Diran Afarian
Bio[edit | edit source]
Listen to this page:[(http://www.bluegrind.com/Diran/diranAfarian.mp3)]
Diran Afarian immigrated to the United States in 1976. The oldest of 3 brothers. Attended California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly), Graduated with a BS Degree in Engineering in 1985. Started at Northrop Aircraft Corporation (Currently Northrop Grumman) as a CAM Engineer (Computer Aided Manufacturing).
After 3 years at Northrop, he was presented with an opportunity to become the General Manager of a Jewelry Manufacturing company, where he worked until 1995. Diran started an Internet Consultancy company called AmeriConcepts Inc. where the company specialized in analyzing trends and industry shortfalls and created software to address the shortfall.
During the time when he was running AmeriConcepts Inc., he attended business school and received an MBA degree in Marketing (2000), and special training in Finance from Cornell University (2006).
During the 10 years running AmeriConcepts Inc., he headed the development of more than 32 projects spanning industries such as Promotion, Insurance, Real Estate, Support, Machinery Manufacturing, ISP and website hosting, Entertainment, and finally video and music.
Early in the life of AmeriConcepts Inc., realizing the popularity that the Internet was about to achieve, Diran established a web hosting division to offer companies a way to get websites inexpensively. Also when the website business took off, he realized that promotion was the name of the game to be able to be found online. He registered a domain name called Mousepad.com (Running until this day) to produce custom printed mousepads that companies can send to their customer to have them visit the website.
The online promotions field being as competitive as they always have been, needed a differentiating factor, so Diran, being an Engineer, invented and designed a mousepad that was geared directly towards the business industry. It was a collapsable 2-piece mousepad that could be shipped by fitting into a normal (#10) business envelope, and shipped for the price of a regular letter stamp.
After 10 years in AmeriConcepts Inc., in 2005 he was offered an opportunity to head the marketing department at Internet Radio Inc., where he is until the present. Diran Afarian is the V.P. of Marketing and Strategy for Internet Radio Inc. [(http://www.internetradioinc.com)], a company running more than 5 Online Radio Stations.
Diran Afarian is also the CEO of BlueGrind [(http://www.BlueGrind.com)], a company that is converting news and blogs to audio so the blind can listen to the news and blogs without the aid of any extra Text To Speech machines.
Patent[edit | edit source]
The inventor of a new shape of a mousepad used by businesses as a promotional item to send to customers. The Patent is for a design of a 2-piece Interlocking Mousepad that can be sent to customers with a regular #10 envelope.
Conceptual Images[edit | edit source]
http://mousepad.com/envelope/envelope_open.gif
http://mousepad.com/envelope/envelope_locked.gif
Link to Full Patent[edit | edit source]
Patent Number D395876 Patent number: D395876 Filing date: May 13, 1997 Issue date: Jul 7, 1998 Inventor: Diran A. Afarian
Current U.S. Classification
D14114
International Classification 1402