The legend of Woz dates back to 1976, when, as a teenager, Steve Wozniak engineered Apple's early personal computers. Shortly after the Macintosh was introduced, Woz quit to teach public school. Now, 20 years later, he's taking another run at retail as CEO of Wheels of Zeus, or wOz. The startup is working with Motorola to offer a low-cost GPS-based tracking system that lets consumers keep tabs on keys, cars, or even kids via wireless radio signals and broadband Internet. Sure, it sounds kooky. But, back in the '70s, so did a personal computer.
WIRED: What's the story with wOz?
WOZNIAK: The idea started off with humor, but we landed on the concept of people locating important things. Keeping track of children and finding pets when they're not where they're supposed to be. Plus notification. There's nothing that does that.
What humor? Was it a joke?
The original idea was to intercept cop signals to report where patrol cars were and display that information in your car via GPS.
I'd buy one of those.
Everyone says they'd buy one.
So how does your gadget find stuff?
We came up with a very low-power platform. It has small devices that can be located and devices that help you do the locating. The locating devices connect to the Internet, and that, in turn, connects to our backend servers. We designed a network that is really applicable to this. Plus, the user's end is portable, so a user walks around with a little device that does the job of finding. There's a user interface on our device and one on the Internet.
It could be a little creepy.
Everybody wants to track things. But not everyone will buy into this, just like not everyone buys a home security system.
I don't even like caller ID.
I do. There's an 800 number you can use to make a call and give any ID you want. Want to get someone to answer the phone? Make the call from somebody important.
And that doesn't bother you?
If you want to find out if your spouse is visiting a whorehouse or see where your kids are hanging around after school, that bothers me. I believe strongly in a person's right to privacy. But my life is an open world. I've had a Wozcam on the Web for 10 years. As far as someone knowing where I am, I am one of the few people who wouldn't mind. You should live in an open world, too. If that were true of everyone, you wouldn't have to worry about people.
OK, but what's with the company name?
The name was a joke. I got onto the Internet in the earliest days, so I owned a three-letter dotcom. I thought, rather than Woz.com, what company name can I make up for Woz? The words just popped into my head: Wheels of Zeus.
You don't seem like a self-promotional kind of guy.
No. I would resent that. And yet they put my name on my business card in three places. Look, I designed a good computer. That should be it. But for everybody, the computer is the best toy in their life, and they look for symbols to back it up. That's fine. If people want symbols, I'll be a good one. I'll help kids and education. I'll represent technologists as good.
- Jesse Freund
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