The camera-phone shot below was taken at John Wayne-Orange County Airport (SNA).

You'll notice a column of arrows along the right side. These clearly indicate the direction the reader has to go to get to that gate. It's the little things that make all the difference.

In Lived Fast, Died Young, Left a Tired Corpse, Jeff Atwood speaks of both the successes and failures of the original .Com Bubble and posits that we are entering another bubble at this very moment.  As someone who participated in bubble 1.0 (2 startups, only gained experience to show for it), I plan to watch both of the documentary films that Jeff mentioned with the goal of being able to identify when I see the same things occurring again.  However, the part of the post that struck closest to home for me was the very end, where Jeff states:

Yes, you will have incredibly lucrative job offers in this bubble. That's the easy part. As Startup.com and Code Rush illustrate, the hard part is figuring out why you are working all those long hours. Consider carefully, lest the arc of your career mirror that of so many failed tech bubble companies: lived fast, died young, left a tired corpse.

Thinking about the time I spent in these .com startups, and thereafter with smaller (non-corporate) customers, I am struck by how uncomfortable I was with the non-corporate culture.  Put another way, I am startled by how comfortable I am now that I am back working in a very corporate environment.  I spent the first 11 years of my career at a medium-sized corporation that became a large corporation while I was there, and have spent the last 4 years at a medium-sized corporation that is rapidly growing.  In between, I spent 10 years hopping around between .com startups and consulting gigs all over the country.  While I enjoyed the travel and the fast-paced, rapidly changing environments, I found there was something very significant missing for me at these assignments.

It is clear to me now that the startup game is not, and never was, for me.  I don’t think it is the long hours either since it is not uncommon for me to put in extensive hours when I have a deadline to meet no matter where I am working.  More likely, it seems to me, is that I have process to lean on when necessary.  That is, when I see something that doesn’t make sense, I can lean on the corporate culture to a large degree to either fix it, or to start the process to change it.  While this change may not happen as rapidly as in smaller companies with less process, it is also less likely to cause “ripple-effect” changes that create problems elsewhere because the process identifies those potential problems. I know this will seem counter-intuitive to many, but it has definitely been my experience that the process of larger corporations solves problems quickly enough, and causes fewer tangential problems.  Perhaps this is because I feel comfortable examining the origins of a process and changing or eliminating it if it no longer makes sense.  That is, I am able to use the effective processes effectively and eliminate the ineffective ones.  I’d like to think that is the case but I also recognize how self-serving a supposition that is.

When the next bubble comes and the job offers flow freely again, just keep in mind that, aside from figuring out why you want to do what you do as Jeff said, you also need to figure out in what environment you are most comfortable doing it.  Many feel they are more comfortable in the low-resistance, low-process environment of a startup.  Of course, most startups fail…

From Read/Write Web - http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/cool_augmented_reality_videos.php

 

Be sure to see the 2 videos linked in the above article from the International AR Symposium.  Aside from the cute factor of the Eye Pet and the WOW factor of the AR Sketch demo, there is the very real possibility that my dream of being able to write code anywhere, via a Heads-Up-Display in my sunglasses, is coming close.

 

 

These exciting examples of Augmented Reality have little to do with mobile location awareness, a nice reminder that there's a whole lot more to the field. Mobile AR browsers are the best known commercial services so far, but academic research on other forms of AR has been going on for years.

Ready to browse and interact with data on top of the physical world, through webcams, mobile phones and increasingly svelte AR glasses? A future when such experiences are mainstream may be fast approaching.

My apologies but we have had a major server crash and are having to rebuild everything from scratch on a new server.  I expect the archives to be back up shortly.  In the meantime, I will be able to continue my irregular posting schedule from this point forward.  I appreciate your patience and indulgance.

I'd like to announce that I have decided to accept an offer of employment with US Airways, designing and developing software for their Airline Operations Development (AirOps) group. This offer follows approximately 1.5 years of working for US Airways in AirOps as CopperByte, Inc.'s primary customer and my acceptance is testament to the fact that I have found it to be an outstanding place to work.  We have worked on some fairly exciting projects during my time with AirOps, often using the latest-and-greatest technology from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and others.  I look forward to continuing this work.

It should be known that I will continue my relationship with CopperByte, Inc. as an owner and director, and will occasionally participate as a developer and architect, primarily with regard to our not-for-profit endeavors such as with the Pueblo Grande Museum and  GIPhoneHome.

I probably don't need to mention that the usual caveats apply here.  All opinions are mine and mine alone; US Airways has, and will continue to have, nothing to do with this blog. All information contained herein is entirely my responsibility.