My stomach is still on fire. We had Kentucky Fried Chicken at the office last night, and my 42 year old stomach can’t take the grease any more. The dev team gobbled it up, though.
We’re in crunch mode — that time when tech teams pull out all the stops and crank toward a release. It means a lot of late nights, catered in lunches and dinners (I know… KFC isn’t exactly catering, per se) so people can stay focused, and the push to a deadline.Â
I’ve never worked on a technology project where it hasn’t come to this. It was 2:30 AM when I finally hit the sack, yesterday.
So what are we working on? A couple of months ago, I called a friend of mine and asked how his day was going. “Lousy”, came the reply. “I’ve spent the last two hours playing telephone tag”.
Next week we hope to be able to deliver an early release of a new feature for the iotum Relevance Engine, part of a roadmap of features we call “Minerva” internally. We’re not quite sure what to call this feature yet… but I think it’s going to change the way people think about presence, especially mobile presence. It’s not based on today’s presence technologies, although it’s something like presence. It’s not a buddy list either, but more like a hybrid of a buddy list and a to-do list combined with telephony. The goal for this feature is the elimination of telephone tag.
We’re going to be looking for a few people to try this out. Initially it will only be available on Blackberry.  If you have a Blackberry with OS release 4.1 or higher, and would like to participate in an early trial, feel free to drop me email. I’ll send you an invite when it’s ready to download.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
