Steven Woods

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Steven Gregory Woods
Born June 16, 1965 (1965-06-16) (age 42)
Melfort, Saskatchewan
Occupation Former Quack.com Co-founder. Currently NeoEdge Co-founder & Director
See also: Stevie Woods


Steven Gregory Woods (born June 16, 1965, Melfort, Saskatchewan, is a Canadian entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Quack.com, the first popular Voice Portal platform, in 1998.

[edit] Career

Motivated by Woods' desire to pull together a highly talented group of friends in one place to do something interesting for a year, Quack.com was born in 1998, funded September 1st, 1999, and acquired August 31st, 2000 by America Online for 200 million dollars.[1]

Woods is currently Chief Technology Officer of NeoEdge Networks, in Palo Alto, California.[2] he founded NeoEdge in 2002 under the name Kinitos[3] along with former America Online, Netscape, and Quack.com colleagues including Jeromy Carriere. Prior to NeoEdge, Woods was Vice President of Voice Services for America Online and Netscape - joining America Online through the acquisition of Quack.com in September, 2000[4]. Quack.com was notable as the first Voice Portal, and held a number of key patents around interactive voice applications, including the definitive Voice Portal patent - "System and method for voice access to internet-based information"[5]. In 1998 Woods co-founded Pittsburgh-based voice-portal infrastructure company Quackware with Jeromy Carriere and Alex Quilici. Quackware became Quack.com in 1999 and moved headquarters to Silicon Valley[6].

Previously Woods was Technical Staff Member at Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute[7] working on technical efforts there in product line development and practical software architectural reconstruction and analysis. He holds a Ph.D and M.Math from the David R. CHeriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo[8] in Canada and a B.Sc. from the University of Saskatchewan[9].

Woods' Ph.D was published in 1997 as a book co-written with Alex Quilici and Qiang Yang entitled "Constraint-Based Design Recovery for Software Reengineering: Theory and Experiments"[10]

[edit] Trivia

  • While at the University of Waterloo, Woods captained the varsity Waterloo Warriors golf team and in 1995 was co-winner of the Ontario University Athletics "Len Shore Trophy" for top individual performance[11].
  • During 1991-1992 Woods was a member of the Canberra Knights semi-professional ice hockey in the Australian Ice Hockey League.
  • Woods' hockey career spanned a variety of teams just below the pro level. He currently skates with the Veo Snapshots in Fremont, CA. The Veo squad routinely wins their league play in the SIAHL, and most recently (2008) won their annual tournament in Las Vegas. Woods veteran leadership is a team asset, and he works extensively with the younger players off-ice.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Voice: The Killer App (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  2. ^ NeoEdge. NeoEdge Networks (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  3. ^ Steven Woods - P.G. Sorenson Distinguished Graduate Lecture (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  4. ^ Jefferson Partners' Investment in Quack.com Pays Off, as Voice-to-Web Innovator is Acquired by AOL (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  5. ^ System and method for voice access to internet-based information (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  6. ^ Risking it all for dot-com gold in California (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  7. ^ SEI Architecture Practices Propel Successful Startup (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  8. ^ University of Waterloo - notable companies started by alumni (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  9. ^ Steven Woods - University of Saskatchewan Alumni (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  10. ^ Constraint-Based Design Recovery for Software Reengineering: Theory and Experiments (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.
  11. ^ OUA Golf Len Shore Trophy (2008). Retrieved on 2008-03-13.