Aza Raskin

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Aza Raskin

Aza Raskin, 2005
Born February 1, 1984
California, USA
Education Math, Physics B.S. (University of Chicago)
Physics, Computation and Neural Systems (Caltech, dropped out of PhD program)
Occupation interface designer, entrepreneur
Parents Jef Raskin, Linda S. Blum
Website
http://www.azarask.in

Aza Raskin (born February 1, 1984) is an American [1][2] interface designer.[3] He is the son of noted human-computer interface expert Jef Raskin.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Raskin gave his first talk on user interfaces at age 10 at the local San Francisco chapter of SIGCHI.[4] By 20, he was speaking internationally.[5] He holds bachelor degrees in mathematics and physics from the University of Chicago.[6] He attended Caltech briefly as a Ph.D. student in Physics, continuing the dark matter research he had participated in at both the University of Chicago and University of Tokyo.[citation needed] The University of Chicago was the only school Raskin ever completed, having left middle school, high school, and graduate school.[citation needed]

In 2004, Aza Raskin worked with Jef Raskin at the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces on Archy, a new user interface paradigm.[7] The next year, he founded Humanized Inc. to continue work on the Archy paradigm. At Humanized, he created the language-based service-oriented Enso software.

In 2008, Raskin and the other Humanized employees were part of a hire-out by the Mozilla Corporation.[8] In 2010, Raskin was appointed Creative Lead for Firefox,[9] having previously been head of user experience at Mozilla Labs.[6] He has worked on several labs projects including Ubiquity,[10] Firefox for mobile,[11] and wrote the original specification for the Geolocation API.[12]

Raskin is a successful entrepreneur having founded two other companies, including Songza, a music meta-search tool, and Bloxes, which sells furniture made out of cardboard.[13] Songza was acquired in late 2008 by Amazon-backed Amie Street.[14][15] He also has a number of smaller projects like Algorithm Ink (based on Context Free) [16] which generates art from a formal grammar.[17] Raskin is a prolific writer and speaker, having appeared on the cover of Wired[18] and given a TED talk.[19]

During the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January 2010, Raskin mobilized with a group of other entrepreneurs (including Joshua Rosen, the art director of Steven Spielberg's movie A.I.) to create a crowd-source Web site to turn real-time information streams into meaningful map data, used by several major non-governmental organizations helping on the group in Haiti hosted at Haiti.com.

Raskin is also an active phishing researcher,[20] best known for discovering[21][22] the tabnabbing[23] attack; the technique takes advantage of open browser tabs to launch phishing sites without the user's knowledge.

In 2010, Raskin introduced the results of his work on the Firefox team at Mozilla: Tab Candy. Organizing tabs spatially, Tab Candy allowed the user to "organize browsing, to see all of our tabs at once, and focus on the task at hand."[24] Tab Candy initial design and alpha release has been seen as a major step forward in browsing,[25] and called "the best new browser feature since tabs were invented" by Computerworld.[26] Tab Candy was later renamed Firefox Panorama, although the feature was ultimately hidden by default in the initial Firefox 4 release.

By the end of 2010 Raskin announced[27] he'd left Mozilla to begin a health-related venture at Massive Health start-up, with the goal to apply design principles to the problem of being healthy.[28][29]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Campofiorito, Matteo (September 1, 2008). "Interview with Aza Raskin, Head of User Experience for Mozilla Labs". oneopensource. http://www.oneopensource.it/01/09/2008/interview-aza-raskin-head-of-user-experience-for-mozilla-labs/. Retrieved 2009-03-06. 
  2. ^ Infosecurity: Mozilla warns of a new phishing scam
  3. ^ Shankland, Stephen (March 8, 2009). "Firefox, too, revamping new-tab behavior". CNET News. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10191921-2.html. Retrieved 2009-03-10. 
  4. ^ Raskin, Jef; Aza Raskin (September 13, 1994). "The Interface Paradox". BayCHI Monthly Program. http://www.baychi.org/calendar/19940913/. Retrieved 2009-03-06. 
  5. ^ Raskin, Aza (2004). "The Failure of Applications". EuroPython 2004. Gothenburg, Sweden. http://europython-develop.zope.nl/conferences/epc2004/info/talks/applications/jacob02. 
  6. ^ a b Raskin, Aza. "Aza's Thoughts - About me". http://www.azarask.in/blog/. Retrieved 2009-03-06. 
  7. ^ McCarthy, Jack (February 28, 2005). "Mac creator Jef Raskin dies of cancer". InfoWorld. http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/001138.html. Retrieved 2008-03-06. 
  8. ^ Raskin, Aza (January 16, 2008). "Joining Mozilla". Humanized. http://humanized.com/weblog/2008/01/16/joining-mozilla/. Retrieved 2009-03-06. 
  9. ^ Raskin, Aza (March 30, 2010). "Firefox Looks Inward For a Creative Boost". Giga Om. http://gigaom.com/2010/03/30/firefox-aza/. Retrieved 5 April 2010. 
  10. ^ Raskin, Aza (August 26, 2008). "Introducing Ubiquity". Mozilla Labs. http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/. Retrieved 2009-03-06. 
  11. ^ Schonfeld, Erick (June 11, 2008). "Zoom, Pan, Throw: A Peek At What Firefox Mobile Could Be". TechCrunch. http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/11/zoom-pan-throw-a-peek-at-what-firefox-mobile-could-be/. Retrieved 2009-03-06. 
  12. ^ Popescu, Andrei (July 7, 2009). "Geolocation API Specification". W3C. http://www.w3.org/TR/geolocation-API/. Retrieved 2009-07-07. 
  13. ^ Wenzel, Elsa (March 7, 2008). "Cardboard key to a 'green' office space". CNET News. http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9888750-54.html. Retrieved 2009-03-06. 
  14. ^ Aime Street Swallows Songza
  15. ^ http://bub.blicio.us/interview-with-amie-street-why-keep-acquisition-of-songza-a-secret/
  16. ^ contextfreeart.org/
  17. ^ Algorithm Ink
  18. ^ Aza Raskin on Wired Cover
  19. ^ Aza Raskin gives TED Talk
  20. ^ Jakobsson, Markus; Myers, Steven, eds. (2006). Phishing and Counter-Measures: Understanding the Increasing Problem of Electronic Identity Theft. Wiley. pp. 800. ISBN 0-471-78245-9. http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471782459,descCd-description.html. 
  21. ^ Information Week's: 'Tabnapping' Attack Simplifies Phishing
  22. ^ Aza Raskin's original disclosure of Tabnabbing
  23. ^ Eweek: Tabnapping Attack on Web Browsers Makes Phishing Easy
  24. ^ Raskin, Aza. "Tab Candy: Making Firefox Tabs Sweet". http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/tabcandy/. Retrieved 2010-08-19. 
  25. ^ "With Firefox's Tab Candy Feature, We'll Finally Achieve Tab Nirvana". http://gizmodo.com/5595017/with-firefoxs-tab-candy-feature-well-finally-achieve-tab-nirvana. Retrieved 2010-08-19. 
  26. ^ http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9182000/Firefox_4_Beta_4_opens_a_new_Panorama
  27. ^ Aza Raskin. "Leaving Mozilla, Starting Massive Health". http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/leaving-mozilla. 
  28. ^ "Aza Raskin Leaves Mozilla to Start Massive Health". http://thenextweb.com/industry/2010/12/14/aza-raskin-leaves-mozilla-to-start-massive-health/. 
  29. ^ "Firefox UI man quits Mozilla for new health-conscious venture". http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/15/aza_raskin_quits_mozilla/. 

[edit] References

[edit] Writing

[edit] Talks

[edit] External links

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