A sign that I work in a male-dominated field: the ranking guy at my new office had to send out an e-mail to the guys in the office. He told them that that since their newest hire is female, the gents would no longer be able to commandeer the ladies’ room to use the shower there after their lunchtime bike rides. Sheesh…. I’m used to being in the minority, but this is amusingly out there.
Add comment May 30th, 2007
Interesting perks of my job of late:
- seeing us on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network in banner ads, and part of the SpongeBob Friend or Foe episode sponsorship.
- knowing that we’re in Best Buy (search ‘kajeet’ on BestBuy.com) and LimitedToo (again, search ‘kajeet’ on LimitedToo.com)
- We were in the WashingtonPost: my boss is the guy holding the cellphone
- We were on CBS News (!) tonight. See clips ‘Eye to Eye: Kids Go Mobile‘ and ‘Marketing Cellphones to Kids‘ (note that we’re the good guys at the end of this clip looking at all the bad things that happen in the market of selling cellphones to kids).
All very cool, and nowhere near anything I’ve had at previous jobs. I’ve been there a bit over a year, and seen us grow (sniff, sniff) from an idea / architecture to an operational system. My part in it? Based on some stats run against our code-base, approximately 28% of the code, or some 125,000 lines of code. (Note that I didn’t run the stat tool and count the numbers highly suspicious. That said, I’m holding onto the email that says ‘She is personally responsible for more than 125,000 lines of custom kajeet code, all written while leading a team of engineers, managing collaboration with Marketing and Product Development/Management, and interacting with half a dozen vendors.’ )
The sad part is that I’m leaving kajeet for pastures closer to home. The commute is killing me (running about an hour and a quarter each way for me in Beltway traffic, since I don’t live that close to Bethesda). That said, that leaves a wonderful opportunity for someone to come and fill my shoes. (No pressure here, looking at those stats above.) Cool job: Java technologies, interesting frameworks, agile development, smart team members, and a focus on building stuff that’s really going to get used. There’s no shelf-ware here: something you build today will hit the production system and be used by customers within a matter of weeks. Those Best Buy customers will be using YOUR stuff. Those CBS news viewers will be checking out YOUR stuff.
Check a job posting for a software engineer at kajeet. Multiple positions being hired, on a variety of skill levels. But it’s a good snapshot of the technologies and platforms in use.
Add comment May 16th, 2007
Reading up a bit on the Wii, the new gaming system set to be released by Nintendo just in time for the Christmas rush. Have to admit, even though I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer, this thing sounds appealing. Its price point appeals to me (cheaper by far than the XBox or the PSP3), the fact that you can download “old” games for $5 or $10 bucks to its console appeals to me (hey, I racked up a lot of time on Frogger, Pitfall, and SeaQuest as a kid), and the new controller REALLY appeals to me. The idea of someone rethinking how to interact with a game, beyond the traditional joystick: now that’s the kind of thing that sounds exciting. Wave my hand, and the game responds: I can’t wait to see the magic wand princess game for my girls. I’ll just lead you here to Fast Company’s blog posting, and definitely here, to Nintendo’s site for the Wii.
Oooooh, browsing through Nintendo’s site, found the Mii channel: check out the video of the caricatures you can create, and the thought they put into being able to adjust your caricature/character/avatar. Looking for the announcements that lets me (1) extend the set of caricature features: more facial expressions, ability to add clothing, jewelry, accessory items…, (2) share that caricature with my game-playing friends, (3) personalize the movements of the caricature, and (4) export it in some form that lets me use it on my webpage, cellphone, etc….
1 comment September 14th, 2006
I’m impressed by Napster of late. They recently announced that users can now listen to every track in their catalog for free, up to five times. After five times, if you want to listen to it again, you need to either buy the track, or subscribe to one of Napster’s monthly services. In the meantime, as you’re listening to your free tracks online, you’re being exposed to various ads, whose revenue is then apparently shared with the music industry as its payment for the use of the free music. (Napster’s FAQ on its free music model is here.)
This seems to me to be a brilliant music model: the few second snippets offered in other music libraries are not enticing enough to cause me to browse to find new music which I might purchase from their stores. Napster, through use of this ability to listen for free, as well as its playlists, encourages me and makes it enjoyable to browse for those songs I would be willing to buy. No longer am I consciously shopping: I’m browsing, and impulse buying.
I wonder if the 5 listen limit is too high, actually. New songs only stay in popularity a short while. And there’s quite a breadth of material on Napster. Seems I could always be listening to new and interesting things, without ever really hitting the 5 song limit. Now, I’d need to be perpetually connected to an Internet connection, else I might want that song in my portable player. But I generally AM perpetually connected to an Internet connection… my portable player serves me at the gym, but not many other places. Napster might consider lowering that limit to 3… if I’m willing to listen to a song more than 3 times, I probably oughta pay for it…
Add comment May 3rd, 2006
Watch Out, Kids: With GPS Phones, Big Mother Is Watching
Rob Pegoraro notes a certain discomfort with WaveMarket’s location-based service that “enables enterprises and fleet managers to manage mobile assets”. There’s nothing new here, except perhaps a cost savings for the fleet managers. We were putting GPS receivers in trucks in 1994 for this very purpose. I was a lowly intern building out the functionality, but got to drive around in my oil-leaking Pontiac Phoenix with a GPS disc thingy attached to the top of my car and a mobile transmitter that would then transmit my coordinates as well as receive communications from the central system.
I well agree with Rob’s point, though, that “The whole idea of tracking your family in this manner is weird and alarming on some levels. So is the notion that we’re all so deathly afraid for our kids that there’s even a market for this.”. That’s the reality in our society, though, as alarming as it is. We worry about government spying on us, ostensibly to help keep us safer, and then pay to spy on each other in the same name of safety.
1 comment April 19th, 2006
Monday will be my first day with my new company. Few details here, for reasons of NDAs and just generally enjoying waiting to see this thing hit the scene. But it’s an exciting, unexpected jump to a startup. A chance to refresh my Java skills, build a very scalable site, be associated with something I expect will get household name recognition (as opposed to my current contract management system for the federal gov’t project) and help sheperd a new product to a successful launch. The first ad that I see in a big box circular, I’ll link in here. Heck, I’ll be hawking it here, snagging beta-testers, and folks to add some buzz. If you’ve got kids, specifically in the realm of, say, 8-12, keep an eye out here.
1 comment March 6th, 2006
My Grandma’s birthday is coming up, and, apparently like all Grandmas, mine’s notoriously hard to purchase buy a gift for. But I saw an ad for something called a Scooba: it’s a robot that washes your floors. Hmmmmm…. a bit pricey. But it’s older brother*, the Roomba, has been out for a while, and surely Grandma would even more appreciate a vacuuming robot. [Sorry, Grandma, still out of my price range.]
Like lots of consumers, I did my price-checking on Amazon. A search for ‘iRobot’ included these gems: Roor the Tiger, and Mooba the Cow. They’re costumes for your Roomba, both put out by a company called myRoombud. There’re also frog, pig, zebra, and leopard costumes available.
From the features description of Mooba:
If you own a Roomba, you know what I am talking about. Have you ever:
1) named your Roomba? 2) talked to your Roomba?
3) spent more time watching your Roomba than it would take you to vacuum the room(ba)?
4) bought a second Roomba so your first would not be lonely?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you are a prime candidate for an original RoomBud Roomba costume!
If you answered yes to any of the above, you’re a prime candidate for your own room with padded walls. Note that your Roomba will successfully navigate said room, and keep you company while keeping your floors clean.
Add comment February 14th, 2006
I’m taking a class called ‘Analysis and Decision-Making’ this semester at Loyola as part of my MBA. I knew I had learned something in the class as I sat pondering what to do about my take-home exam last night. I analyzed and decided that I should take the prof up on her offer to extend the deadline for the exam. This let me go to bed at 1 am last night, and be reasonably patient with my kids today. Score an ‘A’ in the dual degree of MBA/mommy-hood!
Add comment December 21st, 2005
Wow…. I was already impressed by the revenue streams being generated by ringtones: the idea is that I can assign some music bit to my phone, and even down to the phone number of the person who’s calling me. When my phone rings, I hear a bit of music that I like, and the phone company gets to charge me by the song for the privilege. The more different songs I apply, the more money they make, and the more my tastes change, the more money they make. Since it’s generally not very expensive to set up an individual ring tone, they get a nice revenue stream that I don’t notice as a significant outflow from my wallet.
New thing seen out on Verizon’s site: ringback tones. Now I can assign basically my own call-waiting music on a per-caller basis: while my caller is waiting for me to pick up, they get to listen to the music I’ve pre-selected for them. Hubby gets something from his favorite band, mom gets “There’s a Tear in my Beer” (cause she likes it and I hate it and I never have to hear it on the ringback tone), the boss gets “Working 9-to-5″, etc, etc. And of course, if I’m a hip thing instead of a mostly not-hip thing, I need to change that music as the music scene changes. Verizon collects $1.99 per tone, with a monthly subscription fee of .99, thank you very much.
Apparently Verizon was the first major carrier to do it, starting in November 2004 (see MobileTechNews article. According to Engadget, a wireless carrier in Illinois was the first with the idea, and T-Mobile jumped into the fray. They’re really big in China, and there’s a whole site (Ringtonia) with news on ringback tones. There’s even links to how to get ringtones of animal sounds, ala “gorilla beating on its chest“. Now THAT would shake a meeting up!
Add comment October 15th, 2005
Got a spam comment today that made me laugh out loud. In amongst the porn spam (mature porn? uh, yuck!), the drug spam, and the vacuum spam (?), I had a spam comment from the Pampered Chef.
I almost left it up, just because it amused me so, in amongst the rest of the trash. I can imagine some housewife sitting at home, trying to expand her Pampered Chef sales so that she can get just one more plastic scraper to round out her set.
Pampered Chef: bringing the ingredients and utensils of spam to my website!
Add comment August 16th, 2005
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