A dark day in Boston is a little darker now. Jerome Rubin, the publishing executive and inventor who co-founded the display company E Ink and helped commercialize the online database that became LexisNexis, died from a stroke on Monday in New York City, according to a report by the Associated Press. He was 86.

Rubin worked at the MIT Media Lab in the 1990s, where he helped spin out Massachusetts-based E Ink, the electronic-paper company that makes the display in the Amazon Kindle and other e-readers.

Before that, Rubin, a Harvard University alum trained in physics and law, helped launch an Ohio-based research database for lawyers in 1973. The database search and retrieval system eventually became LexisNexis, specializing in news, legal, and public records information. Harvard Magazine wrote about some of Rubin’s achievements back in 2000.

Rubin lived in Manhattan and is survived by his children, Richard Rubin and Alicia Yamin, according to the AP report.

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What was Steve Jobs’ greatest contribution to society? The amazing thing is that there are so many answers to choose from. Was it the insanely great Mac? Or perhaps the iPod and the MP3 music revolution? Or Pixar and Toy Story and all of the studio’s other animated wonders? Or the iPhone and the iPad and all the innovation they’ve uncorked in the mobile, software, and publishing businesses? Or maybe it’s simply Apple itself—the world’s most valuable company.

I think all of those are fine answers. But to me there’s another answer that encompasses all of them: Steve Jobs taught us to have higher expectations. Of our technology. Of our entertainment. Even of ourselves.

Of course, the expectations Jobs placed on himself, his co-workers, and just about everyone else he dealt with are legendary. We’ve all heard about the killer stares, the angry rants, the foul-mouthed dressing-downs of employees whenever Jobs was unhappy with a policy or a product. This was a man who did not have time for fools, phonies, weaklings, or people who questioned Apple’s mission.

But that same conviction—which seemed to flow, in turn, from a supreme trust in his own instincts—is exactly what enabled Jobs to transform industry after industry. And I think it’s the way Jobs’ beliefs rubbed off on the rest of us—his customers, his colleagues, even his competitors—that will be his real legacy.

In statesmanlike remarks following the announcement of Jobs’ death on Wednesday, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said that “for those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor.” I wasn’t lucky enough: I never met Jobs. Like millions of others, I only knew him through Apple’s products (and, of course, through my coverage of the company as a tech journalist). But that felt like a real connection. To a degree achieved by no other company on Earth, Apple bakes its values into its products, and those values come directly from Jobs. So being an Apple customer meant, in some sense, bringing Jobs into your life. That’s how it always seemed to me, anyway.

I first got my hands on a Macintosh in 1985 (ironically, the year Jobs was forced out of the company he co-founded) and I was immediately enchanted by the attention that its designers had given to details like the adjustable fonts, the garbage can, even the funny little dogcow icon that welcomed you to the Print Setup dialog box. As a college freshman, I wrote all of my class papers (and all of my articles for the college newspaper) on a Mac. I also spent quite a few less studious hours honing my MacPaint skills—I still have a graphic I made based on the famous M.C. Escher print Ascending and Descending. Unlike most of the personal computers that preceded it, and even the ones that tried to copy it, the Mac wasn’t just about making you more productive. It was about helping you express yourself.

And that’s how Jobs raised our expectations of technology. Apple products are famously easy to use: the first thing you try is usually the right one, which is a reflection of the company’s deep understanding of the way people think and move. But the even bigger idea that Jobs instilled in Apple from the beginning, and managed to re-instill after his return to the company in 1997, is that hardware and software designers should also pay attention to the way people feel, and that digital devices should, at least occasionally, be fun to use.

After all, by the 1980s and 1990s, Moore’s Law was generating some serious dividends—it was finally becoming possible to devote computing cycles to aesthetics and experiences, not just number-crunching. Jobs saw sooner and deeper than anyone else how, in a world of utilitarian and frequently uncooperative computers, a piece of truly pleasing hardware or software would command great customer loyalty—and often, a premium price.

Apple has more or less conquered the world with this idea. It doesn’t yet dominate in PC sales—even today, three-quarters of the desktop and laptop machines that consumers and businesses buy every year run Windows—but it dominates in style, as every new iteration of Windows seems to … Next Page »

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This is the second in a series of profiles of companies emerging this summer from Mountain View, CA-based startup incubator Y Combinator.

When I met the founders of 1000Memories, a new website where family and friends of people who’ve died can create free multimedia memorials to their loved ones, my mind flashed first to The Monk and the Riddle. This Silicon Valley classic was published in 2000 by startup guru Randy Komisar, who’s now a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The book, which I reviewed at the time for Technology Review magazine, is loosely structured around the fictionalized story of Lenny, a young, driven insurance executive pitching Komisar for an investment in “Funerals.com,” a business designed to “put the fun back into funerals” by selling caskets and other funeral services online.

Digging past the dot-com crassness of the Funerals.com business plan, Komisar eventually discovers that Lenny isn’t the soulless opportunist he first appears to be. With Komisar’s coaching, Lenny realizes that lurking underneath his original plan is a far more compelling idea for a community site—”Circle-of-Life.com”—that would “bring together family members and friends, wherever they are in the world, and give them an opportunity to grieve, remember, mourn, and show their support in ways not possible until the Web.” Komisar helps Lenny recognize that his original Amazon-for-funerals pitch amounted to the Deferred Life Plan: the misguided decision to put one’s passions on hold while pursuing something safe, profitable, and dull.

The young guys behind San Francisco-based 1000Memories are not, as far as I can tell, on the Deferred Life Plan. For one thing, they’ve all given up lucrative careers to build the startup—Brett Huneycutt and Jonathan Good left management consulting powerhouse McKinsey & Company, and Rudy Adler resigned his post at Wieden + Kennedy, the advertising agency for Nike and Old Spice.

For another, all three say they’ve recently lost important people in their lives—out of respect, I didn’t ask who, and to their credit, they’re not hawking the names—and that they found that existing social networking sites such as Facebook don’t provide good ways to share stories or celebrate the lives of the deceased. (Recent stories, including this New York Times piece, have highlighted Facebook’s difficulties dealing with the deaths of users.)

1000Memories launched on July 9 with backing from Y Combinator; it’s one of 36 “YC S10″ companies now feverishly preparing for “Demo Day” pitches to prospective investors on August 24. I spent some time recently with Adler, Good, and Huneycutt at their apartment/headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission district, and got the sense that while their business plan is one that could have been lifted straight from the pages of The Monk and The Riddle, it’s an idea they genuinely care about.

“We prefer to be working on a business that solves a big problem,” says Adler. “Each of us has experienced the loss of a friend recently and we’ve watched the process play out online. You get the sense that people want to express themselves and share memories of the person online, but there just isn’t a great platform for doing it.”

“People tend to either use Facebook as a default, or create a blog themselves if they’re tech-savvy, but in both cases it just doesn’t work very well,” Adler continues. “We wanted to create a platform that would have a much better design, that would … Next Page »

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Some more sad news has hit the Seattle biotech community. Lee Adams, one of the early employees at Spaltudaq, now Theraclone Sciences, died this week on Mount Rainier after a fall into a crevasse. He was 52.

The Seattle Times has a solid story on what happened on the mountain at 13,000 feet of elevation. The story notes that Adams was not just an avid climber, but a research scientist at the Institute for Systems Biology and Theraclone Sciences before that. In a statement, ISB officials said that Adams brought “genuine enthusiasm” to his work each day. I heard a similar comment from Accelerator president David Schubert.

“He was truly one of the nicest people you would ever hope to meet in this world and he ALWAYS wore a smile and was infectiously positive in his demeanor. He was part of the Accelerator family. He will be deeply missed,” Schubert says.

I can’t say I knew Adams, because I only met him once. But I have to say he made the same impression on me personally. Adams was one of the earliest supporters of Xconomy Seattle. As you can see in the picture from our archives, Adams (on the right) attended our very first local event, a forum on vaccine innovation that was held at the Institute for Systems Biology in December 2008. The economy was in the tank, and almost everyone other than my wife thought I had lost my mind in joining an online media startup. I wasn’t really sure how many people were reading our site, or how many people would show up at our event.

But I remember Adams pulling me aside at this event, which you can see in the picture. He told me how much he appreciated our daily coverage of local biotechnology, how valuable it was for people like him in the local biotech industry to be able to read about what others in town were doing. He might have even asked me for some scuttlebutt about another company I had recently reported on. But basically, he urged me to keep doing what I do. There was no question it was a sincere comment, and he wasn’t asking for anything from me in return. I could tell this was someone who had a real genuine life spark inside him. I’m sad to see him go.

This is the second tragedy that has hit the Theraclone Sciences team this summer, following the sudden death of CEO David Fanning in June. If you have any memories of Adams, or Fanning, that you’d like to share with readers of Xconomy, please feel free to add your thoughts in the comment section below.

Lee Adams (center right) was an enthusiastic scientist and outdoorsman

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[Updated Feb. 9 and Feb. 10 with comments and funeral service/memorial donations details---see below] Xconomy is very sad to note that John Mucci, the co-founder and former CEO and director of SiCortex, the Maynard, MA-based startup that sought to build a new generation of energy-efficient supercomputers, passed away yesterday of a heart attack, according to reports we have received.

Mucci had a long history as a sales executive, and before co-founding SiCortex with Matt Reilly and Jud Leonard around 2003, had been a vice president at Thinking Machines Corporation, where he worked from 1986 to 1994, according to his LinkedIn page. He had also served in several executive positions at Digital Equipment Corp., and had co-founded another startup, TopicalNet (previously known as Continuum Software), according to his bio on the SiCortex site, which is still up although the company announced it was closing its doors last May.

“It is a sad day for all… less competition, unemployed seventy some workers…” Mucci wrote Xconomy in an e-mail at the time SiCortex closed, even though he had been replaced 10 months earlier as CEO. I had not verified the current status of SiCortex at the time of this post.

SiCortex had been funded in part by Polaris Venture Partners. Polaris general partner Bob Metcalfe wrote this in an email tonight: “While working on SiCortex, John and I walked together, he my guide for three years, through the exhibits of the SuperComputing conferences. Everyone there knew and liked John. And I mean everyone.”

Mucci, who had a B.S. from Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University, was reportedly working on a new venture. I could not verify his age by the time of this post.

Update, Feb. 9, 2010: SiCortex co-founder Matt Reilly, who says Mucci was 67 years old when he died, writes this: “John was a man of great enthusiasms, but I think the greatest was building connections with and between people. John didn’t build SiCortex, as much as he knitted it together. As a partner, a coworker, a friend, and guide he gave more than I could ever repay.

John was exploring several new opportunities and ventures at the time of his passing. He will be sorely missed.”

Update, Feb. 10, 2010: The funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, February 13th, at First Parish Church in Stow, MA. A wake will be held from 5 p.m.-8 p.m. on Friday, February 12th, at Fowler Kennedy Funeral Home in Maynard.

Memorial donations may be made to the Trustees of Tufts University, Travis Fund for Needy Animals, Office of Development and Alumni Relations, Cummings School Veterinary Medicine, 200 Westboro Rd, North Grafton, MA, 01536; and WBUR Boston, Attn: Susan Tompkins, 890 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA, 02215.

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Xconomy is saddened to note that Brett Allsop, the chairman and co-founder of Seattle-based Yapta, died last night in a car accident in Bellingham, WA. Allsop was 38. The news was reported by the Bellingham Herald.

Allsop co-founded Yapta, an online travel site that tracks airfares and hotel prices, in 2006. The startup raised $2 million in venture capital in June from Voyager Capital and other investors, and a total of $7.7 million since it got started.

The Seattle Times quotes Yapta spokesman Jeff Pecor as saying, “We’re obviously deeply saddened about it. All our prayers and thoughts go out to the Allsop family.” TechFlash quotes Yapta co-founder and CEO Tom Romary as saying, “It is a tremendous loss. He was an exceptional person—ethical, bright, innovative—and I will miss him dearly.” A blog post on the Yapta website today reads, “Without Brett, there would have been no Yapta. He was a visionary and a great entrepreneur—and most importantly, a terrific guy.”

“I love helping to create that break through idea,” Allsop wrote on his LinkedIn page.

Allsop began his career by founding Fogdog, a leading online sporting goods retailer that was acquired by GSI Commerce (NASDAQ: GSIC) in 2000. He then joined Amadeus Capital in London where he evaluated investment opportunities in software. In 2003, he became president of his family’s business, Bellingham-based Allsop Inc., a computer and consumer electronic accessories company. Allsop was a Stanford University engineering alum, and was married with two children.

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[Editor's Note: this piece is adapted from a speech Chris Rathe gave at a memorial service last week for Stephen Quinn, a biotech entrepreneur who died suddenly on June 28.]

We are here today grieving the untimely passing of Stephen Quinn, but are also here to rejoice for the person that he was. Four years ago I first met Stephen furthering his quest to understand new technology and help support its development and commercialization. Today I project that the Seattle area, and over time, the world at large will long remember Stephen for his visionary leadership in moving proven science from the laboratories of Dr. Buddy Ratner and other key researchers in our community and recently across this country, presenting this work as commercial opportunities, and helping create five biotech companies in just the past few years.

I was also blessed to know Stephen as a good friend and to see his love and devotion as a husband to Katherine and as a father to his three daughters, Anastasia, Ava, and Mya, with a special love for his teenage daughter Anastasia, as she adjusted to her new sisters arriving into their growing family with Katherine.

We all have a lot to be thankful for in knowing Stephen. He encouraged us all to be better people. Here is some added perspective from a mutual friend, Scot Cocanour; “Stephen brought out the best in me, I suspect in all of us. The quizzical look, the slight tilt of his head, a few sharply pointed questions—they leveraged me to a whole new plane of insightfulness. His earnest, restlessness helped me to develop ideas and concepts that were resident in me but not yet liberated. I’m thankful for my time with him.”

Paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw: From my first hand experience I am of the opinion that Stephen’s life belonged to the extended community, and as long as he lived, it was his privilege to do for it whatever he could. Life was no brief candle for him. Life was a torch that he had gotten a hold of and wanted to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

It appears Stephen lived at least at double the speed of mere mortals. He enjoyed double the experiences, the ideas, the friendships, and play. As many of you came to know, his mind moved at double speed as well. Though Stephen may have been alive for only 46 years, he was a person that created added decades of experience into his colorful, and thoughtful life.

In closing I’d like to ask that we share a common vision of extending love and bettering human health on this planet, in honor of Stephen, in honor of those living and deceased, and especially in honor of those still to come. What we do for ourselves alone dies with us; what we do for others and the world remains and is immortal. A Chinese proverb summaries the growth opportunity for most of us, “If we exercise great caution nothing will happen”. I will continue to tell Stephen’s children, and his many extended friends and family, that Stephen not only stood for something wonderful, but he also acted on it.

Stephen will be truly missed by those that knew him.

With Love, Chris Rathe

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The Seattle community lost a giant last week, when Keith Grinstein passed away at the age of 48. A memorial service for Grinstein, the chairman of Coinstar and a venture capitalist at Second Avenue Partners, was held yesterday afternoon in Seattle. I wanted to post a couple of thoughts from the community that I’ve gathered.

From Michael Butler of Cascadia Capital:

“When I moved back to Seattle, Keith was one of the first people I met in the business community. He went out of his way to help me integrate into the community. He was a person with a kind heart, quick wit and a larger-than-life personality. His departure leaves a void and he will be deeply missed.”

From Nick Hanauer of Second Avenue Partners:

“Keith was an extraordinarily talented man. He was incredibly bright, educated and informed. He could do the Saturday NY Times crossword in about 15 minutes. It was humiliating to even be in the room with him when he was doing it.

“No one in Seattle had a better sense of humor or timing. Once, when a group of us at a large party were listening to one of our mutual women friends tell the story of their brief romantic relationship, and how wonderful it had been, Keith, without missing a beat said ‘Holly, you coughed me up like a hairball’. It was hilarious.

“He was larger than life. His early passing is tragic.”

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Xconomy is sad to report that Keith Grinstein, a major figure in the Seattle-area innovation community, passed away suddenly last night from an apparent heart attack. He was 48. Grinstein was a founding partner in Seattle-based Second Avenue Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology deals. He was also a strategic advisor for Madrona Venture Group. We will be posting further details and reactions as we hear them.

Grinstein served as chairman of Coinstar (NASDAQ: CSTR), director of F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV), and director of Labor Ready (NYSE: LRW). According to the Second Avenue Partners website, he had played a role in structuring and/or investing in numerous private companies including Amazon, aQuantive, Tegic, HouseValues, Nordstrom.com, Insitu, Neah Power, and Seattle Biodiesel. Prior to Second Avenue Partners, he had also held senior management and operating positions at Wireless Services, Nextel International, Nextel Communications, McCaw Cellular, and AT&T Wireless.

Grinstein graduated from Yale University in 1982 and received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. magna cum laude, in 1986. He was a member of the State of Washington and New York Bar Associations.

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