horaceluke
Latest
The story of the Duke, the Xbox pad that existed because it had to
Denise Chaudhari had never touched a gamepad before stepping onto Microsoft's campus as a contractor. The first woman to join the Xbox team, Chaudhari had studied ergonomics and industrial design at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design but didn't have any experience with joysticks. That's part of why Xbox's Jim Stewart was so excited to bring her on board: Her ideas wouldn't be based on preconceived notions of what a gamepad had to be. It was early 2000, and the company was preparing to enter the gaming world with the Xbox. In Nov. 2001, the console was released in North America alongside the Duke, a controller that seemed comically large compared to its contemporaries. Within a year, the oversize gamepad was abandoned by Microsoft and replaced with a smaller model, but the Duke has had an impact on every controller since.
Former HTC execs unveil smart scooter plus a network of swappable batteries
One of the biggest barriers to owning an electric vehicle is that you have to charge it, often for hours, before taking it for a spin. But what if you could swap out its depleted battery for a fully charged one in seconds? And what if those batteries were in plentiful supply throughout the city? And what if, on top of that, the vehicle in question was a high-powered, cloud-connected electric scooter that told you, among other things, exactly when you should go and swap them out? That's exactly what today's big announcement is from Gogoro, a new effort by a couple of ex-HTC executives -- former Chief Innovation Officer Horace Luke and former Chief Technologist Matthew Taylor -- both of whom were responsible for some of HTC's most groundbreaking products in the past few years. With Gogoro, however, Luke and Taylor's focus is not on phones, but on implementing smarter energy consumption in large cities. And its plans include transforming the urban transport landscape as we know it.
HTC exec Horace Luke leaves company for 'personal reasons'
HTC is out a top executive with the departure of chief innovation officer Horace Luke. The exec has been gone for some time now, having exited at the end of April. The Taiwanese phone maker formally announced the news this week, citing "personal reasons" as the motivation behind the CIO's exit. HTC had nothing but kind words for Luke, who had been with the company since 2006, stating that he had "nurtured a culture of innovation." The company's vice president of design, Scott Croyle, has stepped into the Luke's vacant position.
