5 posts tagged “hiptop”
Microsoft to buy phone maker Danger
"In a telephone interview, Microsoft General Manager Scott Horn said the company isn't ready to announce its specific plans for Danger, but said the company plans to continue operating its existing Sidekick business."
They are waiting for the lasers to be fully powered up.
" Horn said Microsoft will look at ways of bringing the two businesses--and the two operating systems--more closely together."
Don't cross the streams!
We launched Powered by Danger last night. This was definitely one of the more complex projects I've worked on. I'm extra-excited since the "powered-by" concept/name was my idea :) On the technical side of things, it is several order of magnitudes easier to manage/work with/update compared to the site it is replacing (hiptop.com). So far, feedback seems favorable. And there was much rejoicing!
My interview with Shoshannah Stern was one of the sweetest I've done, while my short interview with Amazing Racer Tyler MacNiven was one of the more quirky ones.
As mentioned earlier, this Halloween I participated in an event I originally founded - a Halloween Photo-Scavenger Hunt. Basically, there were a few hundred participants on several teams running around the country taking pictures of things from a list of about 500 items and submitting them to a blog for judging. Since over 5,000 posts came in and there are like two judges, I'm not surprised we don't know who the winner is yet :)
I was originally hesitant to sign up because I had to work all day, and had trick-or-treating duties later. In the end I posted a lot more items than I though possible. I rummaged through the house in the first couple of hours after the list was posted at midnight, stopped to take pics during my bike commute to/from work, and got out at lunchtime and found a bunch of items. After trick-or-treating I dedicated the remaining four hours to finding more items both in the house and around town.
Our team communicated primarily over IM and with some emails and it was a lot of fun seeing what everyone could find, remotely guiding someone around NYC and all sorts of madness. As much fun as I had running the hunt (I loved thinking up items to the point where I could not sleep because I would keep jumping up to write down more ideas), playing it was even better. The hunt combined with too much halloween sugar kept my metabloism racing at a frenetic pace all day/night.
A++++ WOULD PLAY AGAIN
For further reading:
Integrating and Evolving a Mob: The Growth of a Smart Mob into a Wireless Community of Practice
(paper/presentation by John Lester, Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School, on the first hunt)
Last weekend we visited my brother to help build his house. He is in a race against the weather in the hills of New Hampshire. We did a quick swing by the Pumkin Festival in Keene as well.
This weekend we had massive rain/windstorms, so for the most part we huddled inside. On the plus side, the house is nice and clean, the laundry is done and we made a couple of tasty meals.
Along with regular Halloween activities, I've signed up for the 5th annual Hiptop Halloween Photo-Scavenger Hunt. This is an event I founded five years ago, but this will be my first year as a participant instead of an organizer. Should be fun!
I've been reading The Historian, which is a 600+ page vampire story. Maybe I'll just rent some Buffy DVDs next time. No, actually, it is quite good if a bit long. The first two hundred pages were the setup. I'm on page 300ish now and things are moving along.
Next weekend we're headed for Boston. Later in the month we're going to NY. So we are keeping busy.
Not mentioned on the Team Vox blog for the last release, but important (to me) were the fixes put in place for Vox on mobile devices. Or at least, on my mobile device (hiptop/sidekick 3). Initially, Vox didn't do anything special for the hiptop browser - which was fine because the regular site rendered nicely as it was. But then they moved to strip things down and make things faster for phone browsers (good) but they went a little overboard because you couldn't read entire posts anymore. But this last release strikes a pretty good balance between stripping things down but keeping everything functional. Let's take a look screen by screen:
So for me mobile Vox is entirely useful, but I wouldn't mind seeing a few improvements in the presentation (and I am sure the next version will be even better!)
