Meet the deeda Team

Atif K Khan

Atif is the CEO and Founder of deeda Inc. His vision of a unified ecosystem for web, desktop and devices began with his graduate work in Neuroscience at Harvard University. Atif's research focused on "Proustian Memories" - the kind of memory, where an unexpected re-encounter with a scent from the distant past brings back a rush of memories. How does the brain create and maintain such complex links between such seemingly separated senses? More important, why don't we use this type of contextual interlinking between data and content in the real world? We keep our pictures in our picture folder, documents in a document folder - on the web we similarly isolate visual, auditory and text based content in separate sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, etc. There must be a better way to organize, link and recall such diversely related content.

The word deeda originates from “Dynamic End-to-End Data Aggregation”, the contextual mapping and data linking technology developed by Atif to bring Proustian Memories to the web, desktop and wireless device environment. Today, deeda Inc. is the corporate face for our set of Open Platform products: deeda.com, deeda Desktop, and deeda Mobile.

As the 2005 developer of his own set of capacitive-touch devices with wireless device-to-device capabilities, Atif has consistently remained ahead of this rapidly developing area in technology. Many aspects of his independent design and development work can be seen in technology that was eventually validated through Microsoft’s Zune, and Apple’s iPod Touch and iPhone. His work in developing wireless capacitive-touch devices and systems began in 2004 and has been acknowledged by the Boston Globe as well as through patents filed in this field. These include application 60/668,650, filed: 04/05/2005, as well as applications 60/881,815, and 60/881,808, Filed: 01/19/2007. These patents also cover Atif's contextual mapping and data visualization models for dynamically sharing and retrieving content across a web, desktop and device ecosystem.

Atif’s early vision for building wireless devices and web systems on an open-platform Linux based OS, along with an easily accessible open-development platform, have been further endorsed through strategies recently adopted by such industry stalwarts as Google and Facebook. Atif plays a principal role in all aspects of deeda’s web, desktop and device designs, as well as actively designs and develops all of the applications that run across the deeda ecosystem. As the principal architect of the deeda system he is also responsible for maintaining deeda’s intellectual property. Accordingly, his roles and functions at deeda Inc. are extremely diverse. When not managing and developing deeda's suite of products, Atif loves working on his second passion - Classic Muscle Cars.

Original SolidWorks renderings - 2005:

Representation:

Advisory Roles

Dr Mark Granovetter (Stanford University)

Mark Granovetter is an American sociologist who has created some of the most influential theories in modern sociology since the 1970s. He is best known for his work in social network theory and in economic sociology, particularly his theory on the spread of information in social networks known as "The Strength of Weak Ties" (1973). Dr Granovetter is working with deeda to help us develop models for analyzing our aggregated social web data. Our goal is to help empower our users by offering a deeper understanding of their social graph information, strong and weak-tie social influences, and something we've coined, "Personal Analytics".

The strength of weak ties

 

Dr Granovetter's most famous work, "The Strength of Weak Ties", is considered to be one of the most influential sociology papers ever written.
In marketing or politics, the weak ties enable reaching populations and audiences that are not accessible via strong ties. The concepts of this work were later published in the related monograph "Getting A Job", an adaptation of Granovetter's doctoral dissertation at Harvard University's Department of Social Relations, with the title: "Changing Jobs: Channels of Mobility Information in a Suburban Population".

Economic sociology: embeddedness

 

In the field of economic sociology, Mark Granovetter has been a leader ever since the publication in 1985 of an article that launched "new economic sociology", "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness". This article caused Granovetter to be identified with the concept of "embeddedness", the idea that economic relations between individuals or firms are embedded in actual social networks and do not exist in an abstract idealized market (a concept originally described in Karl Polanyi's book The Great Transformation). He is currently working on a book provisionally called Society and Economy.

"Tipping points" / threshold models

 

Dr Granovetter has also done research on a model of how fads are created. Consider a hypothetical mob assuming that each person's decision whether to riot or not is dependent on what everyone else is doing. Instigators will begin rioting even if no one else is, while others need to see a critical number of trouble makers before they riot, too. This threshold is assumed to be distributed to some probability distribution. The outcomes may diverge largely although the initial condition of threshold may only differ very slightly. This threshold model of social behavior was proposed previously by Thomas Schelling and later popularized by Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point.

Security influence

 

Dr Granovetter's work has influenced some researchers working in the field of capability-based security. Interactions in these systems can be described using "Granovetter diagrams", which illustrate changes in the ties between objects.


Dylan Schiemann

Co-Founder Dojo/ CEO Sitepen – As CEO of SitePen and co-founder of the Dojo Toolkit, Dylan is best known for building Web applications that make use of JavaScript/AJAX, Dojo, Comet and other Web development technologies. He has helped develop Web apps for companies including Renkoo, Informatica, Security FrameWorks, and Vizional Technologies. Dylan has been our friend and advisor from a very early stage. From advice on web hosting solutions to ‘big picture’ development strategies as well as inviting us to various Valley networking events, Dylan has been an extremely valuable asset to deeda Inc. Today Dylan and his team at Sitepen are working to help complete our products and realize our vision. deeda Inc. is also a client of SitePen.

Meet Georgia

So here is a look at what's been going on with deeda's Mascot - the '67 Mustang we affectionately call "Georgia" because she was saved from an abusive previous owner from Griffin, Georgia. As you know the start of our "Mascot" project began with the following endearing quotes:

1. "This thing is being held together by the roof."
2. "If you drive this car you will likely die from any of the following:

• Car will explode due to leaking and crushed gas tank.
• Front and Rear rails and sub-frame have rotted so badly the car can break in half over a bump.
• The entire front clip of the car can come off at any time.
• Whoever installed (insert any vital car part) was an idiot.
• Your fuel pump is sitting on the exhaust.
• Your brake lines will crumble if you touch them.

We quickly corrected all of the above issues and finally had a "running" vehicle. We grew used to the fact that the car had no power steering (no really we did). This car is seriously tough and mean, and overcoming all these major hurdles made her feel more at home on the road. It was as if we rescued her after decades of neglect and abuse, and now we were being rewarded for all our attention and doting.

And the sound... we'll have to save that for a later post... but it has to be the most intoxicating engine scream you've ever heard.

However, by February she was acting like my girlfriend and leaking oil everywhere. Err... well okay --- not really like my girlfriend --- but she was being temperamental nonetheless. What we ended up having to work on was:

• Leaking oil from the rear gasket seal
• New Brake Lines
• EFI ECU is acting erratic - Fuel is cutting on and off as engine heats up.
• We blew the T5 transmission and need to rebuild a new one
• Overheating causes radiator fluid to dump out of the overflow can

It was a nightmare at times, but we got through it with some great help from the guys at Atomic Transmissions in Villa Park. By the way, it was Chris over at Mustang Restorations in Dundee who helped us last year with the extensive frame work that had to be done. Joe would have helped out a bit more if he wasn't busy working on deeda's sister car (a black '65 Fastback)-- more on that later.

Anyway, aside from all of this work getting done the spring ended with me wet sanding the paint to a brilliant shine. Like everyone else who looked at our car, the famous quote: "I don't know how to tell you this, but..." applies to the paint as well. It turns out the morons who originally owned this car never got around to finishing the paint. They just sprayed clear coat and went for a drive. However, after a day of careful wet sanding the original Wimbledon White body with Guardsman Blue stripes have come to life.

Here is what we have today:

In honor of where we found her, she has been christened Georgia.

What's left on our list of things to do this winter:

Shelby Rear Tail
Shelby Upper and Lower Air Extractors
Side Exhaust
Hood Pins