Tapulous

Bart is from the Dutch part of Belgium, where they're generous with first names: he's not just Bart, but also Roger and Marcel, and he responds to Bart, Bert, Burt, Mark and many less flattering ways of addressing him. Bart likes working on big new things, especially projects that bring people together. Fresh out of law school, Bart started Plugged In, one of the first "digital divide" programs in the country, helping low-income families in East Palo Alto tap into the power of the network. Next up: Bart was a cofounder of Eazel (making Linux easier to use), headed marketing and business affairs for the Firefox 1.0 launch, and was the founding CEO of Flock, the social web browser.

Bart got his iPhone on June 29, 2007, and was hooked straight away. A few months later, he noticed that guys like Sean and Nate were building awesome iPhone apps - six months before the SDK shipped. Connections were made, and that's how Tapulous got started. Wanna have some fun? Challenge him to a game of Tap Tap Revenge - he's bartd in-game. Bart's our CEO, and you'll find his full bio and mugshots at decremental.com.

Andrew's an Aussie, mate. That means that "meta data"" is properly pronounced "meter dater". Bart? That would be Baht.

Andrew has a law degree, but hasn't made much use of it. He turned some pretty crazy ideas into businesses on behalf of the Australian government and the odd start-up before joining McKinsey. Over five years at McKinsey he did everything from building internet start-ups in India and New Zealand to optimizing mining operations in the Australian outback. In between, he got his MBA at Stanford.

Aussies like to travel, and Andrew's no exception. He's lived on three continents and if he's not at his desk, chances are he may not be in the continental United States.

Rob grew up with a need to play video games as they were not intended, that transformed into a love of making video games in highschool. In college at Cal Poly he made fun demos on a range of platforms in his spare time. Rob is here at Tapulous as our programming intern - focusing his skills on best new platform and helping us make the greatest new games.

Serban is a man of few words.

Sean was at Tapulous since before it was Tapulous and is employee #2. Before that, he worked on a mirage of web development projects, some successful, some not. He also started 3 companies, worked random jobs and lived in China for 2 years after college. Now that he is back in the US, he is enjoying fast internet, Bay Area weather and meaty Brazilian buffets. When he's not pulling programming all-nighters, he's an NPR addict, a 5 handicap golfer and an aspiring jazz saxophone player.

Sean is originally from the beautiful South Lake Tahoe, California. After graduating from South Tahoe High, (go Vikings!), he went on to study Computer Engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Originally hailing from Saratoga California, Ed began life securely attached to his Atari 2600. After the complete annihilation of Pac-Man, he was lucky enough to see the debut of the original Nintendo gaming console and of course, his first love: the Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt combo game. It was through these countless hours of training, Ed honed his hand-eye coordination enough to prove once and for all - video games are good for you.

As the years passed, Ed graduated to more advanced levels of gaming such as Super Mario 2, 3, and Super Mario World. He still has yet to beat the Super Mario five minute seventeen second game-completion record.

Ed now spends his time working with Tap Tap Revenge fans to improve the experience for gamers and non-gamers alike. Feel free to ask Ed for any tips on beating Super Mario, snowboarding, or flying (paper) airplanes.

Tim brings the rock & roll pedigree to the Tapulous team. With his degree from Berkeley's Haas School of Business, he began his career developing amphitheaters for San Francisco's Bill Graham Presents, spent some time on the road with the Rolling Stones, and rolled that into founding his own artist management company.

Guiding major recording artists through music videos and world tours, Tim saw his share of backstages and tour buses. Being on the forefront of street team cultivation and web-community building led him to the online world and business development roles at StubHub and Gydget.com. As the guy who gets the songs, Tim is the Rosetta Stone of Tapulous, able to translate the tech talk into the grunts and screams the music world understands.

A Bay Area native through and through, you can find Tim either sitting at the sushi bar, halfway down the mountain at Squaw Valley, front and center at the Fillmore, or home at last in Sausalito. And of course always on his iPhone, getting the deal done.

Based in Bakersfield California, and the father of two, Bryan has been designing icons, web sites and apps for the past ten years, and has recently struck out into the iPhone and gaming universes. Bryan is responsible for the tasty Tapulous experience.

Originally from Glendale, California, Cristina now spends her days as a Political Science major at Stanford and makes her way to the The Shop part-time. Her nights are spent surfing music blogs scheming new ways to increase her number of twitter followers in order to up her influence on hypem - help her gain world domination by following her... @cristinacordova.

You can catch her around Stanford and Palo Alto with coffee in one hand, iPhone in the other and wearing copious amounts of black.

Wally is a new-ish member of the Tapulous gang, focusing on the creation of tap tracks for Tap Tap Revenge, audio mixing and sound design for various apps, and just the general go-to guy for all things musical and sonic.

Originally from Houston, TX, Wally's music-nerd obsessions began at an early age playing violin, singing in choirs, and finally getting an electric guitar at the age of 11 and promptly learning the entire repertoire of Metallica and other thrash bands. Discoveries of jazz, progressive rock, and contemporary classical music sparked a profound interest in composing and Wally suddenly found himself spending countless hours drawing little dots on paper as a composition student first at Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio and then at Mills College, which brought him to the Bay Area.

Since completing his studies Wally has led a double life: one as a professional composer/audio engineer/midi designer for LeapFrog Toys, Activision, EA, etc. and the other as an active performing musician in the legendary Oakland art-rock community. He is the leader and founder of his own experimental jazz metal ensemble miRthkon, and is a sideman in countless other bands.

He also has 3 amazing cats: Mischa, Zoe, and Percy.

Nate's not a full-time member of the Tapulous team, but it sure feels that way! Nate can always be found tinkering with this or that. If it has to do with technology (and sometimes if it doesn't), Nate wants to mess with it. The unprofessional hacker of the bunch, Nate's the one who shakes things up on the team, with crazy new ideas. Back when the iPhone first came out, Nate was among the first to start tinkering with making new apps for it, long before the SDK or App Store were even announced. Among his first offerings as he started learning Objective C was Tap Tap Revolution. The rest is history.

When he's not slaving away in the code mines, Nate spends his time playing with his green cheek conure parrot Erythema, reading, watching TV or playing video games.

Amy has never lived anywhere besides Palo Alto, California and she wouldn't have it any other way. She is currently a junior at Stanford University where she is majoring in Science, Technology, and Society. An avid music lover, Amy has been singing since the age of three. When she's not interning at Tapulous she is either walking backwards as a Stanford tour guide, singing, making jewelry, or traveling.

Jason, a Miami Beach native obsessed with the details has been art directing entertainment based experiences on the web, mobile, and desktop for over 8 years. He recently left the world of digital advertising and joined Tapulous to focus his efforts on bringing social applications and games to market. When not working at his desk, he can be found enjoying what he considers to be the best things in life; cooking, travel, making martinis, and pining over anything created by Jamie Hayon & Marc Newson.

As one of the team's newest minions, Ernest spreads his love for art in the latest Tapulous projects. Prior to this position, he roamed the Mac Community as a freelance artist under the pseudonym Pixel Sage. Perhaps his largest role was his contribution to the yearly event known as MacHeist. He was also the co-founder of the software gig MacMage.

Ernest is also an aural artist, having been a pianist for over fourteen years. He has also studied the violin, and has traveled the world with the Peninsula Youth Orchestra. During his leisure hours, Ernest enjoys light gaming (aka not WoW), YouTubing occasional piano recordings, and just hanging out with anyone willing to put up with him.

After an accidental start writing firmware for network repeaters, Riley found his footing writing applications for the Mac. A few jobs into it, and he was caught in the tractor beam of the mother ship: Apple-- something his friends all saw as inevitable. He spent just over a decade working on various Mac OS components and pro applications (Help, Sherlock, Soundtrack Pro, Final Cut Pro). After years of creating bigger and bigger applications for Mac OS X, Riley was intrigued with the idea of building small, nimble applications for the iPhone. After some searching, he connected with the team at Tapulous, and the rest is history.

Riley is a native Californian, living in the Bay Area his entire life - except for a five year stint in the middle of the Amazon jungle. If he's not at work, it's likely he's at a scout meeting.

Prior to joining Tapulous in October '08, Jessica held various positions in Software Engineering at Apple, Inc., for just shy of a decade. She worked on Apple Help, Sherlock, PubSub (the RSS framework), and most recently, the Safari browser. In a nutshell, Jess can't seem to stay away from Macs, the Internet, and compelling applications that are used by millions of people.

Jessica's constant companion is her handsome & crazy rescue Basset Hound, Bentley. He's never more than about six feet from her, and always looking for an edible handout. Outside of work, Jess can be found hiking with Bentley, working on her creative pursuits of photography, writing, and music, or down-shifting her beloved sporty German car around curvy back-country roads.

Bentley is a middle-aged Basset Hound, who spends his afternoons hanging out at the Tapulous offices, taking naps and nosing through trash cans. He was adopted three years ago from Golden Gate Basset Rescue, after bouncing around from owner to owner for the first four years of his life. He's one of the most handsome hounds you'll ever meet, and has a big unique personality to go with his good looks.

Bentley's happiest when he's in close proximity to his mom, Jess, and especially when they're out on walks together. His favorite Bay Area hangouts, other than Tapulous, are his window seat at home, the sidewalk in front of the bagel store on University Ave in Palo Alto, and the beach at Fort Funston.

This article's accuracy is disputed.

Zach is from Boston. He graduated from Northeastern University sometime in late 2007. Before graduating though, he created one of the first mega huge Facebook applications, called Free Gifts. In early 2008, Zach joined a the social gaming startup Social Gaming Network as a co-founder. Shortly after joining SGN, he brought in and sold his Facebook applications. In October 2008, through a series of connections, Zach met with Bart for frozen yogurt and was convinced that iPhone was the next-big-thing.

Zach joined Tapulous with no official title, but was ready to roll as an eclectic and provide insight into the social web and to write some sick javascript. Zach can often be found lounging in Tap Tap Chat or playing online in Tap Tap Revenge 2 under the pseudonym zachtap.

Guy spent ten years writing video game software for Windows and various console platforms. After having had enough of that he quit the industry and joined the Mac developer community where he worked on desktop software. Then the iPhone SDK arrived, no, not the "sweat deal" you're thinking of - the actual SDK which ran compiled code, and he found himself, once again, writing video games. These days he is focused on OpenGL code and architectural goop. "Goop" is a technical term, you may not understand it, but it is of the utmost importance. Nobody has fun without architectural goop. Nobody. Guy is officially not a full-time member of the Tapulous team - but that doesn't seem to stop him from coding on Tap Tap Revenge until 6am all too often!

Born, raised, and currently living in San Francisco, Brian has been programming for the Mac since Mac OS 7 days (that's a looong time ago). His career includes stints at Adobe and four years at Apple. These days his fondness for Macintosh programming has turned to a love affair with the iPhone.

New to the bay area, Andy joined Tapulous as an engineering intern working on a Top Secret iPhone app. Andy is majoring in Computer Science Engineering and has speculative (vague) plans to go back at some point to finish his last semester at the University of Michigan. When he's not at Tapulous, Andy spends his time maintaining numerous other interests including drumming, poker, motorcycles, and martial arts.

Way back when, Maria camped out at The Shop while planning the launch of the US arm of a Spanish startup. She is passionate about start-ups and came from Barcelona to Silicon Valley to learn how to start her own one day. After getting hooked on Tap Tap Revenge while in our office she joined the team as a business all-rounder.

Maria has a business degree from ESADE Business School and she also spent one freezing cold semester at University of Michigan. That's where she created her first startup, also around iPods, and that was the move that made her decide to relocate to the Bay Area.

Over the weekend you'll find her hiking in the surroundings, discovering San Francisco or preparing a sangria for friends around a paella. Maria has an infectious smile, be careful you don't catch it!

Adam, our Javascript Ninja, has been studying Ninjavascriptsu since the Emperor of Redmond released IE 5 in the late 20th Century. According to legend, Adam can beat a web browser so deeply into submission that tears can be found dripping from the computer's ethernet port. Luckily, he's on our side.

When Ninja Adam is not planning the assassination of our App Store competitors, he is busy finding new ways to infiltrate iPhone Safari to make Tapulous games more fun. Additionally, he is also extremely useful for expelling street bums from The Shop using Jedi-like mind tricks of suggestion.

Shane is a backend engineer at Tapulous. Before that he has worked for 12 years in several social networking and gaming start ups and for some big names as well like Adobe and Tellme Networks. Even though the demands are in technology are great, some personal highlights during his time in technology are

• - Teaching rockclimbing in Joshua Tree on the weekends
• - Lived in Ecuador, South America for a year in the coastal rainforests and Quito
• - Lived in London, England and traveled all across Europe
• - Skydiving anywhere and everywhere possible
• - Doing copius amounts of bicycle touring in California with his lovely wife on their tandem bicycle

Today in his spare time (yeah right, like Tapulous allows for spare time), Shane is preparing to be a new daddy and works on a cool Distributed File System for web applications named WebDFS.

Trevor's life revolves most around skateboarding and video games. He was inspired to begin skateboarding after going to the X-Games 2000 in San Francisco. Despite his love for the sport, he never got the courage to try skateboarding until five years afterwards when he bought his first board. Three broken bones and over 9000 scratches later to this day, Trevor still continues to shred the streets.

He received a Nintendo 64 for Christmas of 1999 with Star Fox 64, little did he know this led to the beginning of competitive gaming where Trevor placed himself in the top ten highest scores in the world.

Trevor bought himself an iPod Touch 2G with birthday bucks from Best Buy on November 14th 2008. It wasn't until a month later when his friend showed him Tap Tap Revenge, the game which would change his life. After only two months of playing, he skyrocketed to the top five worldwide, going under the alias "krohn7master."

Trevor is 15 years old, and is a junior in high school working as an intern at Tapulous. He works a lot with Ed helping to improve the games and eliminating bugs and glitches. Trevor is also a strong leader in the community where he signs on daily to give advice, ideas, and solve problems. If you want to take on Trevor in Tap Tap Revenge, send your challenge to krohn7master@taptaprevenge.com. (Good luck, you'll need it!)