Ian Clarke (born 16 February 1977) is the original designer and lead developer of
Freenet
Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web ...
.
Early life
Clarke grew up in
Navan
Navan ( ; , meaning "the Cave") is the county town of County Meath, Republic of Ireland, Ireland. In 2016, it had a population of 30,173, making it the List of urban areas in the Republic of Ireland by population, tenth largest settlement in ...
,
County Meath
County Meath (; gle, Contae na Mí or simply ) is a county in the Eastern and Midland Region of Ireland, within the province of Leinster. It is bordered by Dublin to the southeast, Louth to the northeast, Kildare to the south, Offaly to the sou ...
,
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
. He was educated at
Dundalk Grammar School
Dundalk Grammar School, is an independent school in Dundalk,
County Louth. The school is co-educational with both primary and secondary departments. It is one of a small number of schools in Ireland offering students an education from school ...
and while there, he came first twice in the Senior Chemical, Physical, and Mathematical section of the
Young Scientist Exhibition. The first time, in 1993, was with a project entitled "The C Neural Network Construction Kit". The second time, the following year, was with a project entitled "Mapping Internal Variations in Translucency within a Translucent Object using Beams of Light".
Freenet
In 1995, Clarke left
Dundalk
Dundalk ( ; ga, Dún Dealgan ), meaning "the fort of Dealgan", is the county town (the administrative centre) of County Louth, Ireland. The town is on the Castletown River, which flows into Dundalk Bay on the east coast of Ireland. It is h ...
to study Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...
, Scotland. While at Edinburgh, he became president of the then dormant Artificial Intelligence Society, resulting in its revival.
In Clarke's final year at Edinburgh, he completed his final year project, entitled "A Distributed, Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System". In July 1999, after receiving a 'B' grade for his paper, he decided to release it to the Internet and invited volunteers to help implement his design. The resulting free software project became known as
Freenet
Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant, anonymous communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to keep and deliver information, and has a suite of free software for publishing and communicating on the Web ...
, and attracted significant attention from the mainstream and technology media.
In August 1999, Clarke began his first full-time job as a software developer in the Space Division of
Logica
Logica plc was a multinational IT and management consultancy company headquartered in London and later Reading, United Kingdom.
Founded in 1969, the company had offices in London and in a number of major cities across England, Wales and Scotl ...
plc, a London-based software consulting company. In February 2000, he left Logica to join a small software start-up called Instil Ltd.
In August 2000, he left London for
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...
, where he co-founded Uprizer, Inc. with the intent of commercializing some of his Freenet-related ideas. In January 2001, Uprizer Inc. successfully raised $4 million in
Series A round
A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...
venture funding from investors including
Intel Capital
Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, s ...
.
In March 2001, Clarke published an article describing FairShare, developed in collaboration with Uprizer's co-founders,
Steven Starr and Rob Kramer. Clarke was concerned that copyright would become increasingly difficult to enforce in the Internet age, the goal of Fairshare was to provide an alternative to copyright as a way to compensate creators.
Professional career
In September 2002, after leaving Uprizer, Clarke formed Cematics LLC to explore a variety of new ideas and opportunities. Cematics LLC developed a number of products including Locutus- a P2P search application for the Enterprise, WhittleBit - a search engine that learns from user Feedback, and 3D17, a web-based
collaborative editing __NOTOC__
Collaborative editing is the process of multiple people editing the same document simultaneously. This technique may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially improve the quality of documents and increase productivity. ...
tool.
In October 2003, Clarke decided to leave the United States to return to Edinburgh, Scotland. In December 2004, he began work on
Dijjer, a distributed P2P web cache, and
Indy
Indy may refer to:
Computing and technology
*Indy (software), used for Internet access to music
*Internet Direct, or "Indy", a software library
*SGI Indy, a computer workstation
Periodicals
*''The Indy'', shorthand for newspapers that include " ...
, a collaborative music discovery system, both in conjunction with ChangeTv, a company founded by his long-time collaborator,
Steven Starr, who later brought in Clarke and Oliver Luckett as co-founders. In 2003, he was named to the
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
Technology Review
''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...
TR100
The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com
...
as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
ChangeTv changed its name to
Revver Inc. and unveiled a new website in November 2005 that strove to let creators of short videos earn revenue from their work. Revver was one of several user-created video websites unveiled in late 2005, but was the first such website to financially compensate video creators, and is reminiscent of Fairshare.
In December 2006, Clarke left Revver and moved to
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...
. There, Clarke founded a new company, SenseArray, which is a drop-in ad targeting engine based on a proprietary algorithm developed by Clarke. In October 2009, he released Swarm, a novel approach to distributing computation across multiple computers in a manner largely transparent to the programmer.
In January 2012, Clarke co-founded OneSpot, with the goal of creating "ads that don't suck". Over the next 3 years, he designed a
real-time bidding
Real-time bidding (RTB) is a means by which advertising inventory is bought and sold on a per- impression basis, via instantaneous programmatic auction, similar to financial markets. With real-time bidding, advertising buyers bid on an impression a ...
engine capable of consistently outperforming Google Adwords. In March 2012, he open sourced LastCalc, an online calculator he intended to provide an open and more flexible alternative to tools like Google Calculator.
References
External links
Ian Clarke's blog*
Interview on Deviant NationUprizer Labs LLC
{{DEFAULTSORT:Clarke, Ian
1977 births
20th-century Irish people
21st-century Irish people
Irish computer scientists
Irish computer programmers
Irish expatriates in the United States
Living people
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
People from Navan
People educated at Dundalk Grammar School