For those who don’t know Craig is an impressive guy with a really cool story. He was born and raised in Canada and one of his first jobs was designing, what become, Canada’s national banking infrastructure and software. He worked for Microsoft back in 1993 as a technical evangelist. He was one of the creators of DirectX and was really the first person at MSFT to think of gaming beyond just Solitaire and Spider. He did an interview with UWTV a while back that you can find here.
After many years of working for MSFT he left to be CEO of Action Engine Corporation. Action Engine puts the internet on your phone. Also their website is slightly annoying and maybe a little over the top.
After that he went to work for AOL and managed their wireless group. He is now back working for Microsoft. So what do you think he is doing? Lets see… his career with MSFT says to me he loves gaming and his career since then is phones. So lets just say gaming phone? This is really the best evidence thus far that the Zune team is working on the Zune phone.
Interesting Facts about Craig Eisler:
He was a competitive power lifter… really!
He is terribly competitive.
He took down Canada’s banking infrastructure 4 times in one day… on accident.
He came up with the Media Center concept.
“If I don’t agree with a boss, I’ll make his life a living hell.” - Craig Eisler
Whenever Craig signs his name he adds a skull and crossbones just to remind people he’s a badass.
“a BA.. that’s a bad ass, I shortened it.” - Dane Cook, comedian
well a Zune phone i think is a terrible idea. Maybe a windows mobile phone with Zune branding. or a partnership with motorola. like instead of iTunes on the phones they have Zune marketplace where you could sync and download songs.
and since the next generation motorola sider and new RAZR2 can sync with WMP11 and have support for WMP DRM it would make sence to just change the phones mp3 player to Zune and add zune support to it.
as for the gaming part. gaming on the zune is awesome. if there is a zune/xbox/phone. that would be pretty awesome to see too.
lol, a Zune game phone? Sounds interesting. Craig sounds like a cool guy. Having him on the Zune team would rock. I would say that this could lead to some cool games and possibly a phone.
lol, and yes, that website was a little bit over the top. Thought I was watching Star Wars for a second there…
I just watched that interview. This guy has a great energy. I wish I could work for him. Even though he says he doesn’t like managing people who need help.
He seems like a totally nice guy. I’m sure the Zune team is happy to have him.
For the record, when I left Action Engine, here is what the web site looked like. It was a simpler time: http://web.archive.org/web/20040102224008/http://actionengine.com/
I do love Star Wars, though!
Craig along with Eric Engstrom, left AOL’s Mobile group in complete shambles. No doubt Craig is a smart person but he and Eric should be ashamed what he did with AOL’s money and the team he destroyed.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article is Craig Eisler doing with the Zune? at I want a Pink Zune dot com, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.