Marc Canter

Marc Canter

Marc Canter is CEO of Broadband Mechanics, which produces People Aggregator, a social networking tool with source available (but not under an open source license).[1] Previously, he was a founder of the company that became Macromedia. His blog, Marc's Voice, frequently critiques other Internet luminaries and competitors, such as Mark Zuckerberg.[2] Known for his boisterous appearances at technology conferences, Canter makes no secret of his left-leaning politics, identifying himself as a "red diaper baby" at the 2005 Gnomedex meeting in Seattle.[3][4] A son of community leader Miriam Canter -- eponym of Chicago's Canter School -- and well-known election and civil rights attorney David Canter, he was raised in the liberal but exclusive Hyde Park-Kenwood neighborhood near the University of Chicago.

Canter is also a contributor to many open standards efforts and advocates for end-user controlled digital identities and content - being a co-founder of the "Identity Gang",[5] and a co-signer of the Social Web Users' Bill of Rights.[6] He has consulted with global corporations including PCCW and Intel and has written on the multimedia industry, micro-content publishing and social networking.[7]

Business activities

Canter is the founder and CEO of Broadband Mechanics a digital lifestyle aggregator (DLA) company.[8] Broadband Mechanics builds tools and environments to enable online communities. It targets products at a broad user base with the hope that everyday people can make better use of Internet technologies.

Broadband Mechanics provides strategic consulting and architectural design work to its clients, such as 1UP.com, Tribe.net, aSmallWorld, and AlwaysOn Network.

Canter has been involved in various startups in the formulative stages of their product development and design. He was an early participant in Tribe.net and helped develop its "tribes" system, the first social network 'groups' technology.[9] He consulted for Ruckus Network and Visual Media. Broadband Mechanics has also collaborated with Avid Technology.[10]

Broadband Mechanics in 2006 released StructuredBlogging,[11] an attempted standard for microcontent. It has released Perl and PHP libraries and plug-ins for WordPress and Movable Type. StructuredBlogging has established schemas for events, reviews, lists, media (audio and video), people and group showcases.

History in the technology industry

Canter co-founded MacroMind in 1984 and began developing for the newly launched Apple Macintosh.[12][13] MacroMind became Macromedia in 1991. He was part of the team that created the first multimedia player, the first cross-platform authoring system and the world's leading multimedia platform. Marc was considered one of the founders of multimedia,[14] and has been a speaker, developer and evangelist in the industry for over a decade.

Prior to MacroMind, he worked for Bally-Midway programming music for videogames. He claims to have programmed one of the earliest licensed music ("Peter Gunn" for Spyhunter).[15][16] He started his career after college when he went to New York City to help his friends build a music studio called "Noise New York." During this time Canter learned about laserdiscs, laser light shows, NAPLPS, pro audio and video equipment, and a then-new technology called videodiscs.

Canter was also involved in one of the first known cases of a virus being distributed via commercial software.[17] According to the March 16, 1988 edition of the Toronto Star, several MacroMind products shipped with virus infected media. Analysis later revealed that Canter's computer was infected with the virus while he was working on training material for the software products.

Canter and JD Lasica founded a video sharing website, Ourmedia in March 2005.

References

  1. ↑ Marc Canter explains that People Aggregator source is available, but not under an open source license
  2. ↑ Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Open letter to Mark Zuckerberg
  3. ↑ Red Diaper Canter sur Flickr : partage de photos !
  4. ↑ Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Honesty, courage and American politics
  5. ↑ http://www.identitygang.org/ Identity Gang
  6. ↑ "A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web". Opensocial.org. September 5, 2007.
  7. ↑ "MicroContent Musings". Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  8. ↑ "Welcome to Broadband Mechanics". Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  9. ↑ Andrew Leonard (2004-06-15). "You are who you know". Salon (Salon.com). p. 2. Retrieved 2007-01-05. A posting on Tribe.net had led me here. I found out about the event after joining a "tribe" called "social software intellectuals" -- originally created by Marc Canter
  10. ↑ "Broadband Mechanics: Our Clients". Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  11. ↑ StructuredBlogging
  12. ↑ "Macromedia - The Story". Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  13. ↑ "Online repository". San Diego Union-Tribune (online version) (Knight-Ridder News service). 2005-04-04. p. 1. Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  14. ↑ Packer, Randall (2001). Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality, Expanded Edition. Norton. ISBN 0-393-32375-7. Marc Canter, who developed the first commercial multimedia authoring system, was a chief catalyst...
  15. ↑ "LinkedIn: Marc Canter". Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  16. ↑ Joi Ito (2002-09-20). "Product Placement on the Sims!". Joi Ito's Web. Retrieved 2007-01-05.
  17. ↑ Peter G. Nuemann (1988-03-18). "RISKS DIGEST 6.46". Newsgroup: comp.risks. Retrieved 2007-01-05.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Marc Canter.