While he may seem like just an unassuming 15-year-old high school kid from Rio de Janeiro, Pedro Franceschi is in fact one of Brazil's rising tech stars. He started learning about computers playing on his dad's Mac when he was just three and started learning programming when he was eight, and became what TEDx referred to as one of the world's youngest hackers, when he began jailbreaking iPhones and iPods at the age of 11.
Pedro began to explore the possibility of unblocking mobile devices when he managed to get an iPod Nano to run video, and then began to jailbreak other devices. He began charging schoolmates R$50 to unlock their phones and iPods, but gained national and international attention when he began developing mobile apps. First, at age 12, he created Quick2GPwner, which received 17,000 downloads in just five days. He then created an app called QuickOiB, which allows you to install Linux on an iPhone or iPod Touch, which received 25,000 downloads in two weeks. He soon gained attention in Rio's tech community, and began working as a software developer at Brainjuice in Rio.
In 2010, Pedro spoke at Rio's TEDx conference about his achievements, giving him even more opportunities to develop apps. He got a job as a developer at Sync Mobile soon after, where he worked for a year, and now works at M4U, which provides mobile payment systems. He also continued developing his own apps -- all the while going to school.
Since then, Pedro has been developing more apps, like ones to more easily scroll or change between iPhone apps, and an app called iUsers to create a multi-user solution for iPads, like you would use on a shared computer. Also, Pedro documents his new projects on his blog and on Twitter.
Pedro was in the headlines again this week when he managed to implement a solution--without jailbreaking--to get Siri, the iPhone 4S voice recognition system, to understand Portuguese. Though the 4S was recently launched in Brazil, Siri doesn't work with Portuguese yet. So Pedro managed to reverse engineer the API for Nuance, voice recognition software used by Apple, and got it to work so that Siri recognizes Portuguese, responds correctly in English, and displays her answers in Portuguese.
I had a chance to catch up with Pedro before New Year's, and he was kind enough to share some thoughts.
Interview
When you finish high school, what and where would you like to study?
I'd like to do computer science. I'm thinking of PUC-Rio or UFRJ, but if the sky was the limit, I'd possibly pick MIT.
How many hours a day do you spend working? What do you like to do when you're not working or in school?
I spend almost all of my free time working. When I'm not in school, I'm working, and when I'm not working, I'm in school. But working and programming is what I most like to do, so I don't see a problem with it. Eventually I do go out with friends, of course.
You've worked for several tech companies. What types of projects did you do?
The majority of the projects I develop are related to the iPhone. At Sync Mobile, for example, I developed an events app called LiveSync, which won the Campuseiros Empreendem Award. [This is an award from Brazil's Campus Party, the biggest tech event in the country] At M4U, where I work now, I develop mobile payment apps for the iPhone.
Have you ever been in touch with Apple? If you had the opportunity to work for Apple one day, would you want to?
I have, yes. However, I don't know if I'd work there. It really must be a unique experience, but at the same time it's a very complicated place to work. You need to deal with all types of situations when you work at a company of that kind, and with the history of quality that Apple has. But I believe at the end of the day I would end up accepting the opportunity.
Why do you think it's important to fiddle with Apple's operating system, since it's such a closed system?
The cool thing about working with the iOS is to prove that it can do things that Apple doesn't allow, and that's a big motivator. An example of this getting Siri to understand Portuguese.
What do you think are the advantages and challenges of working with technology in Brazil?
The advantage is that this market isn't very developed in Brazil, and there are really so many cool things that you can do. At the same time, one of the problems with this market is that since it hasn't been as developed yet, there's not enough investment for it to grow, though that's changing with time.
Read the interview in Portuguese after the jump.
Quando terminar o ensino médio, que gostaria de estudar na faculdade? Aonde gostaria de estudar?
Quando terminar o Ensino Médio pretendo fazer Ciência da Computação. Penso na PUC-RIO ou UFRJ, mas se o céu fosse o limite, possivelmente escolheria o MIT.
Quantas horas por dia você fica trabalhando? Que gosta de fazer quando não está trabalhando ou na escola?
Trabalho praticamente em todo o meu tempo livre. Quando não estou na escola, estou trabalhando, quando não estou trabalhando, estou na escola. Mas trabalhar/programar é a coisa que eu mais gosto de fazer, então não vejo problema nisso. Eventualmente também saio com os amigos, é claro. :)
Você já trabalhou para várias empresas, como a M4U, Sync Mobile, e a brain juice. Que tipos de projetos você fez?
Os projetos que desenvolvo na maioria dos lugares onde já trabalhei são relacionados a iPhone. Na Sync Mobile, por exemplo, desenvolvi uma aplicação de eventos chamada LiveSync, que ganhou o prêmio Campuseiros Empreendem. Onde trabalho atualmente, na M4U, desenvolvo aplicações de pagamento mobile para iPhone.
Já teve contato com a Apple? Se algum dia tivesse a oportunidade de trabalhar para a Apple, iria querer?
Já tive algum contato com a Apple sim. Porém, não sei se trabalharia lá. De fato, deve ser uma experiência única, mas é um lugar muito complicado de trabalhar ao mesmo tempo. É preciso lidar com todo tipo de situação quando se trabalha numa empresa desse naipe e com o histórico de qualidade que a Apple tem. Mas acredito que no fim das contas acabaria aceitando a oportunidade, hehehe.
Por que você acha importante mexer com o OS da Apple, já que ele é tão fechado?
O legal de mexer com o iOS é provar que ele consegue fazer coisas que a Apple não permite, e isso é muito motivador. Um exemplo disso é fazer o Siri em Português.
Para você, quais são as vantagens de trabalhar com a tecnologia no Brasil? Os desafios?
As vantagens são que esse mercado é muito pouco explorado no Brasil, e realmente tem muita coisa lega que se pode fazer. Ao mesmo tempo, um dos defeitos é que esse mercado, por não ser muito explorado ainda, falta investimento para que ele cresça, mas isso vem mudando com o tempo.
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