Ted Cohn

I was hired as the first lead software developer and architect on the Nook team in Palo Alto, CA. We developed a series of award-winning e-readers from Nook Classic (grayscale), Nook Portable, and Nook Color HD tablets in record time with Android.

Piehole is a wild, fast-action 3D shooting-gallery arcade extravaganza. Destroy hundreds of targets using an array of crazy weapons, finding treats and treasure along the way. Annihilate your Facebook friends in fiery explosions for mega-bonus points in multi-gravity environments with realistic physics simulation for hours of fun.

I wrote this entirely from scratch in C# and JavaScript. I developed the original concept, many of the assets, and optimized for the iPad and iPhone. See video at www.rocktonic.com/trailer.

For Litl (Woven app), I developed a cool, complex, and custom view widget to represent favorite photos and videos on a scrolling rows of clotheslines and pins. It includes realistic swaying animations of thumbnails when scrolling, deleting, and changing screen orientation.

I co-founded Ugobe in 2005 and developed Pleo, a life-like pet dinosaur and a major robotic innovation. Bootstrapped from start-up to Series-D funding. Co-wrote the business plan, investor presentations, product concept, software prototypes, product requirements, motion control firmware, personality AI control in Python, assisted with company branding, conducted market research, and developed a technology roadmap and engineering plan.

As senior software engineer, I co-developed XBAND at Catapult Entertainment, the first peer-to-peer video game network over phone lines for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo (before the Internet took off).

Helped design its embedded operating system on bare metal platforms, developed key libraries, including resource manager, pattern allocator, image codecs, and smart card driver. Developed call-waiting detection (US Patent #5,651,060) allowing calls to interrupt games and then recover gameplay. I led the development team on back-end player matching service (using Oracle SQL), built a comprehensive national telephone database, developed top ten leaderboard calculations and player statistics. Also led a research project to determine network performance for internet gaming.

Method and apparatus for detecting and recovering from call waiting interruptions to modem communications.

Method and apparatus for providing multiple bit depth windows.

Accessible menu navigation techniques for electronic devices.

Accessible reading mode techniques for electronic devices .

Enhanced rapid serial visual presentation speed-reading for electronic reading devices.

System and method for navigating in an electronic publication.

System and method for providing product information.

System and method determining and displaying actions taken on digital content.

System and method for transferring content between devices.

I developed a number of applications and games in high school and early college:

• 1979-1982 Consulted for a number of small businesses developing custom applications and reports in Basic, Pascal, and Assembly language.
• 1980-1982 Developed and licensed a number of educational games for computer advanced ideas (CAI).
• 1981 Created and sold BugByter™, the most widely used, commercial, real-time 6502 debugger for the Apple II, distributed by CAI. Licensed BugByter to Apple for inclusion in its ProDOS development kit. BugByter was advanced for its time, sporting resizable windows, variable speed interpretive debugging, real-time view of registers and memory and more. It served as a model for the Macintosh's Macsbug debugger.
1984 Consulted for Professor Theodore Cohn (now deceased) of UC Berkeley's Optometry Dept. developing real-time assembly coded optical experiments testing visual acuity and reaction times.
• 1984 Developed Flappy™, a commercial game for Apple II sold by Unison Corp. of Berkeley, CA.

Developed a high profile, last minute trade show booth demo system using Wordpress/MAMP Pro. It lets attendees register and then select up to 10 from over 90 flavors to add to their custom liquid mix for an electronic inhaler. Custom PHP plugin, database tables, Bootstrap, jQuery and Masonry.

I was a consultant brought in to save GameOn's 2014 NFL season launch of its sports chat Android app 2014-2016. As a project lead for a chat app, I worked with a small startup team. I also helped design and launch the company's chatbot strategy in 2016.