August 15, 2006
Updates to 55ware.com.
November 5, 2005
I'm happy to announce, with SoundSpectrum on its feet, www.55ware.com
has been unmothballed and is once again my personal website, just as it once was so many years ago. For those that don't
know the history, allow me to turn back the clock...
I created the music visualizers "G-Force" and "WhiteCap" during
my later college years (1997-99) at Cornell
University as hobby projects. I was (and continue to be) fascinated with music, music visualization, abstract art,
and the boons of high-speed computation.
I created www.55ware.com in 1999 to serve as a personal homepage as well
as a home for WhiteCap and G-Force.
By the end of 2000, as digital music was taking flight, G-Force was available for almost every audio player
and had become fairly well-known because of unique and powerful approach to music visualization. In late
2000, Apple Computer contacted me in an effort to license G-Force for use in iTunes. It was then SoundSpectrum,
Inc. was born, founded by myself, Key Compton, and Gary Gluck. We reached an agreement with
Apple Computer, and when iTunes was first released in January 2001, G-Force could be seen as the built-in
visualizer and was shown off in national TV
commercials and
Steve Jobs' WWDC 2001 keynote. In the years that followed, I continued to develop and release new versions
of G-Force while I served as a U.S. naval submarine officer aboard USS Jefferson City (SSN-759).
By Fall
2003, SoundSpectrum went from being a past-time to full-time as we made preparations to operate as a
real company, first marked by G-Force going on sale December 2003, followed by www.soundspectrum.com becoming our official
site a month later. In October 2004, my commitment in the U.S. Navy was complete,
and I was finally able to give SoundSpectrum my full 100%. Around the same time, a fourth partner came aboard, my friend
and former Cornell classmate, Anton Shevchenko. Since then, things
have gone very well, and we have accomplished a tremendous number of engineering, business, and artistic milestones.
I continue to operate as SoundSpectrum's chief software architect, doing my best to take SoundSpectrum's software to a new
level, both architecturally and artistically.
I consider myself fortunate to have helped hatch a company that has
gone on to be successful and create software that has made so many people offer the kindest words to us. I wholeheartedly
believe the future of automated music visualization is brighter than ever before and packed with wonders that will one day
rival the greatest abstract art ever created. Art has a new medium: it's where music, art, math, and chaos all meet, and
only the right kind of software can take us there.
