Great to see hard work and persistence pay off! Inspiring for everyone still in the trenches.
dembot:
THE AUDIENCE
When Rocketboom first got started at the end of 2004, and especially during the years of 2005 and 2006, every-time we put a video up online, people were amazed just by the act. “Hey! Come check this out!”, a 9-to-5er would shout out across the office and soon several people were huddling around a monitor saying things like “Wow, check out those kids with a video camera out on the street in New York. They are filming a rock and putting it up online, can you believe it??”
… GO READ THE FULL STORY …
We were compelled by Sony because they have are a complete package. They have so much experience in all of these special areas. With regards to infrastructure and support, they are industry leaders in TV and Film, electronics, gaming, music, the list goes on all the way to the advertising infrastructure that is already well established.
In other-words, instead of gaining capital to burn while continuing to build or seek an advertising solution, we now have one of the most prominent advertising solutions out there, along with increased distribution, a road map for expansion and a guarantee that I believe is an unprecedented deal for this space.
I was at a BBQ over the weekend, and after having a few too many beers the topic turned onto whether Twitter was a fad or not. Nick and Eric both argue that Twitter is a passing fancy, and will go the way of the dodo. I’ll admit that the signal-noise ratio is pretty lousy, and many people seem to be just tweeting to hear themselves tweet. I don’t think twitter as a concept will go away though.
Nobody really uses ICQ or Friendster much anymore, but as a concept IM and social networking are alive and well. I liken Twitter and the micro-blogging layer to being out on the street. You’re out there, and as a result your words, your attire, and your mannerisms are guarded. You’re more free than someone on stage in front of a crowd (your blog), and less so than in your own living room (your IM or email). That level of communication, that — “Hey this is me, for anyone who cares to notice” — isn’t going anywhere.
Sure the social networking apps fill some of this on-the-street layer as well, but not as simply or directly (when compared to blog vs email) as micro-blogging.
I don’t get complaining about Twitter on Twitter. Clearly Twitter has defined a new Internet communication channel because even while throwing a tantrum about how bad it is, nobody can seem to live without it. Doesn’t anybody remember ICQ in the bad old days? It was constantly broken. Hasn’t anyone ever used IRC? It still is. Yes, Twitter is having trouble scaling still. But it’s changed the way we talk to each other so you’re just going to have to grin and bear it. </rant>
Here’s a list of crazy projects that I have tumbling around in my head:
Web 2.0 point-of-sale software
The secret of WalMart’s success is its point of sale and inventory software. Nothing ever sits on the shelves for long, so they don’t get stuck with overpriced inventory.
The point of sale software you and I can get our hands on is notoriously bad. The world needs a web 2.0 solution, badly.
Imagine being able to go from zero to fully automated brick and mortar, with online store, linked inventory, credit card and paypal support, total monitoring and reporting online, all instantly.
Use Google gears to maintain persistence locally in case of Internet outages, and use a signed JPOS applet to drive drawers, printers and pole displays. Make it simple for integrators to write add-ons, as easy as writing Facebook apps. Build a network of resellers so that businesses can get help with hardware issues.
General purpose computer based on Arduino
Playing with the bootrom code for Arduino has inspired me a bit. I want to give it a keyboard, a display, and a disk and be able to load and unload programs. Eventually every software developer has to design an operating system, right?
Open Wireless Mesh Extranet
Let’s use Arduino, Cantennas and Linux to create an open mesh network in NYC. Why? Mostly because we can, but partially because a network like this would allow for people to have a wide area network without NAT. We can do all sorts of things once we can fully address each other. I want to be able to hit NYCR and Blip HQ from my apartment without hitting the Internet.
Erlang
So it’s time to learn another language, this time Erlang. It’s supposed to be fantastic for creating distributed scalable applications. No locks, only messages. And the code is hot swappable! I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet, but I’m thinking some sort of number crunching on S3 would be appropriate.
One challenge of team programming on web applications is dealing with database schema changes. Approaches vary, but they seem to be either keep a running log of changes or use a tool to create a diff. I prefer the former, having a running log of changes that developers can append and apply as necessary.
We’ve been using this kludgy system that I hacked into Otter some years back where you edit the log, append some lines, run a script, cvs commit, then run another script. Getting developers to follow the rules and actually get the changes tracked proved to be a nightmare.
Today I put the finishing touches on a tool that basically does all that in one pop. It’s nothing complicated, just a interactive console tool that wraps cvs and mysql, but it works and it was a joy to write.
It makes me wonder how other people handle this problem?
This just in! Powersauce is amazing!
— From the world of useless tweets
