Another Great Story

The recent release of the Verizon Hub brought back memories of my involvement with a very similar design nearly a decade ago. It involved essentially an identical phone prototyped by Samsung that we referred to as the “Web Phone”. Here is a quote from the marketing brochure done back in 2000. “It’s a combination of telephone and viewing screen that is constantly connected to the intranet. At a touch, it provides local news, weather, and intranet connections with no computer boot-up. “

The story is dramatically larger beginning with my consulting relationship with Paul Estridge Jr’s home construction company through the Purdue School of Engineering & Technology, the creation of the Centennial Community and the company to deliver the technology services, FirstMile Technology. Paul was definitely a visionary who was referred to as a personal giant in the history of the housing industry: the father of "the first mile." He was also a man of strong Christian conviction who pioneered innovation with great concern for moral fabric of community. Confirmed by the fact that at the time of this post the Estridge Co. and friends were less then 14 hours away from moving the bus in front of another house for “Extreme Makeover, Home Edition”. Kind of amazing how seeing a new old phone caused me to take a walk back through time and come across an event that I was unaware of but can totally see why it was it is driven by Paul Estridge Jr.