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Why not take a moment to stop by our forum and meet up with other pzizzers?

Or, if you’ve got technical problems or want to give us feedback, please feel free to contact us any time.

The People Behind Pzizz

There are many people from many different countries working hard to bring you pzizz.

Click on pictures below to learn more about us!

 
matt michael paul edward trygve jason tomas slava piotr tnt
 
 
 
 
edward

matthew ashenden

the inventor

pzizz... the creation story

My first introduction to napping was rather an involuntary one. I was in the British Special Forces and found myself having to catch little bits of sleep whenever I could while staying alert and ready to react to any situation. Since the Royal Marines I have been involved in quite a few situations where 'napping' has been a bit of a 'life saver'. When I was working as a personal trainer, I researched the different techniques of the top trainers and bodybuilders. I was fascinated by Frank Zane's diaries (Mr. Universe '77 '78 & '79) where he talked about his technique of napping in the middle of his workouts. Frank documented his results and proved that he could train harder if he 'napped' than if he didn't! I was amazed but it made perfect sense!

Several years later I worked with Britain's top hypnotist. I began learning about the human mind. I realised how important the whole 'napping' thing was and how it was becoming more and more relevant even in just 'normal' life. I began learning the techniques needed to 'nap' efficiently and found that, to do this well needed quite a bit of effort because you needed to learn, practice and then administer the techniques! I then looked at all the relaxation type products and found some really good stuff. I enjoyed using many of them but always found that I had to fit in with whatever the program offered i.e. if it was a 25 minute soundtrack then i had to have, 25 minutes. I also became bored of hearing exactly the same thing again and again... I thought, "Why can't I have a relaxation system that fits in with MY lifestyle instead of the other way round?"... And so the pzizz concept was born!

My first task was to develop a concept that could satisfy all these 'wishes'. The primary desire was to have a relaxation system that could be set to run for the exact time I had for a nap, was a 'complete' soundtrack (with an intro, middle and outro) and was different every time I listened to it so that I could use it again and again and again - and it would still have the same powerful effect. The only way I could see this happening is if I were to break down the traditional relaxation system into small chunks and have a program to rebuild it each time. This made sense and so I enlisted the help of 2 of my friends who were, luckily for me, experts in their fields; Michael Breen and Paul O'Duffy. Michael is a Master Practitioner in NLP and someone who I have always enjoyed listening to. Paul is a very talented music producer and composer... we used to race motorbikes together. The task for the three of us was to a) create a script of phrases that can be pieced together to make a complete relaxation program b) compose music that fits in with the script to compound the relaxation c) record these phrases and d) write an algorithm to do all the clever 'working out'!

All this sounded relatively simple until we began work. Firstly, Michael had to write dozens and dozens of 'phrases' that would work within the algorithm so that, regardless of which phrases were selected, the resulting soundtrack would make sense. Again with the music, Paul had to make sure that the music would work with any of the voice selections. Lastly, all the separate voice files had to be recorded in such a manner that there was no audible 'jump' between phrases. We've all heard programmed voice announcements where names etc. are dropped into a sentence. This was just unacceptable.

While this was all going on in the background we had other issues to deal with. Mainly, we had a great concept here but how could we deliver it to the public so they could use it? The obvious route would be (as it is now) using a software program. Unfortunately we were slightly ahead of our time and this was all going on way before Apple had OS X or Windows had XP. QuickTime was in its infancy, there was no iTunes and there were NO iPods (was there ever such a time??) - just a couple of MP3 players on the market with 32MB memories. Software was very much out of the question. The only way to get around this was to create the hardware to run this complex algorithm and deliver it seamlessly to the end user. Once we had designed the spec for the device, we put the tender out to about 10 electronics manufacturers to see who would be best to work with. Out of the 10 companies only 1 came back saying they understood what we were asking for and might be able to help!

This whole process took many months. Luckily, Michael and Paul had got the recordings done perfectly and so we were just waiting for the hardware to put them on! We ran into problem after problem due to the fact that we were doing something completely new. Thankfully we made it and in Feb 2002 the pzizz hardware was launched. We were pleasantly surprised at how many people used it and loved it. For the next couple of years we kept ourselves busy with sales and press. Finally, in 2004 we were able to begin working on the pzizz software. Edward, Trygve (our Mac developer) and I were locked in a room in Dubai for 3 months working on the software. It took quite a while to translate the algorithm and timings into a software app. We had been very restricted with the hardware because the technology was so young but now we were writing our own software we could look at features I had only dreamt about! We were also lucky enough that Michael had a window of opportunity to write and record a new module. So the software took us 3 months together and then a few more of Trygve working on his own before we could release it at the beginning of 2005.

Thanks to the software our pzizz users have gone from thousands to tens of thousands of people from over 70 countries around the world. I really do believe that pzizz is a fantastic friend to have on your computer but I have so many great ideas waiting in the background for the time when we are able to include them. Roll on pzizz 3!!! :-))