Let’s speculate about immortality for a bit. It’s something that’s been on my mind a bit recently because… well, what with stem cell research and leaps in medical science, the problem of human mortality could reasonably be solved in our lifetime. I’m no doctor, and I haven’t done research on the actual progress being made, but frankly I’m far more fascinated by the potential long term ethical and social impact that this might cause. So let’s just lie back with something vision-inducing (I recommend running 20 miles) and try to glimpse the future.

Everyone seems to have a Blog these days (if not several), resulting in significantly more noise than signal in pretty much everything out there. Everyone and their brother seems to be jockying for position to be the next big name in… in what? Internet Celebritydom is a fickle and hard-to-reach goal, and more often than not is reached by pure luck than anything else. So in order to pare down this article I’m going to restrict myself to skill-based celebrities. Individuals who through their contribution to a particular field have achieved recognition and celebritydom on a level beyond the average Blogger. Chances are that you know some of these individuals in your own industry or field of expertise, and your own company would do well to be affiliated with them. They might be constantly out of the office speaking at various locations, however the fact that your company name is attached to their expertise marks you as the leader in the field. This article presents some guidelines on how to choose, contact, engage and retain such celebrities.

Two years ago, my colleague Isaac went to SXSW, and came back with a presentation on Mobile Development. In it he said that one of the greatest challenges is getting a mobile application “on deck”. “On Deck” is the term used for an application that’s available on a provider’s mobile platform, that place you goto online when you browse applications, ringtones and such, and to get something on there used to take an Act of God. Why? Because all billing had to be handled through the provider, all sales had to be done though your phone bill, and payments to third party companies had to be set up through their system (and usually required a hefty premium). In short- more trouble than it’s worth. Fact is, this is largely still the case. Yes, with greater adoption of mobile web browsers these things are becoming a lot easier, yet getting an application onto a phone remains problematic, especially if the consumer isn’t aware that you have it. The best option these days seems to be building a Mobile website, which is a far cry from a good user experience.

The executive summary of this post goes something like this: If you are trying to launch a service, product or other technologically “innovative” web presence, your idea either has to be absolutely stellar (which I will guarantee to you it isn’t), or you have to rip the covers off your technology and let your users decide how to use it themselves.

So, the idea of Micropayment Startup Funding turned out not to be viable…. correction- we have no idea whether it was viable, because we simply didn’t have the expertise necessary to refine the business plan. Why? Well, read on.

This weekend is Startup Weekend Columbus, a three day skunkworks convention where 150 people walk into a building for a weekend and do their best to get a few companies started. I registered for it a few months ago with the thought that it’d be cool to really dig into something new and shiny for a short amount of time, and have some good fun networking with others. Unfortunately, three things happened that I wasn’t expecting at that time.

Now and then I come across thoughts and snippets that don’t really warrant their own post, but are interesting nonetheless. Here’s a collection of a few regarding social media.

Sooner or later, every developer out there gets sick of the long hours, the process, the verification and the deadlines. Even if we’ve naturally gravitated towards leadership, the clarion call of management is strong- it’s perceived as advancement (potentially into a C* role), comes with the benefit of fewer long hours, you have people you can boss around… all in all good things when looked at in the right light. Yet most developers end up in Development Management, which ends up being more about estimates and balancing resources (aka beancounting), rather than Product Management, which continues apace with the thing I love most about being a Developer: Building Stuff.

Unfortunately, the field is incredibly hard to break in to (Especially in software), and books on methods and methodologies are few and far between. So when my User Groups’ book shipment from O’Reilly came in with a complementary copy of Adaptive Path’s “Subject to Change” I was intrigued. From the title, the book is about “Creating great products and services for an uncertain world”. Think I was interested? You bet! Here was a book that seemed to be all about how to create and manage a product in the everchanging world of the internet! Unfortunately this particular edition was earmarked for a colleague of mine, however it took me precisely 30 minutes to track down a copy in a nearby Borders and start reading it that night.

You should note that I rarely, if ever, read professional books, that’s what blogs are there for. But I digress…

It turns out that my initial enthusiasm was a little naive, since the argument presented in the book was substantially different than what I was expecting. In fact, one of its chapters is titled ‘Stop Designing “Products”‘, which made me more than a little concerned. Yet having said that, and taking into account the often blatant plugs for Adaptive Path, it turns out the book was exactly what I needed, even though it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

My parents were huge believers in the roadtrip. Whether this is a cultural phenomenon or not isn’t important: What’s important is that pretty much every summer ever since I was a toddler we’d drive somewhere for a substantial amount of time. Greece, Denmark, Yugoslavia, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, you name it. This tradition continued on well after we’d moved to the United States, including pretty much anything within easy driving distance of Texas.

Now, when you’re a parent, you try to encourage your childrens’ curiosity to see which way their enthusiasm will take them- it’s not a matter of molding them into a particular set of standards (aka Teaching Them Good And Wholesome Values (TM)), it’s more about letting them find their own path, and most of the time… well, it’s a bit of a crapshoot, and you never know whether this new pursuit of theirs is going to be a flighty fancy or a serious pursuit. In addition to that my own ADD tendencies could not have made that much easier. Fixating on a particular task was easy for me, but finding something I’d be willing to fixate on for more than a week or so wasn’t about to happen. Name it, I’ve probably explored it, and my mom and dad’s support in every flighty fancy is… well, I can’t really thank them enough for it.

The additional difficulties with this kind of kid (that being myself) is that sometimes the really significant hobbies and pursuits are difficult to pick out from the noise. There are simply too many hobbies, unfinished projects and pursuits to figure out which one really took hold, and it’s not until I myself have gained the ability to retrospect properly that I myself can pick them out.

The actual point of all that commentary? I like kites.

I have just had one of the most emotionally draining days in a very long time. Which is surprising, given that it’s over something as trivial as a blog post.

What happened? Well, I put out a post that was poorly worded. Someone (at work) took exception. I was told about this, took a long hard look at what I said, realized it could very easily be taken in the wrong way (and was), and so posted a retraction, explaining why. And now I’ve been told several times that the retraction looks like I’ve sold out, and that I’m subversively blaming my company for censoring me. That it looks like someone came down on me with a hammer, and/or that the entire exchange sounded insincere.

None of these are true. No hammers, no coercions, no subversion, no lack of sincerity on my part either. Simply one person’s (well, ok-several persons’) hurt feelings and my attempt to make amends. And apparently, I failed so completely that I looked like a vindictive little prat.

So now I don’t just have the original offense to apologize for, I also have to backpedal on the retraction. And short of pulling the original two posts (which I did) I can’t figure out how.