About
Androidian in Context
Androidian is a new venture and spin-off from Xerpent. Xerpent provides software development and consulting services for the IT industry since 1999. Xerpent itself evolved from the Enginering Company ”Tuttle Design” which has been concentrating on internet technologies, multiprocessor systems, RISC-CPUs and open source OS (starting with 386BSD) since 1993. The founder of all listed ventures is Jürgen Fey.
Jürgen Fey started to work with computer systems in 1977. In those days this meant to built your own little 6502 microcomputer from single parts. He received his “Electrical Engineering” Degree from Fachhochschule Saarbrücken where he specialized his study on Automation (Dipl. Ing (FH) Elektrotechnik/Automatisierungstechnik). His first professional engagement was starting as an editor for one of the first PC oriented computer magazines in Germany called “PC Magazin“.
He moved on to build up the application lab for the hardware developer magazine “Design&Elektronik” where he and his team build a multiprocessor system based on Transputer technology. Part of his work has also been an article series on neural network design and starting the very successful Design&Elektronik conference venture. The application lab built also the first antivirus software worldwide. This solution is known as the widely used Avira application.
The next stop had been “UNIX Magazin” where he developed a multiprocessor SPARC system as a “hands on” practice for an article series about SPARC and RISC in common. He then got “Editor-in-Chief” of UNIX Magazin.
After the merger of UNIX Magazin with iX magazine (both were competing till the merger) Fey moved on to build up the munich office for Verlag Heinz Heise while working there as Chief Correspondent for the well known and highly reputated magazines “c’t” und “iX“. During that phase and as a result of his frequent visits to the San Francisco bay area he started to define a new project which has initially been targeted to be the German “Wired” magazine. The final result is “telepolis” which is online since more than 12 years. Fey has been responsible for the concept, building up the operation and even programming the Perl based content managment system.
The next project was to head the re-launch of “Gateway” magazine for the same publisher before heading to WEKA Verlag as the new Editor-in-Chief of ”PC MAGAZIN“. His first job was to change the magazine direction from the aging “DOS International” brand and direction to the (then) new world of Windos based PCs. After leading PC Magazin for 18 months he left to find new challenges.
Fey then developed the concept for tecchannel of IDG Publishing.
Part of the project has been to design and implement the content management system based on the very early days of XML and XSL. The “Xerpent CMS” supported database driven workflows, multiple publishing objects and languages and was build on top of Tomcat, Java. The system used Winword PlugIns on the client side. Xerpent CMS has been one of the first commercial XML/XSL projects worldwide.
In parallel to all those activities Fey worked on various projects like one of the first eCommerce sites (CTT) in Germany, a large online gaming site (Internet casino) and the first mobile proof-of-concept designs. The move towards the mobile world proved to be timed perfectly for the upcoming new networked devices including the Sharp Zaurus and the first Java ME and Symbian devices.
He and his team (usually formed as virtual task force setups) is focusing on mobile technologies since 2002 working on professional projects for international clients like Forum Nokia, Vodafone Global, Microsoft Mobile, SonyNetServices, Gate5, Ericsson Prototype Division and T-Mobile-International.
The current foucs is (obviously) everything around Android and in addition the wide field of browser based applications targetting various platfoms. An example is OMTP BONDI where Fey is currently part of the Interface API team. Androidian works also on a complete browser based mini OS which runs on mobile browsers to build modern user interfaces. Another focus is professional User Experience/User Interaction Design.