Mr. Smith serves as NewDeal's Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. A long-time advocate of broader computer and Internet access, Mr. Smith brings extensive experience and knowledge of the high-tech field to NewDeal from his earlier work with Geoworks, Inc., Commodore International, and the Yankee Group.

Prior to founding NewDeal, Mr. Smith was Vice Chairman of the Board, and VP Corporate Development of publicly traded Geoworks, Inc. (GWRX), developer of the award winning GEOS operating system and application suite. In early 1996, Mr. Smith licensed the GEOS technology on an exclusive worldwide basis for the PC market, and founded NewDeal, with the goal of bringing state-of-the-art computing to the mass market. At Geoworks, Mr. Smith was responsible for the company's new business development and strategic partnerships, including licensing GEOS to IBM EduQuest as its graphical networked application solution for schools.

Before joining Geoworks, Mr. Smith served as VP Corporate Planning and General Manager of New Products for Commodore International Ltd., a global computer manufacturer. In addition to bringing the Amiga computer to Commodore, Mr. Smith was the instigator of Commodore's move into the online services, and was a cofounder and initial Board member of Quantum/America Online, in which Commodore held 50% ownership. He was specifically responsible for AOL's breakthrough use of local PC graphics and computing power to create a visually attractive and responsive online service against the dominant technical approach of market leaders like CompuServe and The Source. Mr. Smith also brought Lucasfilm Games and AOL together to develop and launch the first online virtual world for PCs, a multi-player game environment for the Commodore 64 called Habitat.

Earlier Mr. Smith served as Research Director of the Home of the Future division of the Yankee Group, a Boston-based telecommunications market research firm, where he did pioneering research on the emergence of the home computer and online service markets. He has consulted extensively to major corporations such as AT&T, Citibank, Sony, Apple, IBM, Time Warner, NTT, and Toshiba, as well the governments of Japan and South Korea. Mr. Smith is a native of South Africa and holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He has done extensive doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the field of "diffusion in innovation."