About the Author

Chuck Musciano (chuck.musciano@gmail.com) acquired a B.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 1982. Chuck advises a variety of startups in the Research Triangle Park area, bringing enterprise computing discipline and perspective to the world of internet entrepreneurs. His 15 years of enterprise management experience coupled with his very geeky technology roots gives him a unique perspective on the role computing plays in every aspect of business. His fascination with portable computing devices continues unabated, and his personal collection of handheld devices dating back to his beloved Casio Zoomer continues to grow.

Chuck lives in Cary, North Carolina, with his wife Cindy, daughter Courtney, and son Coleton. He enjoys photography, running, and backpacking when he is not tinkering with the latest phone or tablet.

Bill Kennedy (kennedymri@gmail.com) retired (at least for the moment) in the Fall of 2011 after merging his company, MobileRobots Inc with Adept Technology, Inc. the previous year. During the 15 years from start-up through merger, Bill wore many different company hats, including CIO, COO, CTO, documentation expert and president, to maintenance-in-chief. How he ended up chasing AI-based robots around is not surprising, given his many roundabout careers. Bill has a PhD in biochemistry/biophysics from Loyola University of Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and performed/published over 12 years of biomedical research in the early ‘70s and ‘80s, including a post-doctoral stint at Washington University and as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. Infected with an Apple bug (32K Apple II, really!) he and his life-by-improvisation wife, Jeanne Dietsch, started a software company in 1981, KenneDietsch Productions, which developed family games and educational programs. Needing a real job with benefits so they could start a family, Bill entered the publishing world in 1985 with International Data Group’s Peterborough, NH division as technical editor for inCider Magazine, and climbed the corporate ladder as features and senior editor for SunTech/SunWorld Magazine and as editor-in-chief of A+ Publishing, a multi-magazine venture including inCider, PC Games and Mac Computing Magazines. Bill was Chuck Musciano’s column and features editor for SunWorld Magazine when in 1994 they had the big idea of writing this book. (If we knew then what we know now after seven editions…) An avid, early user of the Internet since the mid-80’s, Bill and his wife co-founded ActivMedia Research, the first market-research firm ever to formally study businesses doing business on the Web. Their first report, published in 1995, contained data gathered by actually visiting each and every business web site in existence back then, if you can imagine! Always ready to embrace new technologies, Bill and Jeanne founded ActivMedia Robotics in 1996 and which now develops and sells more intelligent mobile platforms around the world than anyone else (http://www/mobilerobots.com). Who knows what Bill (and Jeanne, too?) are going to do next?

Estelle Weyl is a front-end engineer who has been developing standards-based accessible websites since 1999. She writes two technical blogs pulling millions of visitors and speaks about CSS3, HTML5, JavaScript and mobile wed development at conferences around the world.