Jeff Black

Jeffery D. "Jeff" Black is an American chief executive officer and chief strategy officer associated with the information technology industry. He also is a programmer and inventor, holding six patents.

Biography

Black studied business and computer science and artificial intelligence programming. In 1984 he went on to work at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he was a company leader for fourteen years. During that time, he was part of the team that developed AltaVista Black served as general manager at AltaVista. a "Dynamically categorizing entity information", and a "Dynamically categorizing entity information", all assigned to AltaVista Company. He also received a "top secret" clearance due to classified work for several agencies of the United States Government.

In 1998, Black quit Digital and became CEO of Internet Marketing Inc. (IMI), the first web mapping service on the Internet. On August 3, 1999, iAtlas secured a partnership with Ameritech (then the largest telecommunications company in the Midwest), allowing Ameritech's yellow pages search engine to use the iAtlas Registry.

In the early 2000s, Black established and then sold Hotels.com and Resorts.com.

In 2005, Black founded the startup company TalkPlus, based in San Mateo, California. TalkPlus served as a mobile phone service that allowed multiple phone lines to be used from a single mobile phone. TalkPlus also sold a related service called Mirror Numbers which allowed a user make calls from an existing landline phone number. The service allowed for new phone lines to be created for as little as one-tenth the cost of creating a new landline. Applications were also seen for use in conjunction with online dating services and online auction sites, to prevent callers related to those services from gaining access to permanent personal or business phone numbers. Black was inspired to develop the concept by the work he did for the government during his time at Digital. Black has also participated in Silicon Valley Open Doors technology conference, representing TalkPlus.