Skip to main content
Forbes.com - Magazine Article: "On the surface, there's nothing terribly unusual about Scott Jones. The 42-year-old divorcé lives in a quiet suburb of Indianapolis, has two dogs and three sons (ages 6, 8 and 10), and is concerned about being a good father. But anyone invited in to his Tudor-style mansion quickly learns that nothing about his life is normal. His house is the stuff of fantasies--the fantasies of a wealthy entrepreneur with money to burn.

The 'other' Indiana Jones invented a voice-mail system that is now used by an estimated 500 million people around the world. In 1986, he was just a 26-year-old research scientist at MIT when he co-founded his first company, Boston Technology. He designed a technically sophisticated voice-mail system, but the earning potential of the technology wasn't a given. The Regional Bell Operating Companies weren't legally able to sell voice-mail services yet. But, by 1988, a U.S. District Court ruled that the phone providers could sell voice mail, as long as they did not manufacture the voice-mail products themselves. Boston Technology quickly swept up the RBOC business, and four years later Scott Jones retired with enough money that he probably never needed to work again.

Scott Jones
But he did. In 1995 he left Boston and returned to his home state of Indiana, where he founded an audio and video home-network business called Escient Technologies. He also bought a 1939 country manor and immediately began what would become a seven-year renovation project. Not only did Jones spruce the place up, he turned it into a high-tech playground, adding on 17,000 square feet. The home includes an indoor tree house for the kids, a 27-foot Mahogany slide, a full-size movie theater and a special therapeutic waterfall shower with a water flow rate of 300 gallons per minute (the average shower has a water flow rate of 1.6 to 3.8 gallons per minute). "

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

At USDA, the Mouse Is in the House

(washingtonpost.com) : "Employees at the Department of Agriculture's main cafeteria were just sitting down to lunch on Friday when security guards ordered everyone in the huge eatery to leave. Al Qaeda? Bomb scare? No. Mouse droppings. The D.C. Department of Health closed the cafeteria for failing to pass inspection. Yes, the USDA, home to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the meat and poultry inspectors -- the agency that is part of the federal system for protecting the nation's food supply, was in violation of the D.C. Health Code. There were several citations, according to the inspection report, including: 'water leaking excessively' in the ceiling, employees not wearing hair restraints, and inadequate cleaning of the inside of ice machines, cabinets, surfaces and equipment. The biggest problem, however, seemed to be mouse droppings found everywhere -- in the dry storage room, by the salad bar, behind the ovens, near the serving line, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Artist turns animals into everyday objects

Ananova - A Chilean artist is making a name for herself with an exhibition in which stuffed animals are transformed into household objects. Artworks on display include a chick turned into a lamp, and 'sheep bag' - a lamb carcass fitted with handles. Artist Caterina Purdy says her exhibition at the Experimental Arts Centre in Santiago is intended to be humorous but also makes a serious point. She told Las Ultimas Noticias online: 'It is possible to see my work as something scary, but I find it beautiful. 'There is also irony and humour in my objects as well as a criticism of the way animals are treated by society.'"
Post a Comment
Read more
BW Online | March 1, 2004 | Software : "As Stephen and Deepa emerge this summer from graduate school -- one in Pittsburgh, the other in Bombay -- they'll find that their decisions of a half-decade ago placed their dreams on a collision course. The Internet links that were being pieced together at the turn of the century now provide broadband connections between multinational companies and brainy programmers the world over. For Deepa and tens of thousands of other Indian students, the globalization of technology offers the promise of power and riches in a blossoming local tech industry. But for Stephen and his classmates in the U.S., the sudden need to compete with workers across the world ushers in an era of uncertainty. Will good jobs be waiting for them when they graduate? 'I might have been better served getting an MBA,' Stephen says."
Post a Comment
Read more