James Levoy Sorenson Has spent most of his 82 years thinking about the next pretty-big thing―then pouncing. Though little known outside Utah, he . has made conquests in medical equipment, real estate, genomics and the Internet, and in the process has become a very rich man. He's probably worth $4 billion. His latest contraption is called the Sorenson VP-100, a videophone device that works in conjunction with a broadband Web connection and a large television. The device helps folks like Philippe Montalette, a software engineer at Sun Microsystems and one of 28 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing. Instead of relying on tedious, text-based services to make telephone calls, Montalette can communicate directly with other deaf people, conveying subtleties of facial expression, or with those who hear via a bank of interpreters in four different locations who translate his sign language. "This has definitely changed my life," Montalette says of Sorenson Video Relay Service.
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