Firefox boss uses his robot

DAVID COOPER/torstar news service

Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s Toronto-based director of Firefox, is able to mingle and schmooze with his California co-workers.

Published: September 08, 2010 5:04 a.m.

Last modified: September 07, 2010 9:08 p.m.

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When he meets with colleagues in Mountain View, California, Mike Beltzner understands the reaction.

“It’s not every day that you see a machine autonomously rolling around your office…. and at the same time it carries the disembodied head of one of your colleagues.”

Computer screen are attached to a long pole attached to a wheeled platform with speakers and a web cam “The general response was that it was kind of creepy,” he said.

But by the second week, people were asking him to “roll by” for a chat.

Mike is product director for Mozilla’s Firefox, and a lot of his team members work out of the company’s California office.

Beltzner says every time he’s used the robot — about four to six times a week for the past two months — he’s had at least one useful conversation he wasn’t planning on having. “As you walk around you bump into Jeff or Frank...and you remember that thing,” he says.

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