Next Tuesday, Mason Neck resident Mike Willner will dine with Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka, and several Yahoo! executives at a table suspended 150 feet above New York Harbor. The owners of two other businesses that were selected as finalists in Yahoo!'s Ultimate Connection contest will also be in attendance at what the Internet company is calling the "ultimate power lunch in the sky."
At Willner's side will be his business partner, co-inventor and former wrestling teammate, who now works as an oil trader on Long Island. Over the last 10 years, the two developed a device they call the AlphaGrip, a handheld device resembling an elaborate video game controller, which can be plugged into a computer to take the place of a traditional keyboard.
Yahoo! selected AlphaGrip Inc. as one of five finalists from a pool of more than 9,000 small businesses that entered the contest. The public then whittled the finalists down to three winners through online voting.
"Computers are moving out of the office," said Willner, during an interview in the living room of his home on the Potomac River, where he lives with his wife and two children.
YEARS AGO, Willner developed a live financial newswire, which he later sold to Dow Jones. The AlphaGrip began as a side project around the time the Palm Pilot was introduced, he said. "A computer in my hand is great, but I can't do as much on this Palm Pilot as I can at my desk."
By using full-sized keys, some of which are "rocker keys" that type two different letters each, the AlphaGrip allows users to type full-speed while leaning back on a sofa or standing, as Willner demonstrated. A roller ball controls the mouse cursor.
He noted that the device would be helpful to a user who was bedridden, as well as allowing anyone to type in greater comfort. It should also be more ergonomic than a keyboard, he said, although he has not yet had that study performed.
For now, the AlphaGrip is bound to the desk — or at least the laptop — by a USB cable, but Willner said the comfort factor alone has been enough for the device to get off to a successful start. The first production run of 1,000 units arrived in January 2006 and has since sold out, he said, adding that the company has seen a 1 percent return rate on the product's money-back guarantee.
This reception was not a given, considering that the AlphaGrip, although loosely based on the traditional Qwerty key layout, requires the user to learn a new way of typing. "The hurdle for this technology to make it is the learning curve," said Willner. It takes about a month of practicing for an hour a day to learn the technique, and about two months to master it, he said.
However, Willner said he would like to use the AlphaGrip design to create a Blackberry-type device that would fold up to pocket size and would allow users to type several times faster that they can on the Blackberry's thumb keyboard. "I think people will definitely climb the learning curve for that kind of productivity boost," he said, noting that a reporter, for example, could easily bring such a device into an interviewee's living room and use it to take notes at a higher speed than is possible with a ballpoint pen and notepad.
"I have been an AlphaGrip user for over a year now, and I really enjoy it," wrote Doug Sims of Villa Rica, Ga., in response to an online request for customer comments. "The AlphaGrip provides a comfortable way for me to do my job, along with freeing up desk space for other documents," he said. He also noted that computers moving into the living room, as well as the advent of plasma televisions that provide Internet connections, could bring the device into the mainstream.
It was not just the product's ingenuity that made AlphaGrip Inc. one of the contest finalists, said Yahoo! spokesperson Kristen Wareham. "We were really looking out for business owners who were passionate about getting their business to the next level," she said, explaining that the idea behind the contest was that marketing and making connections can make a small company big. "His passion for his product comes out in the words he wrote about it," she said of Willner.
THE "POWER LUNCH" will only be the most sensational part of the contest prize. For that, Yahoo! has secured an open lot just across the Hudson River from New York City, where "we're pretty much going to create a scene," said Wareham, noting that the details are to be a surprise. "We'll be taking them up in an unusual contraption," she said.
The rest of the prize package includes thousands of dollars in online keyword advertising, a year's mentoring from a preeminent marketing expert and a Web site makeover.
So far, AlphaGrip has been selling by word-of-mouth while Willner and his partner have focused on customer support and finding out how the product is being received, said Willner. The business is due for a marketing campaign, he said. "So, for us, the timing is perfect."