Burning Man '09
February 1, 2010 is here. The stock market is better. New projects are in swing. What are you working on these days? Are you fine tuning your existing application and adding new features? Is your day spent building something new? Are you using a new hardware platform? Have you entered a new arena?

Looking forward, the things that I find interesting are ideas like Kiva, which lets you make micro investments with entrepreneurs in emerging countries. I love how GPS and Web2.0 are changing our lives. No more paper maps! I still have to think twice when I hop in the car and ask myself if I have a local map. Then, I remember I have Google Maps. How cool is that? I love Street View on Google Maps. I love flying through a virtual canyon in Google Earth.

The face of media will never be the same. Thank goodness. How long will it take us to get over the insult to our trust and intelligence that old time media was? All the lies and hype. Now, we have blogs, podcasts, comments, forums, streaming media, text messages, social networks, Wikipedia, instant access to information so we can make sense of things right away.

Those are some ideas that excite me. What excites you? It may very well be working on an existing app and being excited about something that's not work related. My friend Graham loves GPS enabling his dog and mapping dog walks through the snow. In fact, I just bought a Bow-Lingual, and I don't even own a dog! That's fine. You may work to live or live to work. What I am curious about, and I think the community will be interested in hearing is what you're doing that involves technology that you think is exciting. Even what you think would be exciting.

I love great enterprises. Here's an example. I love a business called The Parking Spot. What's the big deal? It's so well run I look forward to using their parking service. I pat myself on the back for being so clever. I use their service and my life is easier. I pull in, take a ticket and park. Minutes later, I get picked up by a comfortable bus that takes me to the airport without any drama. When I get back from a trip, I walk out to a quiet parking space at the airport and minutes later, a bus takes me right back to my car. They give me a bottle of water as I leave and they have a customer loyalty program. What's the big deal? Nothing, really. It's just a parking lot. But, they do it right. It's so easy to do a bad job. But, look at how happy it makes me to enjoy good service.

You don't have to invent the next big thing. You can just build a better mousetrap. But, whatever you're doing or dreaming, would you please take a minute to let us know here with a comment? Some people like specifics, but don't feel constrained to answer these questions:

1) what are you working on or dreaming of?
2) what's language/platform/industry?
3) what's the business model (product sales, service, support, advertising, marketing, etc)?
4) what are the threats and opportunities?

Thanks for your input - and, stay tuned!

Views: 107

Comment

You need to be a member of Codetown to add comments!

Join Codetown

Comment by Eric kovar on February 1, 2010 at 9:04pm
The Parking Spot is a brilliant real estate play. They needed very little expensive road frontage, but acquired huge amounts of inexpensive land for parking for pennies on the dollar.

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

Podcast: Building a Product-First Engineering Culture in the Age of AI

In this podcast, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Zach Lloyd about building a product-first engineering culture, and the critical importance of developers learning to effectively use AI tools while maintaining responsibility for code quality and understanding fundamental programming principles.

By Zach Lloyd

Presentation: Making Augmented Reality Accessible: A Case Study of Lens in Maps

Ohan Oda discusses making the Lens in Maps AR feature accessible to visually impaired users. He explains the motivations, ideation, and challenges faced, sharing valuable lessons on designing inclusive AR experiences and the impact on users, including his work on precision with AR.

By Ohan Oda

How to Build Secure Software without Sacrificing Productivity

Security can clash with development efficiency. Focusing on minimizing breach impact can be more effective than prevention. Dorota Parad argues for flexibility in compliance and collaborating with security teams to define practical protections. Limiting blast radius and using automation can boost security with minimal productivity loss.

By Ben Linders

Inaugural MCP Dev Summit Charts AI Integration's Future

Developers and contributors of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) converged in San Francisco in May 2025 for their first developer summit, charting the future of this rapidly adopted open standard to enable seamless integration between LLM applications and external data sources and tools. Discussions focused on a roadmap for MCP, including critical enterprise features.

By Hien Luu

Article: From Legacy to Value: Building Digital Banking Products Across Central and Eastern Europe

This article shares practical experiences and concrete examples from multi-site teams that built a single solution and delivered value to customers across various European markets. It provides real-life stories and lessons learned from developing two banking products, Lending and Foreign Exchange (FX), and their evolving architecture over time.

By Lejla Vulovic, Ana Nad

© 2025   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service