ALL THINGS DIGITAL: Fullpower's Motion-Sensor Advance

Philippe Kahn's history of entrepreneurship is nearly as old as the PC itself. He developed software for the Micral N, one of the earliest commercial personal computers, back in 1973. As CEO of Borland Software Corp. (BORL), he touted himself the "barbarian" of the software industry and embraced that identity by holding one of the first press conferences for his company in a McDonald's restaurant in Las Vegas during Comdex. Ousted from Borland in 1995, Kahn went on to found wireless synchronization outfit Starfish Software, which he sold to Motorola Inc. (MOT). He followed that up with LightSurf Technologies, a picture- messaging company acquired by Verisign Inc. (VRSN) in 2005. Today Philippe Kahn is CEO of Fullpower, a company developing accelerometer-based hardware and software.
Walt and Kara welcome Kahn to the stage.
- Fullpower, says Kahn, has developed the MotionX Recognition Engine, a technology intended to do for motion and gesture what speech recognition did for speech. "We've created a system that studies how you move as opposed to reacting to it."
- The first demo involves a headset with on-board motion sensing. "Basically what we've done is build a motion-sensing headset," says Kahn. The headset will differentiate between the sources of motion of its user - if the user is walking, or running for example.
- Kahn calls a colleague wearing the headset onstage. Colleague begins walking and then running around the stage. The headset tracks the users speed and distance and the user can tap it for spoken updates about his or her progress.

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