Wingedpig.com - Mark Fletcher's Blog

Like countless others today, I bought an Apple iPhone. It replaces my 2.5 year old Treo 650. Wow, what a difference. The keyboard is going to take some getting used to, but this is one heck of a phone. Web surfing is great on this device. Email is great, especially being able to view attachments. The iPod seems to work fine, with the exception that the DVDs I've ripped for my Apple TVs don't play. I'll have to look into that. The voicemail system is lightyears beyond any traditional cell phone voicemail system.

One confusing thing had to do with the activation. I am replacing my Treo, so I wasn't able to select a particular voice plan. When I go to the AT&T web site to look up what plan I'm on, I now get an error. I'll have to look into that.

Now, Apple needs to create an SDK and open up the phone to 3rd party developers. Web apps will only get you so far and don't lend themselves to a seamless experience. But even without that, it's a huge improvement over my old Treo.

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 09:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Congrats to Marc and Jason and the rest of the gang. They announced today that Wesabe has raised $4M in a Series A round, led by Union Square Ventures. I was privileged to be able to participate in the seed round, and it's been fun watching them grow so far.

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 05:22 PM | Permalink

Hypothesis: The inter-team communication requirements when doing distributed software development force better communication habits upon everyone, which can lead to an overall better development process.

Explanation: When a group is working together in an office, a majority of communication happens verbally and generally informally (ie. talking in the halls or in meetings). These communications are generally not recorded and archived. Knowledge is lost and/or spread unevenly among the group. With a modern distributed development group, the majority of communication is forced to be text, through email, IM, chat rooms and wikis. The knowledge is (within the limit of the tools) easily accessible later, by the entire group. What would seem a disadvantage, that of not all being together in the same building (or even in the same time zone), ends up being an advantage.

Agree or Disagree?

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

It turns out that the rumors are true, Google has acquired Feedburner. Sounds like a great outcome for all involved. Congrats to the guys at Feedburner, they worked hard and created a great company. They're good people.

Posted by Mark Fletcher at 01:26 PM | Permalink