Mobile tech, social good: How these computer scientists are making an impact

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Our latest episode of the GeekWire Podcast featured former Geek of the Week Yaw Anokwa. He’s a graduate of the University of Washington computer science program, the co-founder of the software startup Nafundi, and one of the computer scientists behind the Open Data Kit project (ODK), which provides smart forms for collecting data on mobile devices in rural areas, developing countries and other places with… Read More…

Geek of the Week: Heidi Yu, startup entrepreneur and ‘chic geek’ accessory designer

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Heidi Yu grew up in Chengdu, China, and has been in the Seattle region for seven years. A graduate of the Seattle University MBA program, she honed her startup skills in business plan competitions, including a winning plan for incorporating clean energy and road construction projects. After working as a business development manager for an… Read More…

Geek of the Week: Microsoft creative director Jeff Faulkner

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Jeff Faulkner is a Microsoft creative director who guides branding and user experiences for Microsoft’s entertainment division, with roots in the Xbox team. Now a Seattle resident, he’s a veteran designer with roots at agencies in Portland, working on a variety of high-profile projects. He’s speaking tonight in Portland about the intersection of technology and… Read More…

Geek of the Week: Software engineer Jesse Johnston is making medicine smarter

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Technology is playing a larger role in health care every day, but what if the pills themselves were smart, with embedded chips that work in conjunction with a smartphone app? That’s exactly what software engineer Jesse Johnston is working on in his role as a software engineer at Seattle-based Stratos Product Development. Meet our new… Read More…

Geek of the Week: Maria Zhang’s big-data startup shows you what’s ‘Alike’

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Maria Zhang, a software engineer and startup founder who has worked at companies including Microsoft and Zillow, knows a thing or two about gleaning useful information from huge volumes of data. She and her team are using that approach to help people find places to go, and things to buy. Their new app, Alike, debuted… Read More…

Geek of the Week: Apptio’s Bruce Henry, from nuclear physics to enterprise software

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 Bruce Henry has worked for years in the technology industry, currently at Seattle’s Apptio, where he describes himself as a “process and organizational change ninja.” But he didn’t start out in the software industry. His degrees are in physics. It’s an unusual transition, but it was his ownership of a propeller beanie that truly sealed… Read More…

Geek of the Week: Christian Hansson, Tango Card CTO

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Christian Hansson’s official title is chief technology officer at Tango Card, but he prefers to go by Chief Geek. The Seattle company offers an alternative form of gift cards, allowing people to use them at a variety of stores, donate to non-profits, and redeem their balances for cash. But what truly sealed his status as… Read More…

Geek of the Week: Eve Maler on data, identity and making the web a better place

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Our new Geek of the Week, Eve Maler, has worked behind-the-scenes for years to improve the technical underpinnings of the Internet — helping to create the standards and technologies that we use to share data online while maintaining our privacy and keeping our digital lives secure. Maler was one of the inventors of the Extensible Markup Language,… Read More…

Geek of the Week: Oren Etzioni on Siri, Burning Man and the promise of algorithms

Oren Etzioni. GeekWire photo via Annie Laurie Malarkey

Our new Geek of the Week, Oren Etzioni, is a computer scientist and serial entrepreneur who has a knack for building businesses based on complex algorithms that help people make decisions. If you’ve used the price prediction engine in Microsoft Bing Travel, you’re familiar with his work. Etzioni was the founder of Farecast, which Microsoft… Read More…

Geek of the Week: U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel is on a mobile mission at CES

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Posting from Las Vegas: The last time we bumped into Steven VanRoekel at the Consumer Electronics Show, he was working for Microsoft, looking to transform the way people use computers in their homes. Today he’s working for President Obama, as the U.S. chief information officer — attending the show as part of his mission of… Read More…