Tom Murphy

A native "Bay Arean", I grew up surrounded by technology and music. My dad designed Air Force spy satellites (later to become the foundation for Google Maps), and my mom was a classically-trained opera singer and teacher.

Beginning with piano lessons in the third grade, I grew to be fascinated with synthesizers and sound recording in high school. This led to earning my degree in TV Production, where I worked in both college radio and the local San Jose ABC-affiliate TV station.

Upon graduating from Santa Clara University, I landed my first "real sound job" at Music Annex Recording Studios before taking the digital plunge. I joined Digidesign to support the launch of Pro Tools, represented the company on their CompuServe and AOL forums, and eventually launched their first website.

Those "Web 0.1" experiences led to positions at companies like digital-download pioneers Liquid Audio, rich-media mavens Audiobase, and music locker upstarts musicbank. There I learned the many intracacies of encoding, metadata, and rights-management (not to mention the complexities of "dot-com" startups).

After the "dot-com bubble", I began a 4-year tenure at Gracenote, where I helped customers integrate nearly every product in the deep Gracenote arsenal. From PC applications to embedded devices, to web services and mobile devices, I managed projects for companies like Apple & Real Networks, Nissan & Honda, RIAJ & KDDI.

Currently, I spend a lot of time exploring social media, mobile applications, location-based services, and my hometown of San Francisco.