The development team at Sand Castle Systems has extensive experience in a broad range of areas including Internet protocols and infrastructure, embedded systems design and implementation, user interface development, 2D and 3D graphics development, text processing and document conversion applications and web application and database design.

SCS developers were the lead designers of numerous patented technologies. Team members are the inventors of patents in the areas of cryptography, eCommerce, user interfaces, manufacturing, text pagination, image caching, network protocols and database technologies.

Learn more about our technical expertise.

Our talented team of developers includes:

Erik Walter
Embedded Systems Architect

Erik was the lead low-level firmware engineer for the Gemstar eBook Group; responsibilities included: hardware integration, operating systems, networking protocols, manufacturing diagnostics and serialization, and other hardware level software design.

Erik was responsible for the design, implementation and setup of the diagnostics on the manufacturing lines for Gemstar’s eBook product lines. He also helped create the cryptographic architecture for Gemstar’s eBook registration and serialization.  He worked with various manufacturing organizations both in the US and onsite in China and Taiwan to help bring the Gemstar eBook products from design to distribution.

Further, Erik was responsible for much of our Internet infrastructure (predominantly Unix-based) including firewalls, connectivity, mail servers, file servers and source-code control.  Erik also designed and developed the USB-based eBook “portal” that runs under Windows, MacOS and Linux.

Since leaving Gemstar, Erik has participated in a wide range of projects including: an instant Messaging gateway for a secure messaging company; a Mozilla (HTML standards browser) port for an eBook reading application; and various Internet presence designs for small companies (web server, mail server, etc.).

Brady Duga
Sr. Software Engineer

Brady has most recently served as co-lead developer on the Gemstar/SoftBook eBook reader application. This cross-platform code runs on an embedded device (variety of processors), Mac OS 9/X, Windows and various types of UNIX. Brady was heavily involved in the design and implementation of an extensive object-oriented UI framework for windows/visual elements, application events, command chains, drawing contexts, HTTP classes, etc. In addition to working on this framework layer, Brady wrote HTML and CSS parsers for displaying electronic books and interacting with an electronic storefront. In connection with this work, he helped define a binary file format for electronic books that is the subject of multiple U.S. patents (6,493,734, 6,351,750 and 6,331,865) and served as co-editor of the Open eBook Publication Structure, an open standard for eBook content. He also helped define and implement an XML based protocol for transmitting an online catalog and worked on the implementation of the catalog viewing code.

Before working at Gemstar, Brady was involved in numerous Internet-related projects. He helped write a news client (NNTP) for the Macintosh, in addition to working on mail (SMTP, POP, IMAP) and file-transfer (FTP) applications. This work left him with significant familiarity with various protocols and Internet RFCs. He has also developed terminal emulation (vt320/420) and connectivity (Telnet, serial, etc) software, as well as a powerful Hypertalk-based scripting language.

Will Leshner
Sr. Software Engineer

Will has most recently served as co-lead developer on the Gemstar/SoftBook eBook reader application. This cross-platform code runs on an embedded device (variety of processors), Mac OS 9/X, Windows and various types of UNIX. Will was heavily involved in the design and implementation of an extensive object-oriented UI framework for windows/visual elements, application events, command chains, drawing contexts, HTTP classes, etc. In addition to working on this framework layer, Will wrote the page layout and rendering engine used to display electronic books and interact with an electronic storefront. In connection with this work, he helped define a binary file format for electronic books that is the subject of multiple U.S. patents (including 6,493,734, 6,195,667 and 6,331,865). Will also helped define and implement an XML-based protocol for transmitting an online catalog, and worked on the implementation of the catalog viewing code, as well as the database engine that formed the core of the catalog.

Before working at Gemstar, Will was involved in numerous Internet-related projects. He helped write a news client (NNTP) for the Macintosh, in addition to working on mail (SMTP, POP, IMAP). This work left him with significant familiarity with various protocols and Internet RFCs. He also solely developed educational software that is still being used to manage courses of instruction at K-12 schools.

Russ Schnapp
Sr. Software Engineer

A computer scientist with over the last two decades of experience, Russ has successfully applied his skills to such wide-ranging areas as operating system design, embedded software, microprocessor instruction fetch architecture, user interfaces, software tools, and many other domains.  Most recently, he developed software systems that automated conversion of HTML of various flavors and qualities to the XHTML-based Open eBook Publication Structure. These projects involved integration of image manipulation and publication formatting packages via COM, customization of HTML/XML transformation packages, and the retrieval and delivery of data via HTTP and FTP.  Russ has applied similar technologies to automated preparation of web-based content for distribution to PDAs and eBooks.  He was responsible for development and maintenance of the RCA REB-1100 eBook product’s firmware.  He also integrated flash memory media into an eBook device’s FAT16 file system. 

Other areas of expertise include: cryptography, file systems, hardware/software interfaces, network communications and protocols, and operating systems.  Russ is fluent in C, C++, Perl, Perl/Tk, and numerous flavors of assembly languages.  He is equally comfortable working on Windows and Unix/Linux platforms.  Russ has considerable experience with cleaning up, fixing, and documenting software that has fallen into disrepair.  He has designed, simulated, and analyzed advanced microprocessor architectures; understands Verilog HDL; and is familiar with functional verification techniques.

In addition, Russ is an experienced technical writer, and a published author of 4 books.

Larry Hare
Sr. Software Architect

Most recently, Larry served as Sr. Software Architect for the La Jolla-based Gemstar eBook Group. His expertise is utilized across all products and platforms; specifically: graphics, code performance and size optimization, cross-platform issues, and networking. Recently, Larry has been responsible for over a 100% performance improvement in the TV Guide Interactive on-screen programming guide resident in the company’s cable TV set-top-boxes.

Larry has unique skills and focus on system level design and architecture, embedded systems, graphics, extreme performance, operating systems, networking, and debugging skills.   Embedded experience includes bringing over a dozen systems from hardware prototypes to shipping products.  Graphics skills go back over 30 years and include engineering visualization work before workstations, military flight simulators, early CAD support of shaded surface and solid models, OpenGL support for a complex graphics system, typical 2D graphics in embedded systems and X terminals/servers.  Performance work includes speeding up entire systems to improve interactivity (from slow to snappy) or to meet real time constraints (eg real time stock quotes).   Network and Kernel experience includes multiple embedded OS’s as well as the larger amount of introspection required to develop and support a multi-cpu multi-threaded UNIX kernel.  System level insight and debugging skills come from working with prototype ASICs, CPUs, system boards, operating systems, and compilers.

The conjunction of graphics and extreme performance tuning on a variety of (mostly RISC) processors has led to explicit design collaboration with semiconductor vendors including Digital, Intel, LSI Logic, and TI.  Use of early CPU prototypes has led to first commercial shipping products for IBM, LSI Logic, and Motorola CPUs.

Andy Marder
Software Engineer

Working for the Gemstar eBook Group, Andy was the primary Mac OS client developer and the secondary developer of the low-level systems software for the Gemstar 1150 eBook.  He has been responsible for the MacOS version of the Gemstar Professional Publisher editing and preview (WYSIWYG) application for book and periodical production; was the initial implementer of the Open eBook standard support in the content tools. He co-developed a personal content creation tool that converted Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents to the eBook device binary format (Personal Publisher). In connection with this work, he wrote ActiveX controls and MFC applications under Windows. He helped define a now-patented runtime resource conversion system for the eBook device.

Andy developed the boot-ROM for the GEB 1150 eBook device and was also responsible for the implementation of much of the low-level boot code, SmartMedia support, and USB drivers. He was responsible for the Mac OS version of the eBook Internet proxy application and the USB driver (EBU). Andy has Unix/Linux expertise and has led a number of porting efforts, including a port of the eBook emulator to an ARM Linux system, a port of ARM Linux 2.2 OS to the prototype hardware and Open BSD OS port to the Macintosh. He also developed diagnostic tools to test various components of prototype hardware.

Most recently he was leading the efforts to bring the Macintosh content creation tools to Mac OS X, and developing Macintosh Internet browser plugins for displaying a Flash-like streaming media.

Joe-al Chichioco
Software Engineer

Most recently Joe-al served as a software engineer for the Gemstar eBook Group.  Projects included: Windows and MacOS desktop client development, creation of Windows and MacOS product installers, scripting for automated server-based periodical content transformations and publication. Other responsibilities include “build engineering” (script development and administration of server-based nightly builds of the entire product set) and quality assurance.  Joe-al has strong XML, text processing and Perl expertise.

Prior to Gemstar, Joe-al was involved in the development and maintenance of various network connectivity-based applications such as FTP and NFS client and servers for Windows.