Jonathan Shambroom

A working page for two chapters of internet history.

Jonathan was Director of Products at PF.Magic — the San Francisco studio that more or less invented the virtual pet — then went on to lead product at When.com, one of the first web calendars, which AOL acquired in 1999.

Two tabs below. Drop in photos, corrections, and stories as you like.

PF.Magic

San Francisco, 1991–2002 · Inventors of the virtual pet

Founded by Rob Fulop and a small crew in 1991, PF.Magic started life as a hardware company — the cancelled AT&T/Sega online-multiplayer accessory "The Edge." After AT&T pulled out, they pivoted to games. Ballz (1994) was the first hit-shaped object: a fighting game whose characters were made entirely of spheres.

The real breakthrough came when Fulop, after a conversation with a mall Santa, learned that puppies were still the #1 Christmas gift kids asked for. The team reused the Ballz technology to render animals — and shipped Dogz (1995), then Catz (1996). They effectively created the virtual pet genre. Mindscape acquired the studio in 1998 (≈ $15.8M); the Petz/Oddballz/Babyz IP eventually wound up at Ubisoft via the The Learning Company acquisition in 2001, and Ubisoft continued releasing Petz games through 2014.

The "PF" in PF.Magic — per Fulop — stood for "pure f***ing magic," a phrase used at Atari to describe code that worked without anyone quite knowing why.

Stats

1991Founded (San Francisco)

1995Dogz released — virtual pet genre born

7M+Copies of original Dogz/Catz/Oddballz

22M+Petz franchise copies under Ubisoft

1998Acquired by Mindscape (≈ $15.8M)

2002Studio shut down

Games shipped

Ballz (1994) — sphere-based fighting game (Genesis, SNES, 3DO). The graphics engine that later powered Dogz.
Dogz: Your Computer Pet (1995) — the first true desktop virtual pet. ~200k copies in year one.
Catz: Your Computer Petz (1996) — feline follow-up. Dogz + Catz together passed 1.5M units by early 1998.
Oddballz (1996) — 13 chimeric/fantasy creatures; one of the first games with online trading and "mutation."
Petz 2 → Petz 5 (1997–2002) — added breeding, mixed breeds, expanded worlds; Petz 4 (1999) added voice recognition and new species (Pigz, Bunniez).
Babyz: Your Virtual Bundle of Joy (1999) — 15 adoptable babies in a virtual house; used IBM ViaVoice for speech recognition.
Max Magic — a CD-i title Fulop has called "a blast to make" despite the platform's small market.

Jonathan's role

Director of Products (shrink-wrapped + online), c. 1994–1998. Shipped the catalog above through the studio's peak years.

Photos & box art

PF.Magic logo

Dogz & Catz — original PC boxes

Oddballz (1996)

Babyz (1999)

+ Add a team photo

+ Add a Dogz / Catz in-game screenshot

Sources & further reading

Wikipedia — PF.Magic (founding, history, full game catalog)
Wikipedia — Petz franchise (release timeline through the Ubisoft era, sales figures)
Wikipedia — Ballz (1994) (the fighter whose engine became Dogz)
Wikipedia — Oddballz (13 creatures, online trading)
Wikipedia — Babyz (ViaVoice integration, virtual house)
Sega-16 — Rob Fulop interview (Sept 2007) (Edge-16 → Ballz → Dogz pivot in Fulop's own words)
Digital Press — Rob Fulop interview ("pure f***ing magic" naming story; Atari → Imagic → PF lineage)
Arcade Attack — Rob Fulop interview (Mar 2017) (Fulop calls PF.Magic the most fulfilling company he worked for)
Good Deal Games — Rob Fulop interview (career-spanning, PF era covered)
RobFulop.com — Fulop's own site (bio, photos, project list)
Wayback Petz — PF.Magic page + studio history (fan archive: studio photos, box art, dev anecdotes)
Petz Wiki (Miraheze) — PF Magic (most thorough sourced fan-encyclopedia entry)
MIT Media Lab — "Socially Intelligent Virtual Petz" (academic angle on the AI behind Dogz/Catz)
"The Rise and Fall of Petz" (YouTube retrospective — overview of the genre)
MobyGames — PF.Magic (full game catalog, credits, box art)
Internet Archive — pfmagic.com captures (the studio's own site, 1996–2002)

When.com

Mountain View, 1997–1999 · One of the first web calendars · Acquired by AOL for ~$225M

When.com launched in 1997 as an online calendar and event-directory service — a then-novel idea that your calendar could live on the web instead of in Outlook or a paper planner. It raised about $7.5M from Benchmark, 21st Century Venture Partners, Amicus Capital, and Palo Alto Venture Partners.

On April 5, 1999, AOL acquired When.com for approximately $225M in stock (~8.9M AOL shares). The product became part of AOL's broader push into web-based services alongside Netscape (Nov 1998) and MapQuest (Dec 1999). When.com tech showed up as "My Calendar" inside AOL 5.0.

Stats

1997Founded (Mountain View, CA)

$7.5MTotal venture funding raised

Apr 5, 1999Acquired by AOL

~$225MAcquisition value (stock)

Why it mattered

Pre-Google Calendar (2006), pre-Yahoo Calendar mainstream adoption — putting a personal calendar on the web was genuinely novel.
Event-tracking + reminders + sharing in a browser previewed the "software-as-a-service" model years before SaaS had a name.
The AOL deal landed in the brief window when AOL was assembling a portfolio of standalone web brands (Netscape, When.com, MapQuest) before the Time Warner merger reshuffled everything.

Jonathan's role

Executive Producer / Partnerships, then Senior Director of Product. Spanned the founding through the AOL acquisition and integration.

What it looked like

Original site assets (1999) The when.com wordmark — orange swoosh, blue "DIVISION OF AOL" tag — and the iconic yellow "Sign Up Now / Free" button. Pulled directly from the Internet Archive's Nov 1999 capture.

Calendar with your favorite Event Information

Homepage hero banner Blue monitor displays a JAN calendar; orange swoosh points at "...with your favorite Event Information." That was the product pitch in one image.

Wayback captures

when.com homepage — Nov 17, 1999

when.com homepage — Mar 2, 2000 (with "Editor's Choice" badge)

+ Add a team photo

+ Add launch-day press

Sources & further reading

Wikipedia — List of AOL acquisitions (confirms: When.com acquired 5 April 1999, $225M)
NYT — "America Online Acquires When.com" (April 6, 1999 — primary press coverage)
The Guardian — Online supplement (April 15, 1999 — UK angle on the deal)
CNET — "AOL 5.0 blitz begins" (When.com tech showing up as AOL's "My Calendar")
Internet History Podcast #59 — Ted Barnett, founder of When.com (long interview: founding, scaling problems, AOL deal economics)
SEC EDGAR — AOL filings (FY1999) (primary financial documentation of the acquisition)
Internet Archive — when.com captures (1998–2001) (the source for the screenshots above — 94 captures)
Wayback — Nov 1999 homepage (canonical capture)
Wayback — Mar 2000 homepage (post-acquisition era, with "Editor's Choice" badge)
Issarice — Timeline of Yahoo! (useful contrast: Yahoo Calendar's separate trajectory — some sources confuse the two)
TheStreet — markets coverage, April 1999 (market context for deal day)
Crunchbase — When.com (funding rounds, investors)

A small fact-check note: some older sources mis-attribute the When.com acquisition to Yahoo (confused with Yahoo's separate calendar product from the same era). The acquirer was AOL — confirmed by the Wikipedia AOL acquisitions list, the NYT article from April 6, 1999, and SEC filings.