In this Podcast Episode

Rob McNealy interviews Amal Graafstra, author of RFID Toys, about implantable RFID technology and his own RFID implants.

Amal Graafstra’s Bio

RFID Toys author Amal Graafstra, is the owner of several technology and mobile communications companies and a double RFID implantee. Amal loves thinking up interesting ways to combine and apply various technologies in his daily life.

Since learning about RFID technology used in cats and dogs for identification, Amal wanted to leverage that technology himself. Getting implants meant there was no need to carry an RFID access card around and he could implement his own RFID access control systems instead of buying expensive off-the-shelf products. Soon after getting his first implant and posting some pictures of the process for a few friends, word quickly spread over the Internet and soon he found himself talking to everyone from industry players to clergy to book publishers about RFID technology and its possibilities.

Amal has been interviewed about his adventures in RFID by television, print, and online news media from around the world, including the Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet program. He uses his RFID implants to log into his computer, access his front door and opening his car door.

In this Podcast Episode

Rob McNealy interviews author, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki about his latest book, Reality Check and his internet projects including Alltop.com.

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Guy Kawasaki’s Bio

Guy Kawasaki was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1954. His family lived in a tough part of Honolulu called Kalihi Valley, where he attended Iolani School. After Iolani, he attended Stanford University, where he graduated in 1976 with a major in psychology - the easiest major he could find.

After Stanford, Kawasaki succumbed to the wishes of his Asian American parents, and enrolled in law school at UC Davis.  He only lasted a week before he left, but the following year he entered the MBA program at UCLA.  While completing his MBA, he worked for a fine-jewelry manufacturer called Nova Stylings, where he learned how to sell.

Guy remained at Nova for a few years, until he was bit by the computer bug and took a job with an educational software company called EduWare Services. After Peachtree Software acquired the company, he got a job at Apple with the help of his Stanford roommate, Mike Boich. He spent four years evangelizing Macintosh to software and hardware developers and led the charge against world-wide domination by IBM.

Kawasaki left Apple to start a Macintosh database company called ACIUS, which published a product called 4th Dimension. from there he moved on to pursue writing, speaking, and consulting.  Eventually, Guy returned to Apple as an Apple fellow, in order to help maintain and rejuvenate the Macintosh cult.

Currently, Guy is a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures and co-founder of Alltop, as well as a husband, father, author, speaker, and hockey addict. In addition, he’s also written nine books, including his latest called Reality Check.

In this Podcast Episode

Rob McNealy takes time out at Defrag Conference 2008 to interview George Athannassov of WordFrame about how he got his start in enterprise social media software, as well as technology outsourcing to Bulgaria.

George Athannassov’s Bio

George started his first private company in 1993 and since then he is constantly involved in the IT sector. One of his companies - ConsultCommerce has been nominated by ZDNet as the developer of one of the best financial applications on the planet - LoanAmortizer. ConsultCommerce and ITBrix, companies where George is a managing partner have over 20 applications and online services that have over 25,000 customers spread all over the world. Almost all major banks and financial institutions are clients of LoanAmortizer while major government security organizations use TalkSpread.

The applications and services developed by the companies George is involved with include but are not limited to working time management and payroll solutions with ManuPlus and AutoPayRoll Applications, Online communication and collaboration - TalkSpread, NewzSpread and iNetMail, business process and revenue management with Cash Control Manager and PMA - Project Management App, financial applications with LoanManager, FloorPlan and LoanAmortizer, QView and QStat for Cisco’s Unified Contact Center, Freight Expert Software and Mobile devices software solutions and many others…

George and ITBrix funded Blogtronix in 2005 and was an active COO of the company till December 2007 when he sold his shares.

George’s and ITBrix’ latest endeavor is WordFrame Community Platform. WordFrame Community provides an out-of-the-box solution that allows teams to create Web communities for information sharing and document collaboration, benefits that help increase individual and team productivity. WordFrame Community is based on Microsoft asp.net 2.0 Framework. It includes IT resources such as community workspaces, blogs, user profiles, e-mail, document management, wiki, audio and video publishing, all secure and easily managed via a feature-rich administration shell. WordFrame Community enables users to locate distributed information quickly and efficiently, as well as connect to and work with others more productively.

George holds a Master’s degree in Finance and Business from the University of Plovdiv and have been managing software development companies since 1995.