Ran · Zingy · 2006–2007

MD, Head of Mobile Development — carrier decks and top US titles

MD, Head of Mobile Development

MD, Head of Mobile Development in New York: owned development, QA, support, and operations for 50+ mobile applications across 27 carriers, five major platforms and 70+ minor ones, six billing systems and four DRM systems. Client binaries were typically under 64K on handsets often below 40 MHz; carrier compliance testing made post-release upgrades expensive, and an app that fell off the carrier deck did not earn. Coverage across platforms, carriers, and handsets is why MapQuest Mobile, Vindigo City Guide, Moviegoer, GuysStuff, and Celebrity stayed in the US top ten.

apps

50

carriers

27

MapQuest US share

30%

City Guide ads / month

$320K

Plaxo signups / day

800

• MapQuest Mobile: #1 selling phone app in the US (~30% of the market; Weather Channel ~5%); major upgrade added multi-stop routing, points of interest, and Canada (Java, C++, J2ME, Python).
• Vindigo City Guide: third-best-selling US app and #1 in the UK; banner-ad upgrade brought in $320K/month (Brew, C++, J2ME, Java, Python).
• eBay Mobile and New York Times Mobile: Java clients plus a new syndication workflow so New York Times Mobile news feeds could land on carrier news decks.
• NBC Weather Mobile for Sprint then Cingular, 35+ MIDP 1.0/2.0 handsets: MNG animated radar maps (platform extension), real-time weather alerts, and tabular screens that had to fit small Samsung devices (Java, J2ME).
• NBC, NBA, NFA, and NHL fantasy gaming: high-score server and games CMS in Stackless Python for mobile multiplayer / fantasy titles, handling over 4,000K simultaneous players and used as a trial for later server work.
• Plaxo: on-the-go personal-content sync with maps and travel directions; shipped on 38 Verizon (Brew, C++) and 37 Sprint/Cingular (J2ME) handsets; ~800 new subscribers/day after the November launch (Java, J2ME, Brew, C++, Python, MIDP 1.0/2.0).
• Moviegoer: first US mobile Flash application (early Adobe seeding partner); showtimes, images, trailers, reviews, and maps for US/Canada on a Python backend with 96+ data feeds; Verizon bestseller for four consecutive months (Brew, Flash, Python).
• Rewrote the Vindigo client in PhoneScript against a new asynchronous backend (J2ME, Brew, Symbian, C++, PostScript); ported the original client to Windows Mobile (C#), Palm OS (C), and BlackBerry (J2ME).
• Built a new async Java NIO backend (async-j); integrated the new IPAY billing system (Java).
• Worked with Adobe on a Flash/ActionScript UI framework for phones; started Dashcode/JavaScript work for iPhone-suitable apps.