Did you see the movie Iron Man? Read the comics much? If not then you may not see the similarities here. But if so, you’ll see right away that Jeff O’Shea the Founder and Executive Vice President of IntelliTouch Communications, is a real life version of Tony Stark.
Not long ago, we featured a EOS Wireless product here at NC, and after reading some about IntelliTouch and after emailing back and forth with Jeff, I knew this was someone we had to talk too, after learning very little about him, one thing became clear, this was a true pioneer. Here was someone who is living the American dream, someone who had ideas, and even more important then having them, this was someone who went after those ideas and sought to make dreams reality. Without further delay, I present our interview with Jeff O’Shea!
-Jef Price, Editor/Co-Founder NC
(NC) Now to start this right, tell us a little bit about yourself Jeff, what
inspired you to found IntelliTouch?
(Jeff) I’ve always been an idea guy. From the time I was a little kid, I an obsession with creating things. IntelliTouch was my vehicle to start building on my ideas…that was 20 years ago.
We’ve done a lot of things over the years. We began as an audio production house producing advertising messages that played when you were on hold. I quickly realized that the equipment that was being used for this purpose was all wrong. I had the vision of building digital players to play the on-hold content on phone systems.
Once in telecom and with an acquired background in engineering and manufacturing, we bought a business telephone design from Uniden. Things went well and soon we soon found ourselves designing and building cordless telephones for large telco’s. The wireless chip designs we were using opened up the door to one of my longtime dreams… to build a multi-room wireless audio system…that was the birth of Eos.
At the time that Eos was conceptualized, all that existed was 900MHz analog wireless speakers, that never worked. The signal would drift and was highly susceptible to interference. We rounded up a bunch of digital audio technologies that would allow us to broadcast real world 150ft indoors. The natural for the first Eos product was an iPod docking station that could broadcast multi-room audio through walls, floors, ceilings, inside and out.
(NC) Did you have any idea of what you were getting into when you started a
company that was going to be a pioneer with these Technologies? I’d imagine
this is a hard area to both break into and to keep up with….
(Jeff) IntelliTouch has come a long way from an audio production company to a consumer electronics manufacturer. It would have been hard to imagine 20 years ago that we would be where we are today. We are a small company that is very agile. Our strength is our vision to develop great products that are value priced and simple to use. We are also very adept in utilizing our growing global network of engineering talent to bring products to market quickly and affordably.
(NC) Now are you yourself a inventor? Do you work on these new technologies
yourself?
(Jeff) Being an inventor is part of my DNA. My dad was an engineer, we tapped him to help us design and oversee our engineering, design and manufacturing. I spend much of my time hunting down new technologies and working to productize them. I’m always working on a new idea, or working to find new ways to make our products better, easier to use and widen their appeal. Trends and technology change at a rapid pace. As a company we must continue to evolve or face extinction. IntelliTouch is a company of innovation…with first to market technology.
(NC) You guys have won some pretty big awards for products correct?
(Jeff) We’ve won a lot of Innovations awards, including a best of show at CES. We’ve won Editors choice awards and continue to glean praise from the press for our simplicity and ease of use. Editors continue to be impressed with Eos’ ability to automatically link to the base station/transmitter without any setup…consumers really love this too.
(NC) We’ve featured one of your products here on the site, specifically the
EOS Wireless satellite speakers, any new advancements there? What are some
products or technologies from you guys we should be on the look out for?
(Jeff) We have a new wireless audio product line called Converge that will be launching in 3rd quarter 2009. Converge was designed to fill out the Eos wireless line by expanding our appeal to a wider audience and to bring the product to a more audiophile centric market. Converge is based on the premise that your digital music lives on your computer, but your computer does not live where you listen to your music.
The new Converge line features a new USB transmitter and 2 new receivers. The new Converge transmitter connects to the USB port of a Mac or PC and streams digital audio out to Eos receivers (it also gets power from the USB, so there is no power supply required). The new Eos transmitter does not require any software, so it is dead simple to connect and use. One new Eos receiver is designed to connect to your existing home audio system, while the other receiver features an 30 watt amplifier, so you can connect up your own speakers or add our new acoustically matched Eos speakers. The receivers alos give you control to play, pause and track back or forward right from the receiver. And it all can be controlled from an iPhone or iPod Touch with Apple’s new Remote App (more on that later). All the existing Eos components, including the iPod docking station and self-contained wireless speakers work with the new Converge products.
The iPhone and iPod touch will continue to drive the market. Apple’s remote App, now allows you to control your iTunes library on your computer remotely from the iPhone and iPod Touch. This feature, combined with the new Converge USB transmitter allows you to gain complete command of all your music…without having to use your iPhone or iPod Touch as a playback device. From the Remote app, you can select from any playlist, search for albums and artists and much more.
Additionally, streaming internet radio is really coming on strong. Internet radio stations like, Pandora, Last FM and Slacker have opened up a whole new listening experience for consumers. With the new Eos USB transmitter connected to your computer, you can stream this great new music experience throughout your home, inside and out.
What good is technology if a consumer can’t understand it or afford it? Technology, price and simplicity will continue to drive the growing popularity of the Eos line for many years to come.
(NC) Jeff, thanks for talking with us today, we’d love to speak again sometime.
(Jeff) Thanks you for the opportunity to tell the IntelliTouch and Eos stories. More good things to come…and soon, we’ll be sure to keep you guys in the loop.