diagnostic tools. It seems like an obvious type of product today but it was very unusual in 1989! Back then, doctors bought their computers just to run our software. Evergreen was acquired by a large pharmaceutical company in the mid-90s and its technology is used throughout the world today. We also produced a tiny EKG device that uses a Palm PDA as it's viewing device. It's still available today. It has won many awards including Palm's product of the year in 2002 against 75,000 other entries. We developed and manufactured the hardware and software for that product. The development of the EKG device made us realize that these "palm-sized” devices have uses in many areas. As we started cruising, the entrepreneurs inside us kept coming up with ideas about how they could be used for boating. In 2003 we pitched a product idea to Maptech for a "chartplotter in a PDA." Outdoor Navigator was born on three platforms and sold by Maptech. In reality, there's not much different from the medical imaging we did with MedVision and the imaging we do to display nautical charts. Those 25 years of imaging experience is why our software pans and zooms nautical charts so silky smooth. As Maptech was falling apart, we realized that much more was needed to supplement chart display on PDAs and the coming "smartphones." After much experimentation and drawing from our own experience, we realized that the combination of chart display with an electronic guidebook fit our own cruising needs. We thought that there was a need for a product that performed the functions not handled well by a chartplotter. That idea got through Karen. What is ActiveCaptain? Access the award-winning series on mobile phones in boating by clicking here |
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Stay informed with Trawler News from Trawlers & Trawlering! |
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