Fred Davis (entrepreneur)
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Frederic Emery Davis (born June 17, 1955), known as Fred Davis, is a veteran US technology writer and publisher who served as editor of ''
A+'' magazine A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''ae ...
'', '' MacUser'', ''
PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...
'' and '' PC Week''; personal computer pioneer; technologist; and entrepreneur involved in the startups of '' Wired'',
CNET ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...
, Ask Jeeves, Lumeria, Jaduka, and Grabbit.


Childhood

Davis was born at the Yale New Haven Hospital while his father was enrolled at Yale. Davis's father was Dr. Donald Davis (deceased), an IBM Fellow and the creator of the " learning organization" management practice (while a professor at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands). Davis's mother was Doris Davis (deceased), an educator, artist, and longtime director of the Upward Bound project at
Bowdoin College Bowdoin College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. When Bowdoin was chartered in 1794, Maine was still a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The college offers 34 majors and 36 minors, as well as several joint eng ...
, in Brunswick, Maine.


Education

Davis attended Friends Academy, in Locust Valley, New York, from kindergarten through sixth grade, while his mother was an English teacher and assistant principal. In 1966 Davis enrolled at Eaglebrook School, in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he spent grades 7 through 9 and graduated in 1970. In 1966 Davis, then age 11, learned computer programming, by participating in the testing and development of the BASIC computer language via a time-sharing hookup to Dartmouth College, where BASIC was being developed. In 1970 Davis enrolled at
Northfield Mt. Hermon School Northfield Mount Hermon School, often called NMH, is a co-educational preparatory school in Gill, Massachusetts, in the United States. It is a member of the Eight Schools Association. Present day NMH offers nearly 200 courses, including AP a ...
, in Northfield, Massachusetts, where he spent his sophomore and junior years. He spent his senior year of high school at Collins Brook School, in Freeport, Maine. The school was modeled after and run by former educators of the progressive
Summerhill School Summerhill School is an independent (i.e. fee-paying) boarding school in Leiston, Suffolk, England. It was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other wa ...
in Suffolk, England. Davis graduated in 1973 from Collins Brook, where his senior class consisted of only six people. In 1978 Davis enrolled in Antioch College and completed his B.A. in botany. The ''Wall St. Journal'' described Davis as "a teen-age prodigy who earned a B.A. in only one year." In 1979 Davis continued at Antioch College, and he earned his M.S. in Ecosystems Management in 1981. In 1980 Davis enrolled at Union Institute & University as a degree candidate for a PhD in Information Technology. His dissertation was titled "Computer Assisted Publishing," and although Davis did not complete his PhD, the dissertation formed the groundwork for a book he coauthored—''Desktop Publishing''—one of the first books to be published on that topic.


Early business ventures

In 1974 Davis bought Lougee's, a greenhouse and florist business in Belfast, Maine. He expanded the business to include North Star Orchids, an orchid nursery that was a major importer of orchids in 1975 and 1976. During that time, he designed and established a commercial plant tissue culture laboratory for North Star Orchids; the lab was one of the first commercial plant tissue culture labs to use a laminar flow hood based on millipore filters for aseptic lab work, at a time when glove boxes were the standard aseptic tissue culture work areas. Davis invented a new type of plant tissue culture vessel based on millipore filters for respiration, and that invention was published in '' Orchid Review'', where it received international attention. It was cited in subsequent scientific papers and eventually became part of the standard design of almost all types of labware that needed to provide aseptic respiration.


History with computers

In the late '70s, Davis moved from Maine to San Francisco, where he became one of the early personal computer pioneers working with CPM-based systems. Davis bought an original Apple II in 1977 and emerged as an early Apple II programmer, due to his prior knowledge of BASIC, the language that computer used. Davis was among the first computer engineers to successfully connect microcomputers to mainframes, connecting his Apple II with Stanford's DEC PDP-10 while conducting research on database publishing at Stanford. Davis also served as a computer consultant to large corporations and venture capitalists in the early days of the industry.


Magazine publishing

Davis held several executive positions at technology magazines from 1983 to 2002. Davis was the editor of ''A+'', ''MacUser'', ''PC Magazine'', and ''PC Week''; a columnist and writer for ''Wired''; and the publisher of ''dig_iT''.


ZD, ''A+'', ''MacUser''

In 1983 Davis became one of the founders of Ziff-Davis's computer publishing division and worked on the startup of ZD's first computer publication, ''A+'', which rapidly became the leading publication about Apple computers. Later, during Fred's tenure as editor-in-chief, ''A+'' won the Computer Press Association award for Best Computer Magazine. From ''A+'', Davis moved over to serve as editor-in-chief of its sister magazine '' MacUser'', where he founded MacUser Labs. He oversaw the development of the magazine during its period of greatest growth, bringing it up to parity with ''Macworld''.


''PC Magazine'', ''PC Week''

Next, Davis joined ''
PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...
'', which, at the time, was the world's leading computer publication in terms of revenue and circulation, with an annual revenue of approximately $250 million. As editor of ''PC Magazine'' and director of PC Magazine Labs, he helped develop benchmarks and scripts for testing thousands of products under review. Later, as editor of '' PC Week'', he founded PC Week Labs and developed industry-standard benchmark tests for corporate computing. After leaving ''PC Week,'' which was located in Massachusetts, to return to California, Davis helped launch and served as a columnist for several other Ziff-Davis publications, including ''
Windows Sources ''Windows Sources'' was a magazine by ZDNet. It focused on product reviews rather than 'how to,' and it lasted from 1993 – c. 2001. In 1997 Ziff-Davis Inc. appointed Frank Quigley as the publisher of the magazine. The magazine was late ...
'', ''
Computer Life ''Computer Life'' was a magazine which focused on computers. ''The New York Times'' called it "an endless array of permutations that marry the term PC to some older, less-capitalized form of existence" because of its coverage of "the culture ...
'', '' Family PC'', and the ZD Personal Computing newspaper supplement.


''Wired''

In 1992 Davis worked with ''Wired'' CEO Louis Rosetto on the launch of ''Wired'' magazine and was part of the original "''Wired'' Brain Trust." After ''Wired'', Davis worked with
CNET ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...
CEO Halsey Minor as an original member of the CNET startup team, where he helped develop both television and online strategies.


''dig_iT''

In 2001 Davis and computer publishing pioneer David Bunnell founded Prosumer Media, the publisher of ''dig_iT'', a magazine focused on "the digital lifestyle."


Internet

Davis was an early Internet pioneer who launched one of the Internet's first curated search and discovery sites, Weblust.com. Early users of Weblust included Ralph Nader and
Avram Miller Avram Miller (born January 27, 1945) is an American businessman, corporate venture capitalist, scientist and technologist. He served as vice president, Business Development for Intel Corporation (1984-1999). With Leslie L. Vadász, he co-founded ...
.


NetGuide

Working with CMP Media, Davis led a team that developed an advanced consumer portal and Internet search site named NetGuide. It included multimedia features and games such as "Where's Barlowe?" based on the travelings of John Perry Barlow. These features were developed by Marc Canter, founder of MacroMind/MacroMedia, and David Biedney, a highly acclaimed graphic artist. NetGuide was one of the first major consumer Web projects to use Java. One of the programmers on the NetGuide project was Craig Newmark, who later went on to start Craigslist.


CNET

In 1994 Davis joined CNET during its early startup stage. He was the first computer industry person to join the CNET team, which at the time consisted of
Halsey Minor Halsey McLean Minor Sr. is an American businessman who is known for founding CNET in 1993, the first comprehensive consumer-facing technology content publisher. He is also the founder or co-founder of the technology companies such as the virtual ...
, Shelby Bonnie, and Bettina Cisneros. Davis worked with Fox Network cofounder Kevin Wendle and former Disney creative associate Dan Baker to produce CNET's four pilot television programs about computers, technology, and the Internet.


Ask Jeeves

In 1996 Davis helped launch Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com), after venture capitalist Garrett Gruener introduced Davis to David Warthen, the founding CEO.


Lumeria

In 1998 Davis was the CEO and founder of Lumeria, an infomediary company involved in identity management; identity commerce; consumer privacy; and helping consumers own, control, and get value from their personal information. Lumeria's identity management business was designed to provide a secure way for individuals to protect and share their personal information, with Lumeria acting as an agent on their behalf to protect their information and extract value from that information, which was stored in Lumeria's SuperProfile distributed secure XML database. Lumeria had a controversial subsidiary, Lumeria Ad Network, that replaced ads in a user's browser with ads from that person's own ad network.


PrivaTel, Jaduka

In 2005 Davis founded and served as the CEO of PrivaTel, a wholly owned subsidiary of Network Enhanced Telecom, LLP (also known as Network IP), based in Dallas, Texas. While at PrivaTel, Davis developed three main services: My Private Line, a prepaid calling card with disposable phone numbers that could be used for privacy protection when people are not comfortable providing their actual phone number and providing the ability to turn individual numbers off or direct them to go directly to voicemail; Click-and-Connect, a service that enables someone to initiate a phone call from almost every Web page or application; and CallsAd, a service in which classified ads are sold with a temporary contact number, enabling the seller to keep personal numbers private and turn the contact number off after the sale. After Davis's departure, the company was renamed Jaduka and it dropped the privacy products to focus exclusively on the Click-and-Connect service.


Grabbit

In 2009 Davis founded Grabbit, with Lisa Padilla and Peter Karnig. Grabbit is an open source social media platform that integrates social network and other content streams into a single stream that can be filtered by social networks, content sources, keywords, users, and so on. Users can add many types of real-time streams, updates, and alerts such as RSS feeds, e-mail alerts, news alerts, blog alerts, alarms and reminders, shopping alerts, and more across a broad range of social networks, information, media, and commerce. Grabbit also gives users a powerful set of tools for managing and discovering friends, contacts, and groups of contacts across a wide variety of social and business networks. Grabbit was built with Drupal, and the open source project and source code is published on GitHub. In partnership with Cognition, Grabbit developed new semantic technology to analyze social media, blog posts, friends, locations, media consumption, product purchases, brand preferences, and other data. As a result of this work, Davis filed a patent application titled "Semantically Generating Personalized Recommendations Based on Social Feeds to a User in Real-Time and Display Methods Thereof."


Other work

From 1996 to mid-1997, Davis served as director of Strategic Development for CMP Media, during the period leading up to its successful IPO, in August 1997. While working for CMP Media's CEO, Ken Cron, on long-range business strategies, Davis also wrote articles and columns in various CMP publications, including '' Windows Magazine'', ''Home PC'', and ''
Computer Reseller News ''CRN'' is an American computer magazine. It was first launched as ''Computer Retail Week'' on June 7, 1982, as a magazine targeted to computer resellers. It soon after was renamed ''Computer Reseller News''. History and profile Originally laun ...
''. Davis was a columnist for the '' San Jose Mercury News'' and was the US columnist for ''EYE-COM'', one of Japan's leading computer magazines. Davis was also a regular technology commentator for National Public Radio's '' All Things Considered'' and is the former cohost of the radio call-in show ''On Computers'', with
John Dvorak John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second ...
, Gina Smith, and Leo LaPorte. Davis also served as president of the Computer Institute, a nonprofit scientific and cultural foundation involved in education research and the study of human/computer ecology. Davis was also the founder of the Festival of Computer and Multimedia Arts (CoMA) in San Francisco. Davis is the author of more than a dozen computer books, including ''The Complete IBM Personal Computer''—the first hardware expansion guide to the IBM PC, published in the early 1980s. His 1985 book, ''Desktop Publishing'' (with coauthors John Barry and Michael Wiesenberg), helped popularize the term and received an award from the Computer Press Association. ''The New York Times'' hailed Davis's ''Windows 3.1 Bible'' as "the best" book on the topic. Davis also developed the ''Windows Bible'' CD-ROM, released in early 1994. The ''Windows 95 Bible'' was released in April 1996, and his ''Windows 98 Bible'' (with coauthor Kip Crosby) was published in April 1998. Davis has been named one of the most influential people in the tech industry by several publications in both the US and Japan and is listed in Marquis Who's Who in
America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. Davis has been widely quoted in publications such as ''
Business Week ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...
'', '' The Wall Street Journal'', '' The New York Times'', '' USA Today'', '' U.S. News & World Report'', and ''
Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' and has appeared on many radio and television programs, including NPR's ''All Things Considered'', ''CBS Evening News'', and ''ABC News Tonight''. Most recently, Davis has been exploring IPTV and Google Glass.


References


External links

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Grabbit
Grabbit open source project {{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Fred American male journalists American magazine editors Antioch University alumni 1955 births Living people Technology evangelists 21st-century American inventors American Internet celebrities Northfield Mount Hermon School alumni Berkeley Macintosh Users Group members