Computers, Development & Publishing
He launched his business with stellar AutoPoll sales proceeds and attained the lofty prerequisites to become an Authorized Value-Added Distributor (VAD) for IBM (International Business Machines). He further extended his business to include a wide variety of vendors' hardware and catapulted his gross sales to over $2 million per month!
In fact, he sold the Grateful Dead their first Apple Macintosh computers and personally installed them in their San Rafael, California 'Round Records' office.
He was also a teacher. On nights he wasn't debugging, you could find
Bill Kreutzmann or Brent Mydland (of the Grateful Dead) or Ross Valory (of Journey) at his Novato, California home receiving private computer lessons.
And, spending daily afternoons loading truckload orders onto forty-foot semi trailers using his forklift wasn't enough.
One evening in a local Japanese restaurant named Fujiyama, he came up with a concept for new software that would put a computer to sleep and wake it up, and then drew it on the corner of a placemat.
It turned out to be what is know known as 'Hibernation Technology,' or that what puts a computer to sleep and wakes it up right where it left off... the sleep mode or suspend-resume. If you are an avid PC user, you'll know this feature as it is built into every copy of Microsoft Windows, since the inception of Windows 98.
In 1986, that product was called 'Bookmark.' And, Mr. Brulen set up a worldwide software publishing company named 'Intellisoft International' to disseminate that software product.
Over a twelve-year period, under his guide, his Intellisoft company had 37 distributors in 22 countries and the product was translated into five foreign languages, and had overseas offices in Austria and The Netherlands.
Bierman licensed the technology to the largest and most prominent computer makers in the business and had a customer list encompassing over one million licensees and users, from 'Main Street' America to The White House to the German Post Office to all ends of the globe.
Bookmark was offered in several flavors. It was also called 'Stop 'N Go!,' 'Smart Start,' 'TurboStart' and other international names. Intellisoft licensed its technology to Siemens, IBM, Acer, Fujitsu ICL, Compaq, Toshiba, NEC, Astec (BSR), and Emerson Electric, among the many.
And, Intellisoft's Bookmark software products were sold in over 9000 computers stores worldwide, including Egghead and ComputerLand. Several computer publications and newspapers touted the product as did the many people who visited Intellisoft's very cool comedic booth at Comdex... where in fact, Brulen personally met a Mr. Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman at the middle stages of its development.
The demise of Intellisoft took place when Microsoft embedded Intellisoft's technology in Windows® without license, and eliminated its market since it was included in every copy of Windows® since 1998.
Thus, Intellisoft could no longer sell or license its products, resulting in going out of business. Microsoft never paid Bierman or defunct Intellisoft for this occurrence. The legal cost and repercussions to fight Microsoft was beyond the means of Intellisoft or Bierman. Microsoft had no comment at that time.
It was unfortunate that Bierman's invention became a part of Microsoft Windows® without ever being compensated, though he is happy to see that what he created has obviously been a great benefit to PC users worldwide.
It should also be mentioned that Brulen was still doing his debugging work during the light of the moon, and took a brief stint to begin the recordings of what will be known as 'Rules Made To Be Broken.'
And, one last item of note... he also owns 'Imagine WebWorks,' a web design company that has created some very beautiful and comprehensive websites.
In fact, his computer skills are beyond extraordinary. This entire website was fully designed and coded by Brulen himself, with no outside help whatsoever. All of the artwork and functionality of this site is the complete work of Brulen.
He even custom-built the computer that he used to design this site.
Brulen's computer expertise is sought after by professionals because of his uncanny ability to troubleshoot, answer questions (like a walking and talking technical manual) and assist others in business startups.
More about that can be read in his Business Bio.
