Adobe showcases AKQA in a success story feature and interviewed me regarding some of our recent Visa work. Fun stuff. Thanks to Laura Thurman and the Adobe team for making this happen!

There is an interesting Forbes article on using the power of the Crowd for developing mobile application ideas. As explained in the Nokia example below (which is similar to Nike+), it’s interesting to see how the company’s initial idea for the application was overshadowed by what the community ended up doing with it. Nothing too shocking there, but now many companies are approaching service/product ideation from the reverse: allowing the community to uncover and define the concept before fully developing it and “releasing” it to the masses. Similar to social networks, the Google approach to Software Development (permanent beta) and, in essence, kind of how the whole Internet itself was born. Makes me wonder if we all are just thinking too much.

How could this approach be cultivated to the point where it becomes a full fledge development process and business model? I wonder if the developers in the “old” days of shrink-wrapped software, ever could have imagined a company (like Google) who releases Beta versions of their products to world….often keeping them in “beta” phase for years as they work out the bugs with their customers. Perhaps a future of software development will push a large portion of the concept of the application out to the community: to work out the kinks of the idea. Wouldn’t the social network be the ripe place for this? Targeting specific applications to specific communities to help refine the final purpose. Of course you would really need to have your foundation together; it may be hard to secure VC funding for a bottomless idea. It would be like the Seinfeld of software: “We got an idea for an application that does nothing!”

“Crowds are now being tapped to develop mobile applications before they reach consumers.”

“Nokia’s Sports Tracker application enables runners and cyclists to record and share their workouts on a map-based software system. The initial concept, called “Personal Best,” aimed to allow individuals to track their sports performance for personal use. But athletes began using it to network with one another, creating more of a community feel. Since April 2007, Sports Tracker has been downloaded more than 1 million times.”

“The next step is to apply crowd sourcing to reservations, commuting and shopping–any activity that involves a shared resource. Crowds could share information about seating at football games, waiting times at airports and special sales at local stores. Once mobile payments become more popular, phones could even transmit sales data to let users know where they could buy a particular item for the lowest price”

http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/2008/06/16/
smart-mobile-apps-tech-wireless08-cx_ew_0616smart.html

I hope I don’t sound like too much of a fan-boy-freak here, but I wanted to acknowledge the amazing hosting company I use: Media Temple. I have been in this web development business for many years now (has it been 10?) and throughout my journey I have used many different hosting companies both for client and personal work. Media Temple is a company I began using 5 or so years ago for my personal, consumer-facing websites (including this one) as well as for a (behind-the-scenes) development environment. We use Media Temple at AKQA for a number of client-related hosting as well as for specific development-environment needs (old Flash Comm for example).

Media Temple just ROCKS! These guys are consistently blowing my mind with their supreme functionality, reliability and customer service. Even their administration panels and their custom web tools are awesome and look beautiful, with excellent usability. As a developer with a grid server, I have so much joy every time I log in to my admin panel; everything is so clear and there is SO much I can do. Set up a new Word Press in seconds, hook up a Drupal CMS, play with Ruby (have not done this yet), get great access to all my tools: email, databases, stats, etc. On Jan 2, at 11pm at night I had a question regarding db config – I called them up and had my question answered and was back at work in minutes!

You just don’t get any better than these guys. Thanks!

(P.S. No, I don’t work for them, advertise for them nor do I even know anyone who works there.)

Happy New Year! What a nerd I am, I spent my New Year’s Day (and more) trying to get Subversion to work with Apache 2.2x. What a pain! Apparently, Apache 2.2x does not support this or something? I was looking forward to using XAMPP for my quick LAMP set-up on my laptop. After some poking around the web, I discovered that there is some issue with Apache 2.2x support for the following files:

mod_dav_svn.so
mod_authz_svn.so
libapr.dll

Without going into the gory details, it just didn’t work with Subversion out of the box. I am surprised that there is not more information about this. Anyway,luckily I stumbled upon this:

http://forum.atlantaphp.org/index.php/m/1103/

…which essentially saved my butt! Thanks man…this was very helpful.

OK….more on this soon….again, Happy New Year.