Fen Labalme became interested in computers as a fifth grader, when he built his first analog computer. Three years later, he wrote his first computer game -- a version of Lunar Lander on the PDP 8/e. While working toward a combined bachelor/master's degree in engineering at what is now the MIT Media Lab, he conceived of and wrote his thesis on NewsPeek, a knowledge-based open-access news and information retrieval system (1981). NewsPeek marked the genesis of Mr. Labalme's lifelong passion for making information for the masses accessible and personalized. NewsPeek combined the Nexis online news service with large-scale personal computing, artificial intelligence, and advanced communications and networking to create a personalized electronic newspaper containing high-quality news, information, and entertainment. In 1983 he coined the term broadcatch to describe a suite of "many-to-one" technologies designed to provide information the way people really want it: timely, trusted, and on target.
In 1986, Mr. Labalme co-created the Stop First Strike Action Collective which worked to uphold U.S. and international laws prohibiting the creation of first strike weapons such as the Trident II D-5 MIRV'd ICBM. In the same year, he became the host of the WELL's Peace conference and soon after started his activism-oriented web site, Activism.net. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Labalme assumed the role of technical lead at Oracle Corporation's Office Automation Division, where he incorporated elements of NewsPeek into an internal messaging system. Transferring to Oracle's Network Division, he built tools to support a protocol-independent network-transport architecture. Concurrent with this move, he co-founded Metaview Corporation, creators of the SmarTV personalized TV system. As Chief Engineer, he designed (and demonstrated at CES in Las Vegas) a system that controlled multiple VCRs to record selected broadcast or cable shows as determined by a continuously-updated user preference profile. While at General Magic (1991-1993) Mr. Labalme designed and implemented a framework for an open profiling system - the Information Provider Architecture - in Telescript. His work was key in forging alliances with both Oracle and RSA.
Mr. Labalme helped launch Software.net in 1995 and then built search engines for the New York Times and the California State Legislature on behalf of WAIS, Inc. The following year, he was brought on as Director of Technology for Songline Studios, where he was responsible for the publication of Web Review and helped to produce the collaborative Movie Critic system. In 1998, he co-founded Lumeria Inc. where he created and implemented BookmarkCity (acquired by Linkify), developed the SuperProfile concept, and authored An Infomediary Approach to the Privacy Problem. He continued to pursue the broadcatch vision through the OpenPrivacy Initiative, authoring Enhancing the Internet with Reputations. Since 2000, Mr. Labalme has been the CTO and chief architect of several inter-related personal profiles with privacy initiatives, including:
- OpenPrivacy - an open source, cryptographically secure, distributed platform for creating, maintaining, and selectively sharing profile information (e.g., a marketplace for anonymous demographic profiles),
- Identity Commons - a technology-neutral trust federation that is continually seeking out emerging technologies to enhance its planned open global trust network, and
- 2idi - an identity services provider with a difference, whose mission is to provide its customers with total control over their identity-related transactions
Away from his computer screen, Mr. Labalme spends his time hiking, swimming and generally goofing off with his wife Elaine and their son, Steven. He consults with and has even performed for the George Coates Performance Works, is an avid (Frisbee) disc golfer and feeds an orange cat named Simba.