I suspect they would find escape and socialization by means of virtual worlds. They could visit San Francisco and meet old friends for coffee. They could scuba dive or go hang gliding. They could revive their spirits basking in Earth’s comforting slendor.

Alan was a man.
A man with ideals.
A man with dreams.
He spent his life breathing life into his dreams.
He worked to make his dreams real.

When we look around, we see the result of his work.
Looking at his work, we can see the dreams.
We can see the man.
His works appear to me as monuments
to beauty, creativity, optimism and love.

Now that he is gone, the world is a dimmer place.
His living force that strove to build and sustain these monuments is no longer here, and I can tell.

However, he has left a legacy even greater than these monuments. And that is his example.
His example inspires me to dream.
His example inspires me to work.
His example inspires me to live.

I want to tell you about Foundd by telling you a little bit about myself. I studied math at Cal Poly, SLO, California and entered the workforce as a programmer in the midst of the dot-com boom. One thing led to another and I became a specialist in Adobe’s PDF file format. Who could have guessed?
Anyhow, that’s how I came to write my book, PDF Hacks, for O’Reilly. And that’s when my DNA changed.

Writing a Hacks book is a crazy, mad-scientist marathon, and the experience has altered how I think. I can’t take off the lab coat any more. I’m always dissecting, tinkering and creating — looking for novel solutions to interesting problems. It’s usually fun, sometimes frenzied, occasionally profitable.

Foundd got its start in February, 2005, when I hit upon a new idea for an online service. After many months of odd hours, I had built GoJot. I showed it to my friends and we started kicking it around.

In the course of these debates my passion for GoJot gradually dimmed. I had wanted to build something so useful that ordinary folks (not just geeks) would use it every day — and this just wasn’t it. The debates around GoJot, however, had sparked a wildfire of new ideas. I had become the mad scientist again, passionately persuing an elusive notion.

A succession of little online services followed, each one an experiment. One Friday I hatched a new idea that was so compelling that it made my heart skip with excitement. After many long nights, ListMixer was online. I love ListMixer, but I knew it could grow into something greater. ListMixer was almost it.

With great care I started work on the online service before you now: Foundd – Re-search Engine. And I feel I have finally discovered what I set out for, over one year ago. Olé!
But this isn’t the end of the story. Rather, the passion I used to discover Foundd will now go into developing Foundd into something even greater. That’s where I could use your help.
I hope you will try Foundd, and I hope you will love it as much as I do. Most of all, I hope that you will write me to let me know how it works for you — how I could improve it. Foundd’s success depends on how well it serves you.

Thank You–
Sid