Richard Cowin

2007 gone and a world of change

In 2007, I was a bit off the radar. 

I had two big changes.

Switched Jobs

I switched my day job back in the summer of 2007.  I left FiveRuns to work at a startup called 7 Billion People.

FiveRuns was a great company to work with.  I had lots of fun going from scratch to a product with sales in 7 months using Ruby on Rails and javascript. I spent 18 months there and wish them all the best of luck. 

At 7 Billion People, we are also making heavy use of both Ruby on Rails and javascript.  We are getting ready to start releasing information about our products. So, I can't say much yet, but will soon.

Switched Homes

My wife and I sold our home in DFW area back in May.  We really like the Austin area and have decided to call it home for a while.  We signed a contract on a home under construction in North Austin area that should be completed in early Spring.

2006 and Back (Update)

Got back from Rails Edge last weekend and it was great.

2006 has to be my busiest year yet. This included working at a startup, bringing a product from scratch to sales within 8 months. This has involved pretty exclusive use of Ruby on Rails with javascript and it has been awesome.

I am still commuting across Texas on the weekends, but will be reducing this commute to twice a month for 2007. Hopefully give me some time to get some other things done.

I was out ill most of December and part of January, so I got a bit behind in my communications. I should be caught up soon.

Oh, and the most awesome news is that my oldest daughter (Angela) had a beautiful son (Ashton Thomas) in October. He weighed in at 4 lb. and 15 oz.. A bit of stress at first, but he is doing fine now. Pretty amazing being a grandfather.

Catching Up.

Catching my breath a bit now.  However, I still have lots of work to accomplish and I am still traveling between DFW and Austin - hope to sell my house soon.

I will try to blog a bit more, but will be spending a bit of needed quality time this month with Rico.

If I have not responded to your email yet, I will be getting to it soon.

TED (more on interactive display)

TED has a new video on a demo by Jeff Han from work at New York University's Media Research Lab.

Ted has nice videos of some great talks. I really like the ones done by:
Ken Robinson
Majora Carter
Daniel Dennet

Really good stuff with great content done with great style.

Extracting feelings from rss feeds and giving them life

I just came across http://wefeelfine.org/ - tracks feelings across rss feeds. I have only briefly looked at the app and methodology and I am not sure what goals it will accomplish, but it has some interesting ideas.

My first impression is that the overall UI makes me feel like I am interacting more directly with content instead of controls (including the hover based scrolling)

The rss snippets racing and hovering across the screen look like they are some sort of life forms with somewhere to go. A bit much, but kind of cool.

After looking at something like this, I can feel the neurons firing in the back of my brain - not really knowing where they are going.

Technorati Tags: UI

Online Demo of FiveRuns

FiveRuns is releasing an online demo of its management software early next week.  We have been working hard and long over the last couple of months. 

The FiveRuns product uses Ruby and Ruby on Rails for all the server stuff,  Gruff for graph generation (with a custom theme), and obviously Rico (early bits of next release) and Prototype.  I have also added lots of interesting new behaviors into the FiveRuns product that will find their way into Rico 2.0 in the coming months.  Some of those new behaviors will not be in the initial online demo at FiveRun, but will be part of the product before release.

It has been lots of fun working with great people at FiveRuns as well working with Scott Boms from Wishingline.

Everyone has done an excellent job and I look forward to the rest of the year.

Update: For now, the demo is made available only to a few of the people who are signed up for the beta.  We are still making some refinements and things are apt to change.  Keep an eye on the FiveRuns site, you will be seeing more soon.

Daughter is Getting Married

My daughter is getting married this weekend.  My wife has working like crazy preparing for the wedding and selling our house.  This week has been particularly intense because my daughter has flown in from Germany (she has been living there for the last two years) and is trying to do all the wedding dress fittings and things a week before the wedding.

Both the wedding and product release efforts at FiveRuns  as well as a dozen other things (including selling a house) have been consuming all of my time lately.  Even though they have been great fun, I am looking forward to the end of the weekend so I can relax a bit and also get back to working on Rico.

Where is my Damn Technological Singularity?

I just finished moving my development onto a beautiful new Mac Book Pro this weekend.  Awesome machine.

Although Apple products show great design, they seem to have another advantage...

For most companies, I seem to have this force of expectations that far exceeds the time to market of any of their new technology driven products.

So, do we really seem to be moving to any  kind of technological singularity in the next 20-30 years?

It seems that to have a technological singularity, the technological releases would have to exceed our expectations.  I don't really see this happening.  I would say that the only reason technology is evolving so quickly, is because our expectations demand it ... and we are able to envision it quicker.

So, if technology is advancing exponentially, then it is doing so because our expectations or visions are pulling it along.

However, I do see a force that could cause this balance to change.  It seems that the only way that any technological singularity will occur, is if companies/people start keeping better secrets.  Because the technological singularity seems to be really about not knowing what is next... not being able to predict.

I am a big Apple fan, but I think one advantage that Apple has is that they keep good secrets.  This is quite different than Microsoft's marketing strategy of setting expectations well before they can even figure out what they are able to release.

So, it seems that any technological singularity will really only exist for those that do not know what others are doing.  I don't think this can really happen without some mechanism to obstruct information flow.  Hmmm, isn't this more difficult as people become more connected or will the mass of misinformation help provide this mechanism?

In the meantime...my new development machine rocks!

Goals for frameworks, languages, libraries, and tools (Goal 1)

As I was thinking of the key goals I want to achieve as Rico moves to 1.2, I came across a new post by Andy Hunt on Why Ruby.  He talks about  how one of the two main reasons he likes ruby is that it "stays out of your way".  I agree that Ruby does a great job in this area by  allowing itself to be molded to the problem at hand without getting in the way. 

This is probably one of the hardest and yet most important goals of any framework, language, library, application, or tool.  I think a good framework/library should allow itself to be shaped to easily work with required technologies and processes that are in place.  Being opinionated is great, but only in the areas that the user does not want to worry about. 

One of the tricks is to understand what are the required technologies 'it' must work with.  In the area of javascript libraries that clearly means existing HTML and CSS content.

So number 1 goal is to "stay out of your way".

Touch Screen of the Future

Ran across this video from projectionist guys blog.

Truly awesome! Appears to be work done by Jeff Han

Watch it and think about the future.
I am salivating.  Suddenly, my current systems seem very limiting.  And, makes me want to go back to school again.