Ole-Ivar Holthe
President and Founder

I believe that an essential part of being a Christian is to step out in faith and do what is Gods will for our lives. The Apostle James said that "faith without works is dead." True, works will never get you into Heaven, only a personal relationship with Jesus Christ will, but as Saints we have the Lord Jesus Christ with us when we join together, have all things in common, and step out to do His will.
 

Research
My research is primarily focused on future grid-based computer game engines; collaborative game design and development; and remote play techniques. I focus exclusively on enabling serious computer games with educational content and Christian values.

My Ph.D. project has been focused on "multimedia presentation for IP networks," including issues concerning small footprint, high performance and cross platform. I have studied next generation multimedia frameworks (e.g. MPEG-21), video compression schemes (e.g. MPEG-4), multimedia descriptors (e.g. MPEG-7), etc. I have also worked much with graphics technologies (e.g. DirectX, OpenGL and shaders), virtual machines, etc.

Much of my work has been performed at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. I have also worked with University of California, Berkeley. My work is sponsored completely by Gridmedia Technologies AS and the Research Council of Norway. I also serve as Vice Chairman and Secretary on the board of directors of the Norwegian Signal Processing Society.
 

Publications
Ole-Ivar Holthe and Leif Arne Rønningen. "Compact Multimedia Format for Digital Video Web Interfaces." Proceedings of the Nordic Signal Processing Symposium (NORSIG) 2005.

Ole-Ivar Holthe and Leif Arne Rønningen. "Video Browsing Techniques for Web Interfaces." Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2006.

Ole-Ivar Holthe and Leif Arne Rønningen. "Web Browser Plug-In Prototype for Advanced Graphics and Multimedia." Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2006.

Ole-Ivar Holthe and Leif Arne Rønningen. "Geelix.com: Sharing Gaming Experiences." Proceedings of ACM Multimedia 2006.

Ole-Ivar Holthe, Kristian Amlie, Richard Tingstad, and Leif Arne Rønningen. "Geelix HUD: Capturing and Sharing Live Video and User Input from Computer Games." Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2008.

Ole-Ivar Holthe and Leif Arne Rønningen. "GX: Web Browser Plug-In for GPU-based Video Effects." Proceedings of the 5th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2008.

Ole-Ivar Holthe, Ola Mogstad, and Leif Arne Rønningen. "Geelix LiveGames: Remote Playing of Video Games." Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2009.

Ole-Ivar Holthe. "Geelix InGame: Searching for Serious Games." Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2010.

Ole-Ivar Holthe. "Player GX: Safer Content Only Techniques." Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference 2010.

Ole-Ivar Holthe. "A Multimedia Presentation Framework for Web 3.0 Computer Game Experiences." IEEE MultiMedia, October-December 2010, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 70-79.
 

Testimony
I started the company in 1996 with the help of my mom Annie Holthe who encouraged me to start my own company seeing that I had spent much of my teenage years programming on computers. My first computer was a Commodore 64 on which I made many demos and a music program. Later, I got a 486DX2 personal computer. I bought Microsoft Visual C++ and then I was lost writing various Windows programs. My first large program was a program to help florists print "flora bands." Unfortunately, the market for this software was not good (I did not sell a single license:). I started my masters degree in computer science in 1996 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, known as NTNU in Norway. During our studies, me and a friend worked on making a virtual reality modelling language (VRML) authoring tool named "World Studio." This tool did not sell either. When I had completed my masters degree at NTNU in 1999, I moved to Oslo to work for a dot-com start up company. The company did not last long. While I was working there, I met a guy that was interested in what I had been working on. My mom adviced me to be careful and to set up an independent company if I was to work with him. We founded GridMedia AS and worked together from autumn 2000 to spring 2003. We got a large (for us) consulting contract, and things worked for a while, but when we eventually lost the contract, things took a negative turn. Thanks to the helpful advice of my mother, I was able to dissolve that independent company. I moved back to Trondheim in 2003 to start my PhD-project at NTNU Institute of Telematics on the topic multimedia presentation for IP networks. Gridmedia Technologies AS (I bought the trademark back from the dissolved GridMedia AS company, which I had brought in there when the company started anyways) has funded my project thanks to many grants from SkatteFunn, Innovation Norway, and the Norwegian Research Council. I have included nine master projects and seven other student projects in my PhD-project. I went to San Francisco in California in 2005 when my advisor at NTNU introduced me to a professor at University of California, Berkeley, who gave me an invitation to participate in research, colloquiums and seminars there. While living in San Francisco, I was relatively unhappy. My life consisted mainly of work. I was still single after my ex girl friend ended the relationship in 2004. Even though we had a baby daughter together, she did not want to get back together. We went to family councelling for about a year, but her mind was set. I started "dating" in San Francisco, but I realized that people on the "dating scene" just go from one relationship to the next (both men and women). I got more and more unhappy, and at the end I was continuously contemplating if life is worth living. I could not sleep at night. I would usually try to sleep for a while, and then get up around midnight and turn on the TV. I was living on government funding, so I only had a small downstairs apartment and no cable. The only TV program on broadcast channels at midnight was Shepherds Chapel Family Bible Study. I was not much of a Christian back then and never went to church. I was actually working on Geelix as a service to share video recordings from regular (rated) computer games (i.e. a lot of violent videos). Nothing in my life made sense except what Pastor Arnold Murray was talking about. He also talked about giving your life to Jesus. I went to go and buy a bible, and I started reading. One day I got to the laws that Moses wrote after instruction from God, and I read that if anyone is guilty of adultery they are to be stoned to death, and it said "and that is how you shall keep evil out of Israel." I got very convicted, because one of the women I had dated had told me that she was married and in the process of getting a divorce. I ended it as soon as she told me, but I was guilty. I understood the judgement and did agree with it, because I had seen first hand the result of such things has on families. I remembered what Pastor Arnold Murray talked about, so I left the bible open to that page on my table, I cleaned my apartment, put some olive oil on my hands and face and got down on my knees, and I praied to Jesus Christ to come and take my sins. I praied (and cried); "Jesus, you have to come and take my sins, otherwise I am going to die. I am far away from God. You have to take my sins." I praied and cried for a few minutes, and then, suddenly, I saw the feet of Jesus Christ in front of me. I got afraid. I did not know what to do, so I closed my eyes, and bent down and kissed His feet. And when I opened my eyes, He was gone. But, the strangest thing had happened. I was happy again. I got up and lay down on my couch. I was so very rested. I just lay there for a good while, just feeling on the good "restedness." After a while, I turned the TV on and the first word I hear was "Hell." I jumped up, what does this mean?! I got very afraid, because I took this as a sign that I will eventually end up in Hell regardless. I praied that night to God that I would rather that my life is like Hell, and that I end up Heaven, than living a selfish life and ending up in Hell. I later learned after I started going to the Potter's House church in 2008 that Satan always attacks right after you are saved (because that is the best time to attack). I praied to God about it, and God confirmed to me that it was Satan that gave me the "Hell" word. I did wonder, though, why God let Satan do that, and I realized that I did make a pretty big committment to God as a result of that. I realize that God is very very concerned with all the problems of children growing up in broken homes. Children and young people growing up without knowing their father. People dating and going from one partner to the next and utterly loosing their ability to bond with someone. People getting divorced (with a 50%+ divorce rate) and leaving children and young people in cold and hard circumstances. Fornication (i.e. sex outside of marriage), adultry, divorce, and such, are abominations. After I started going to church in 2008, and actually read the whole bible, I learned a lot of things. I wanted to be closed to God and do what God wants me to do with my life (and not my own things). I gradually gave up sinning. I did not watch pornograhpy on the Internet anymore, I stopped smoking cigarettes, I stopped going to parties, I stopped drinking alcohole, I even shut down the Geelix computer game service, though years of work were invested in it. I praied to God to help me find something better to do with my life, and then realized that the word "doctor" actually means "teacher" in Latin. Then I asked God if I perhaps could start a school and a church to teach young people from broken up homes, and also perhaps rather make computer games that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. As I was praing, I heard a still voice inside of me that said "yes." I was very excited. I had a purpose for my life - a meaning. In 2008, I got married to my lovely wife, Joanna, in San Francisco. Finding her was a miracle. I asked God if He could find me a wife. She was the only one I met on Christian Cafe (an online dating Web site). It was love at first sight. We had a baby in 2009. We were living in San Francisco, and rent there is expensive, so I praied to God if He could perhaps get us a house (even though I could not get any loan in the US because I had no credit history). Then I heard the still voice inside again, "Why don't you look closer to where you are going to be?". I knew what He meant, because I had earlier got a vision of a school and church campus in the desert (and the only desert I had been to was the Mojave area between San Francisco and Los Angeles). I went online at Realtor.com, to look for houses. There I saw a house for sale for around $45,000 in California City. We started going there while my wife was still pregnant, and eventually came across our current home for around $45,000. We placed bids and eventually got the home for $35,500. A beautiful 2005 home that no one has lived in. I had the amount saved up, so we got it with no loan. Another miracle. But, a problem arose as we were getting ready to move. Our pastor in the Potter's House mentioned that he was not sure if it is the will of God that we leave the church. He talked about how "up-rooting" is a problem in today's churches, for how can a tree grow if you keep up-rooting it? We found out that our fellowship has a church in Lancaster that was about 40 minutes from our new home. I talked to the pastor about it, but he was still not convinced. My wife and I decided to leave, because we had bought the house and did not have much choice about it, but we were sad and uncomfortable about it. As we were getting ready to go to the last bible study to say goodbye to everyone, I went outside to start the car like I usually do, and I was thinking about what to say to pastor. And then, as I looked at the ordometer, I saw something strange. The ordometer read 77,777 miles- God wanted to let us know that He has blessed our trip. When we came to the bible study I told everyone about this miracle, and we were at ease about leaving. We moved into our new home here in California City on October 15th, 2009. We are going to our fellowship church in Lancaster (http://thedoorlancaster.com). The baby is one years and three months old now, and we are expecting our second baby. I submitted the PhD thesis in September 2010. The company vision for the future is to start a school and a church in the Mojave area. I have never been happier and life is very bright indeed. How can I not be with the Lord God smiling on my life and my future. I just hope that I will be able to stay sin free, and as such, useful to Him. I have faith everything else will be great. It will of course be a lot of work, but that is only good when you are happy and right with God. Trust me, nothing is more important!