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Linden Lab Appoints Howard Look Senior Vice President of Customer ApplicationsSAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- Linden Lab®, creator of the virtual world Second Life®, today announced the appointment of Howard Look as Senior Vice President (SVP) of Customer Applications. Look brings over 18 years of experience in software development and user interface (UI) design, having held executive positions at Pixar Animation Studios and TiVo Inc., (NASDAQ: TiVo). Reporting to Linden Lab's CEO, Mark Kingdon, Look will oversee improvements to the Second Life experience and the development of new products and features that enhance the usability and overall customer experience of the Second Life Grid. "Howard's resume speaks for itself and shows why he's the perfect fit for this position. He has led the development of technologies that create and deliver world-class experiences to their users, showing a very rare combination of deep engineering expertise coupled with an intuitive understanding of how consumers interact with technology," said Mark Kingdon, CEO, Linden Lab. "Second Life is fundamentally changing the way people work, play and socialize. One of our key goals is to make Second Life more accessible to more people by making it easier to use, more intuitive, more joyful. Howard works on that very challenging edge where technology meets user experience and is ideally suited for the task at hand. He is a rare talent and we are excited that he chose to join Linden Lab." "Very early on in my career I recognized the transformative power that 3D technologies can have on human interaction and communication. Linden Lab is taking the power of 3D technologies much further than I had originally thought possible," said Howard Look, SVP of Customer Applications, Linden Lab. "The Linden Lab team, the Second Life Grid and the incredible opportunities ahead are exactly what I was looking for in the next stage of my career." Prior to Linden Lab, Look served as Vice President of Software at Pixar Animation Studios, where he led the team that developed and maintained its proprietary filmmaking system. Prior to Pixar, Look was a member of the founding team at TiVo Inc. and served as Vice President of Application Software and User Experience, playing a key role in defining TiVo's functionality and user experience. Previously, Look was Director of Applied Engineering at Silicon Graphics, where he led the team that created the "O2 Out of Box Experience," the world's first Virtual Reality Modeling Language-based (VRML) 3D workstation setup environment. He also served as an engineer on the Inventor team, which later became the foundation for VRML. Look received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. About The Second Life Grid and Linden Lab The Second Life Grid is a technology platform that enables organizations to build custom virtual world environments and applications. Offering the industry's most advanced content creation, land management and transaction tools, the Second Life Grid enables individuals, educators, researchers and organizations to increase productivity and cut travel costs by moving meetings, prototyping, training and other efforts to a virtual environment. In 2003, Linden Lab launched Second Life, an acclaimed 3D online world built on the Second Life Grid. Inhabited by hundreds of thousands of people from across the globe, the Second Life virtual world has a fully functioning economy and empowers its users to create content, interact with others, launch businesses, collaborate and educate. Linden Lab was founded in 1999 by Chairman of the Board Philip Rosedale and is headquartered in San Francisco. The company is led by CEO Mark Kingdon, the former CEO of Organic, Inc., and counts noted software pioneer Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, among its board members. |
