Donna Dubinsky (born July 4, 1955) has played an integral role in the development of personal digital assistants (PDAs) serving as CEO of Palm, Inc. and co-founding Handspring with Jeff Hawkins. Her management skills helped keep Palm Inc. financially viable after the failure of its pen computing software in the early 1990s. Fortune Magazine has nominated her together with Hawkins to the Innovators Hall of Fame while Time Magazine named the pair as part of its Digital 50 in 1999 for their contribution to the development of the PDA. is the 185th day of the year (186th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1955 (MCMLV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1955 Gregorian calendar). ... User with PDA Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are handheld computers that were originally designed as personal organizers, but became much more versatile over the years. ... Palm, Inc. ... Handspring logo Handspring was a maker of Personal Digital Assistants using the Palm OS operating system. ... Jeff Hawkins (born June 1, 1957 in Huntington, New York) is the founder of Palm Computing (where he invented the Palm Pilot) [1] and Handspring (where he invented the Treo). ... Categories: Magazines stubs | Time Warner subsidiaries | Business magazines ... (Clockwise from upper left) Time magazine covers from May 7, 1945; July 25, 1969; December 31, 1999; September 14, 2001; and April 21, 2003. ...

Early years

From a Jewish background, Donna Dubinsky grew up in midwest Michigan, where her father worked as a scrap dealer. She went to a high school where armed guards had to keep order but eventually ended up going to Yale University where she majored in history and earned her bachelor's degree in 1977. Dubinsky then worked for the Philadelphia National Bank for a while before obtaining a MBA from Harvard Business School in 1981. Official language(s) None (English, de-facto) Capital Lansing Largest city Detroit Area  Ranked 11th  - Total 97,990 sq mi (253,793 km²)  - Width 239 miles (385 km)  - Length 491 miles (790 km)  - % water 41. ... “Yale” redirects here. ... A bachelors degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years. ... Also: 1977 (album) by Ash. ... CoreStates Financial Corp was a bank Holding Company in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area. ... Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a tertiary degree in business management. ... Harvard Business School, officially named the Harvard Business School: George F. Baker Foundation, and also known as HBS, is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. ...

After graduating from Harvard Business School, she went to Apple Computer where she started work as a customer-support liaison. By 1985 she was running part of the company's distribution network. However, she became unhappy due to turf warfare within the company. Apple Inc. ... Year 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays 1985 Gregorian calendar). ...

In 1986, Bill Campbell recruited her to a senior position in Claris, a software subsidiary of Apple. Dubinsky was responsible for international sales and marketing and within four years, her group was responsible for 50% of Claris's sales. However, Dubinsky decided to leave in 1991 when Apple decided not to spin out Claris into an independent company. Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ... Bill Campbell is the current Chairman of the Board and former CEO of Intuit. ... Claris was a computer software company formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ...

Palm Inc.

After a year's sabbatical in Paris to study French, Dubinsky met Jeff Hawkins through the introductions of Bill Campbell and Bruce Dunlevie. Hawkins was looking for a CEO to manage Palm Inc., which would join with other companies such as Tandy Corporation and Casio. The consortium produced a PDA called the Zoomer PDA on October 1993, just after the Apple Newton was released. Zoomer was a market failure along with similar products developed by Hewlett-Packard, Sharp and Toshiba. Tandy Corporation is the former name of the parent company of RadioShack Corporation, a Fort Worth, Texas-based company best known for its RadioShack electronics stores. ... Casio Computer Co. ... // Bold textBold textItalic text It has been suggested that Apple Newton Software be merged into this article or section. ...

By 1994, companies had spent a billion dollars to develop PDAs without any of them becoming commercially successful. Hawkins took a hard look at the previous products, and at all the feedback from the market, and proposed the idea for the product that eventually became the PalmPilot.

Palm Inc. decided to take full responsibility for the manufacture, programming and distribution of the new product which was code-named Touchdown. However, it struggled for a couple of years to find the financial support needed to bring the product to market. In 1995, U.S. Robotics acquired Palm Inc. for $44 million, bringing the Touchdown to market, originally as the Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000.

The first PalmPilot went on sale in April 1996. After a few months, sales started ramping quickly. In its first 18 months, more than one million units of the PalmPilot had been sold. 3Com Corporation acquired U.S. Robotics, with its Palm subsidiary, in 1997.

Handspring Inc. and beyond

Dubinsky, Hawkins and Palm marketing manager Ed Colligan quickly became disillusioned with 3Com's plans for Palm Inc. and left in June 1998 to found Handspring. Their track record and the tech boom that was then underway in the US meant that the trio were easily able to finance their new company. Handspring logo Handspring was a maker of Personal Digital Assistants using the Palm OS operating system. ...

Dubinsky was the CEO of the new company which produced its first product, the Handspring Visor, by September 1999. The company decided to target the lower end of the market. Within a year, the company had managed to capture 25% of the market. Handspring ultimately became a leader in the market of smartphones with the Treo. In 2003, Handspring merged with Palm, Inc., having found that they had evolved in complementary directions, and that they would be far stronger by joining together. The company formed through the merger of Palm and Handspring, and the simultaneous spin-off of PalmSource, Palm's operating system group, was named palmOne. In 2005, palmOne was renamed to Palm, Inc., returning to its roots, and the independent PalmSource was acquired by Access Corporation of Japan. A smartphone is generally considered any handheld device that integrates personal information management and mobile phone capabilities in the same device. ...

Donna Dubinsky, together with Jeff Hawkins and Dileep George recently founded Numenta, Inc. to further develop the pattern recognition software termed as Hierarchical Temporal Memory. Jeff Hawkins (born June 1, 1957 in Huntington, New York) is the founder of Palm Computing (where he invented the Palm Pilot) [1] and Handspring (where he invented the Treo). ... Wikinews has news related to this article: New company to research artificial brain Company founded March 24, 2005, by Palm founder Jeff Hawkins with his longtime business partner Donna Dubinsky and Stanford graduate student Dileep George. ... Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) is a machine learning model developed by Jeff Hawkins and Dileep George of Numenta, Inc. ...

Dubinsky serves as a director of Palm. She also serves on the board of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, and recently was appointed to the Yale Corporation. The Yale Corporation is another name for the President and Fellows of Yale College, which is the governing board of Yale University. ...

Dubinsky adopted a child from Russia in the mid 1990's and married Len Shustek in 2000.

External links

• Computer Resellers Industry Hall of Fame 1999 on Dubinsky, Hawkins and Colligan
• Fortune Magazine article on Dubinsky
• Time Digital 50 article on Dubinsky and Hawkins
• Fast Company article on Palm Inc
• Yale Alumni article on Dubinsky
• PalmOne board of directors
• Harvard Business School article on Dubinsky