Hanaan Rosenthal is founder and principal of Custom Flow Solutions LLC, a media software and consulting firm in Providence. Rosenthal, who is also president of The Apeiron Institute for Sustainable Living’s board of directors, will be the featured presenter at tonight’s Providence Geeks dinner.
PBN: What do you do at Custom Flow Solutions? How long has the company been around?
ROSENTHAL: The company started as a one-man show about 15 years ago. I started automating the creation of charts that no other software could create. From there, I started getting noticed by newspapers. I got to work with The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Associated Press and some huge financial-services companies.
In 2008, I joined forces with John Thorsen, a longtime business associate, and John Caserta, a top-notch Providence designer, and incorporated.
Together we created this awesome product, HyperGraph, in partnership with Thomson Reuters. They wanted U.S. and international newspapers to receive their data already in the form of charts and tables. We had the technology and were in a perfect position to do that. The product is live and can be seen at reuters.com/rfi.
PBN: How does HyperGraph work exactly?
ROSENTHAL: HyperGraph is a graphing engine and pagination engine all incorporated into a workflow environment.
The ideal use of HyperGraph is in a situation where a company produces a large number of similar documents containing text and charts or tables. For example, a newspaper that needs the same charts created every night, or a financial company that needs to generate thousands of charts and reports for the end of the quarter.
With HyperGraph, we essentially teach the system how to create the reports by itself, with whatever data, charts or parameters the client needs.
Since the graphing engine is home-grown, we are not dependent on third-party software for charting. It all happens as part of the system. This allows us to literally automate the creation of any crazy chart the client needs. As long as the data is there and the design makes sense based on the data, our software can create it.
PBN: What are some of the most memorable projects you’ve worked on?
ROSENTHAL: You know, financial graphs are cool and all that, but they are almost the same every day. One project I did for The New York Times, however, will probably stay with me forever.
The Time publishes pages with the faces of soldiers killed in Iraq every time that number adds another thousand. Imagine a page with hundreds of pictures.
My project was to integrate the production of these pages into the HyperGraph system used at the Times. Now imagine starting the coding process and running tests: every time you run the script, rows of our dead fly across and fill the screen. I still haven’t gotten over that.
PBN: How has the downturn in the print media industry affected you, if it has? Do you worry you’ll wind up with no customers?
ROSENTHAL: Worry is a funny thing. I have been on my own for more than 20 years. If I worried, I’d be dead. So no – worry doesn’t factor.
It’s true that print media, namely newspapers, are slowing down significantly. However, this forces them to find new ways to go about their business, and automation is a key component. Suddenly they realize that they can teach their computers to do the same work people used to do. Then these people can be promoted, move to other departments, and not get replaced. This saves companies more than money – it shortens production time, reduces the rate of errors and therefore reduces the need for proofreading cycles. In other words, the companies that use our software have a leg up and are more likely to stay in business.
PBN: On a different note, I saw that you’ve also undertaken some intriguing green-power projects, including driving a Volkswagen Beetle that runs on vegetable oil. Could you talk a little about those?
ROSENTHAL: Yes, thanks! I have always been interested in different ways of doing things. Sustainability for me is not so much a matter of “saving the planet” – in fact, I think that the planet would be much happier without us! For me, it’s more about making our lives here pleasant. I truly believe that living sustainably in all aspects of our lives just makes a lot of sense and also feels much better.
Evaluating our lives can stink because we’re not sure we are going to like what we find out – but living unaware is much worse. So yes, I have a 3,700-kilowatt photovoltaic solar system and I’m working to redesign my house using passive solar design.
About my Volkswagen Beetle – well, I met a fisherman from New Bedford whose daughter had cancer, and he drove hundreds of miles back and forth from New Bedford to the hospital in Boston. He wanted to use vegetable oil but had no money. At the same time, my VW Beetle needed some work. I sold it to him for a dollar with the promise that he would fix it, use it and pay me something extra when done. He’s making progress, and his daughter is also much better now! •
