That information goes out to the state’s databases to check for other violations and then returns with information that enables officers to print a ticket in the vehicle. They simply sign the ticket and hand it to the driver. The information is then sent to the court system.
With clients such as the Tucson Police Department in Arizona, Henrico County PD in Virginia, Oregon Department of Transportation, and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, APS posted revenues of $7.5 million in 2005. The company was recently acquired by Trimble, a publicly traded provider of Global Positioning System technology, for an undisclosed sum of money.
“Complaints have decreased with our systems, and traffic citation times are reduced in half,” says Lopez. As a police officer with the Boca Raton police department in Florida, Lopez and two colleagues founded APS in December 2001 to develop products that would better meet the needs of officers. “Police departments spend millions of dollars on technology that languish because they’re not officer-friendly,” he says. “We had laptops and state-of-the-art technology, but officers weren’t using the products in the vehicles.”
Sean Marcus, 34: “I never wanted to be an engineer,” says Sean Marcus, technical manager of Sony Ericsson’s M2M hardware electrical team. But once he embraced the field, Marcus became one of the company’s rising stars. In fact, he recently worked on a product that won the Sony Ericsson Presidential Award for research and development/technology. Marcus is developing gateway products for new telephone and communications technologies. But he admits that as a youngster, engineering and technology were the last things on his mind: “My father was an engineer. All my life it didn’t seem like he got paid what he was worth,” says Marcus.
After high school, Marcus found himself embroiled in the first Gulf War. Averse to a military career, Marcus bounced around to several colleges before graduating from Florida Institute of Technology. He then landed at Raytheon, working on radio frequency (RF), or wireless, technology.
“I was interested in radio and phone design, and satellite equipment, but it’s a difficult market to break into unless you attended one of the top schools,” says Marcus. “I started applying for as many RF design jobs as I could and got hired by a startup that was partnering with Sony Ericsson.” Integrian Wireless Solutions agreed to hire him on a trial basis to design high-power amplifiers, transmitters, and GPS receiver modules for Ericsson USA. Marcus quickly moved up the ranks, slipping easily into technical leadership and project management roles.
Soon, Sony Ericsson took notice; Marcus has been with the company for four years, developing next-generation technologies. He had a hand in creating the GSM EDGE PC Card, which allows users access to high-speed wireless networks worldwide and the award-winning M2M module for the Sony Vaio VGN-T350P laptop, the first portable to integrate a 3G EDGE WAN radio-essentially placing a wireless access network inside a laptop. Marcus is also involved in shaping the direction of next-gen technology at Sony Ericsson’s M2M group. In the last two