Posted on 2nd April 2009 by jeff in Uncategorized
1 year to the day Terry and I decided to do ParkVu full time, we’re pleased to announce our first application: i2b: the first application to let BlackBerry Bold, Curve, and Storm users remotely retrieve music from their iTunes library, allowing them to play the music they want to hear when they want to hear it, no matter where they are. A brief press release is available here.
And since we’re announcing stuff, I can finally say a little bit more about ParkVu. We’re developing software applications that deliver on the promise of the mobile Internet experience by giving users the freedom to access their data at any time from mobile devices.
We’re at the CTIA show in Las Vegas. Ping me if you’re at the show and interested in talking to us.
Posted on 5th March 2009 by jeff in Product Strategy
Networking, Programming, Rich Internet application
Dear developers of RIAs and internet services.
Please consider the impact on users and other apps when attempting to send/receive packets. As more and more apps require communication with the cloud, we have a responsibility to prioritize the user’s experience over the need to get info fast.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8eeff4ee-fff2-4357-b314-b32d26ae752b)
Posted on 5th March 2009 by jeff in Startups
Behold the swanky digs of a capital efficient startup.
Really the Word of the Day should be a phrase: we need more whiteboards! We’ve since plugged up the window with another perfectly fitting whiteboard. But we’re out of whiteboard space.
Posted on 27th February 2009 by jeff in Startups
ParkVu
Not the FDR but an acronym for a key piece of ParkVu Technology.
Posted on 25th February 2009 by jeff in Startups
ParkVu
We’re racing towards a new release of ParkVu Technology. As it typically happens with crazy and intense projects, particular words become meaningful along the way. It could be the lack of sleep, it could be the deficient diet, either way it’s entertaining. To me at least.
So here’s the first of the adventure in the transmundane — Fetch.
Posted on 17th February 2009 by jeff in Startups
10 years ago, Gary Will and I facilitated a little get together called Ground Zero (this was pre-9/11). Basically the idea was ripped off from Round Zero in the valley: get pre-VC backed companies together to hang out, commiserate and support one another.
At the time the driver was a chasm between the “old guard”: Descartes, RIM, OpenText, Sybase and the new startups that were forming at the time. There was no agenda, a varied mix of attendees and beer. We offered to advice, connected to resources that help and supported and celebrated one another. We also mercilessly sponged free advice from any lawyer or accountant that happened to pass by accidentally.
For the past year that we’ve been working on ParkVu, I’ve often been reminded of the same dynamic between the startups and the old guard. Things are friendlier now then they used to be and RIM has been very approachable but ah, obviously we don’t have the same issues.
We’ve talking about getting together all the mobile startups, in Waterloo for beverages. Nothing formal, just hang out, get to know each other, etc… This isn’t yet another *-Camp, those all serve a valuable yet different purpose. This is just for early stage mobile companies to start to form a community.
We (ParkVu) will pull something together in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll post details here. Leave a comment if you’re interested in attending.
Posted on 8th February 2009 by jeff in Startups
jobs, ParkVu
If you know your way around the Blackberry JDE and looking to do some for hire work. Shoot me an email at jeff at parkvu dot com (more…)
Posted on 20th September 2008 by jeff in Product Strategy
When I was a summer research student, I worked across the hall from the gait lab. They did cool stuff like motion capture and telemetry to measure the bio mechanical response to things like subjecting people to an unexpected drop. At the time they were working on a project for a major running shoe manufacturer who had a new cushioning technology. The problem they were working on was quantifying the ‘right’ amount of change.
Too much change in a shoe design and buyers, runners who replace their shoes at least once a year, won’t buy. Too little change and their competitors surpass them and buyers won’t feel the ‘improvements’. It’s a tough call.
The same is true in software. Even if your technology is superior, it has to feel ‘right’. Yep there’s a lot of subjectives in this post – that’s why software design is a hard problem.
With 25+ years of personal computing behind us, people have established conventions and expectations of the user experience. Stay away from those conventions and expectations and you risk users staying away from your application.
Posted on 28th August 2008 by jeff in Startups
I’m a huge fan of Top Chef. So are my kids. Yeah that’s not entirely relevant but I needed to work the title concept in here some how. I mean otherwise it looks like I’m trying to drive readership with gratuitous shots of Padma. Note to self: Photoshop Colicchio out of the header and feature Padma in more blog postings.
Ok I guess it isn’t entirely irrelevant in the sense that on Top Chef, the contestants battle it out to prove to the judges that they’re the real deal. It’s the same principle for OCRI’s Canada’s Top 10. Phew.
I’ve just been told that the deadline has been extended to Sept 11th, 2008 so if you’re a Canadian company looking for VC, there is still time to apply.
Posted on 29th July 2008 by jeff in Product Strategy
Amazon Web Services, Architecture, SimpleDB
I love SimpleDB, no really I friggin’ love it but old habits die hard and sometimes I don’t use it the way I should. Or maybe I’m just not patient enough <cough>. Probably both.
Currently at ParkVu we’re using SimpleDB to store some info — shocking I know. The problem is that this info is somewhat event based. Ok that’s not the problem. The real problem is that sometimes I can query shortly after writing (putting) to SimpleDB and find results and sometimes I can find nothing but try again and find the information I was expecting. Presto: eventual consistency rearing the ugly side of it’s head and biting me firmly on the ass.
Fortunately there’s such beasts as Memcached to insulate you the developer from query/caching heroics. Eventual consistency, gotta love it but gotta consider it when working in the cloud.
