Charles Frankston 617-969-5560

Director of Software at Cimetrics, Inc. Cimetrics is the industry leader in networked building controls.  I was recruited by Cimetrics to develop the software systems that underlie the infometrics product -- an innovative system that leverages Cimetrics' expertise in networked building controls to remotely collect and analyze information about the performance of a building's HVAC systems.  This analysis can then be used to reduce energy costs while improving comfort and equipment life for customers.

Smartlink Radio Networks manufactures systems that interconnect disparate Land Mobile Radios (i.e. the kinds of radios that police, fire, & other public safety officials use).  Acted as VP for Software Engineering, recruited and hired engineering team, created new engineering facilities, and helped architect new platform.  Smartlink was VC backed (General Catalyst and Highland Capital Partners).

Chief Technical Officer of wireless/mobile software startup. Architected a cross platform (Palm and PocketPC) system for delivering native code applications that could run on mobile devices running either online or disconnected.  Server platfrom was Java/J2EE based and made use of SOAP/Webservices for connecting to backend enterprise systems. Client platform XML-scripted native code on Palm, WinCE platforms. This technology was the primary reason JP Mobile acquired Isovia's assets.  Served as Chief Engineer/Chief Scientist at JP Mobile.  i2 was a major customer for the applications built using the Isovia technology.

Program Manager in the Component Applications Group (ComApps) of Microsoft Research.  ComApps developed methodologies to enable to the creation of a large library of reliable, binary re-usable components.  This approach was instended to fundamentally change the way software applications are developed.  Worked with the people who invented COM.

Participated in the creation of XML.  Served as Microsoft's representative to several W3C committees defining XML.  Helped to define XML namespaces (http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-xml-names/).  Designed the Schema language used by many Microsoft products (Biztalk, ADO, etc.  See http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/XMLData-Reduced.htm).  Co-authored XML Schema submission to W3C, along with IBM: http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-dcd, and contributed to W3C Schema language definition effort: http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/, http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/.

Crash course on various Microsoft (COM, OLE, OLE-DB, ADO) and non-Microsoft (Java, JDBC) technologies, while working as a developer on the client-side data-binding feature of IE4 (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms531388(vs.85).aspx).

President, founder, and co-owner of a small (14 person) software company specializing in contract software development and software internationalization. Clients included Microsoft, Lotus, Delrina, Attachmate, Ventura, PC Docs, Mathsoft, and Dan Bricklin.  Contract programming projects included: The Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Scenes, Lotus VIM to Microsoft MAPI interface, Dan and Bricklin’s Demo-It! for Windows, and Vision Maker -- an OS/2 based drawing system comparable to Corel Draw.  Internationalization projects included: Ventura Publisher 4.0 for Japan, Winfax Pro 3.0 for Japan, Attachmate Extra! 4.0 for Japan, MathCAD for Japan, PC Docs Open 4.0 for Korea, FTP Software OnNet 2.0 (Internet suite) for Japan, Korea, and China.

Charles View Software was "acquired" by Microsoft in March 1996.

Senior Software Engineer primarily responsible for the internal architecture of Javelin product – which won InfoWorld Software Product of the Year in 1985 and a PC Magazine Technical Excellence award. Designed and implemented data store, calculation engine, and building-blocks (visual computational elements). Performed sundry other tasks, such as adding expanded memory support to the product two months before shipment. Implemented a client-server based order entry system on two weeks notice when Javelin dropped the price to $99 and started selling direct. This system handled 10,000 orders in its first week of operation.

Helped to set up their LAN. Got to meet Richard Feynman.

Summer work while finishing my undergraduate degree: created the only CP/M version of VisiCalc (http://www.bricklin.com/visicalc.htm), and later helped finish Visicalc Advanced Version for the IBM PC.

Worked as part of a small team designing and implementing a new, state of the art super-computer operating system (see http://www.mit.edu/~cbf/thesis.htm).  Created an in-house local area network based on home grown hardware (this was pre-Ethernet!) and the world’s smallest full ARPANet host (an LSI-11 occupying about 1 cubic foot).

Mixture of part time student work and full time work at the MIT Math Dept.  Wrote a real-time OS to support on-line access to supercomputers at a national laboratory.  Started using the ARPANET.  Helped develop the original Emacs text editor (with Richard Stallman and others). 

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology B.S. in Computer Science

Served as chairman of Student Information Processing Board -- an organization that helped students get access to computers (back when computers were scarce).  First student representative to Project Athena’s technical committee.  Took some graduate computer science courses.

Some Charles View Software projects:

All of Charles View Software’s work was performed under contract for other companies. These were some of our projects:

Vision Maker (1989 to 1993):

OS/2-based presentation graphics system custom developed for Toyo Information Systems, a large Japanese Software and service company (http://www.tis.co.jp).  NTT was the eventual customer.

Ventura Publisher Japanese version 1993:

All engineering work to create Japanese version of Ventura Publisher 4.0. Included features such as WSYWIG support for mixed horizontal and vertical frames on the same page that are still not fully support in Word 97.  (The Ventura Publisher product is now owned by Corel).

MathCAD Japanese version 1994, 1995, 1996:

One MacIntosh and two Windows versions of MathCAD for the Japanese market. This involved extensive modification of MathCAD’s internal RTF-based editor. For the last version, we converted the editor to use Unicode throughout, which resulting in substantial performance improvements for handling Japanese characters.

Attachmate Extra for Windows Japanese version

1995: prepared Japanese version of Attachmate’s premier product. A considerable portion of this was in assembler. (http://www.attachmatewrq.jp).

Limbic Scheduler

1993, 1994, 1995: A Windows based personnel scheduling system for medical use.

FTP Software, On Net 2.0 for Windows Japanese version

1995: Did all the engineering work for the Japanese version of FTP Software’s primary TCP/IP suite. This was the first time FTP software had ever done their own Japanese release (previously their distributor created Japanese product from source code). Our work included the Web Browser, Mail program, FTP, Telnet, and NFS client (which was a VxD written primarily in assembler). 

Dan Bricklin’s DemoIt! For Windows

1995: Wrote Windows version of Dan Bricklin’s popular Demo program, to Dan Bricklin’s specifications. We wrote all of version 1 and about two thirds of version 2.

Font Assistant for Microsoft Word

1994: Wrote the Font Chooser pop-up that rendered each font in its own face. This involved pre-computing a database of pre-rendered font names. Worked around many Windows bugs.

Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word

1994, 1995: All engineering work for versions 1 (for Word 6.0) & 2 (for Word 97) of the Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word. Bill Gates has publicly described the Internet Assistant for Microsoft Word as Microsoft’s first Internet product.