Finding Paths Through the Worlds Photos (via webware.com) is a stunning example of stitching together collections of 2d photos and navigating them in 3d.I can’t help but be reminded of the scene from Blade Runner where the main character takes what appears to be a 2d photo, enhances and looks around a corner (or similar). I always thought that special effect failed - how would we ever pull that off… But, this demo is creeping up on that idea.

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I haven’t even noted anything different here - but on Oct 1st ‘07, I joined FiveRuns as their VP of Development and Technology. A lot is brewing there, and the fruits of of our work will be visible soon. Recently, I’ve begun to blog there as well. On occasion, I’ll link through from here to the recent blog posts. This time there’s two posts. My first post was simple look at our product development process in terms of feedback loops: FiveRuns Development - Feedback Loops.

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I had an interesting discussion with Kelly Looney today regarding positioning. Based on his experience, (as I interpret it )positioning starts with identifying and sharing a world-view and then describing what you do (of benefit), in the context of that world-view. For me, it seems an interesting pattern to use to compose a simple pitch of an idea (e.g. for a startup). So, here's some attempts to try that pattern out:

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I think that my recent purchase of the iPhone has tipped the balance in quandry I’ve had. It goes something like this: I’ve wanted a better tool to manage my professional relationships (something I’ve been thinking of as a personal CRM). As a result, I’ve been looking for what Mac apps fill that niche - and there are some nice candidates (e.g. Contactizer, Daylite, even Crm4Mac). At the same time, I see web-based solutions as well (and here’s the ‘in the clouds’ part), such as Highrise, Etelos, even a customized SugarCRM.

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So if vertical social networks become popular, then the horizontal problem becomes intestering, e.g. how to manage one identity across multiple services. OpenID provides authentication, but nothing beyond that. What about profile data ala Google’s form-fill? How? Consider this - if an OpenID enabled set of tools existed to extend OpenId so that when you registered, a plugin (ala greasemonkey) would run to take your OpenID related profile data and place it into the registration.

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So I’ve made the plunge and bought an iPhone. Half the joy is in using such a beautifully designed product - every aspect of the experience shows so much thought.I can only add my kudos, and continue to be frustrated at how low the standards are for so many products.

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So in the physical world, there’s tremendous constraints placed on a system by existing infrastructure.It defines and limits what can be done without significant extra resources expended - which means cost, complexity, risk, etc. In a recent issue of Wired, there’s an article about how a new city in China is being designed with what amounts to a well thought out infrastructure optimized towards energy use It’s an interesting contrast between that approach and the agile software approach of evolving the infrastructure (and the approach to infrastructure that’s true for most cities as well).

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Thanks to Julie, we had a great Excite.com reunion party last night at her house.Ostensibly, it was to celebrate an old Excite comrade (Kuntay) coming to Austin to work (at least for a little while) - and it was a great reason for many of us to get back together. I have to say, after many years- it may be corny (but not surprising to those who know me), that I still fell privileged to have worked with such a great group of people who all shared a common purpose.

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Ok - so maybe it’s a sign of just how much a shiny-gadget-geek I am, but I love what’s possible with MacFuse (and MacFusion).For example, I have an existing website (at omnis.com) that doesn’t have a ssh account, so the only way to deploy / work on what’s there is via FTP. So when I need to work on it, I have to use FTP to push & pull code & data, but I don’t do it that often - so I’d have toright FTP client to do bulk transfer was a pain, etc.

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There seems to be more and more instances of platforms appearing which raise the level at which people can create, manipulate and share rich content in a rich context. Sophie appears to be another interesting entry, in addition to Croquet and the etoys work in Squeak.

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