« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »
August 29, 2006
Moving on
After 15 years at a software-company I've seen go from a small startup to an established player in the German financial services market, I will be leaving S&N to "do my own thing". Together with Ashley I will be building something new in the enterprise software market. After our experiences over the past 18 months, we deliberately decided to go the "start small" route and start with a seed.
I'll be moving my business and Open Source related blogging over to the Indiginox blog, so you may want to read that one as well from now on.
I actually start on the 1st of October - but Indiginox has been operational for a couple of months now. Exciting times ahead!
Posted by Matthew at 07:14 AM | Comments (9)
August 26, 2006
Pasta and fish - Part 3
Man in the middle
The beginning of 2006 sees our heroes camped out in Open Souce business bleakness trying to revive plan B - something that had been on the back-burner while they had been revising business plans, chasing VCs and spending precious time getting nowhere.
Plan B was to take a completely different approach to building a company in the growing enterprise market for open software. The company would position itself smack in the middle of established players such as:
- corporations - looking to understand the implications of - and/or adopt - Open Source offerings
- vendors - looking to go to market with an Open Source offering or move a proprietary solution into an Open Source strategy
- communities - looking for corporate adoption and support
The company would act as an independent broker in the rapidly opening world of enterprise software. Because the company had its origins in a particular location of enterprise software - Open Source - they would call the company "Indiginox".
To be continued.
Posted by Matthew at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2006
A stack is a stack is a...
The hype around pure play Open Source stack providers is over.
The 451 Group believes the market for pure-play open source stack providers looking to support enterprise customers directly is limited. More.
Let the shakeup begin. As I wrote back in January - time to differentiate.
Posted by Matthew at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2006
Sign of the times
On-site with a customer today and my Windows XP laptop died on me. Dead as a dodo. The first time this has happened to me in years - which is pretty ironic when you think about it. Anyway, this gives me the chance to use my Powerbook there tomorrow and as I have Office and OmniGraffle Pro installed, I should be good to go.
A sign of the times ahead *grin*.
Posted by Matthew at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2006
Pasta and fish - Part 2
The long and winding road
The initial idea was to build a company around an Open Source product for the mobile industry. An idea that had originated in discussions with a couple of US Open Source visionaries was deemed viable to be adopted by our two friends. The idea seemed sound and initial talks with potential funders and conspirators on both sides of the Atlantic suggested potential. Our two caped heroes wrote and revised business plans and pitches. Many times. No, really, many times. Meetings were organized with VCs and possible customers - even a prototype was built. Many lessons were learned - but in the end nobody was prepared to take heart in our team of would-be entrepreneurs. So, after eight months work, the idea was shelved. It was Christmas in Germany and not only the weather was miserable.
Luckily, the two had a Plan B.
- To be continued.
Posted by Matthew at 09:17 PM | Comments (1)
Scramble to launch on XBox Live Arcade
Yes, at last. Mark your calendars - Scramble to be released on the 6th of September. I can rest now.
Posted by Matthew at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2006
Game programming for you and me?
Back in the days of yore - I used to write games for my VIC20. That was one of the only ways to actually get games for the system back then as there wasn't much around at the start. Frank and I spent hours typing in games from magazines, debugging and modifying them or writing our own in lines and lines of BASIC and DATA. Ah yes, those were the days.
Microsoft has just announced the release of XNA Game Studio Express. From the description, the system will allow people like you and me (well, maybe not me) to write and share games for the XBOX360. It looks as though actual XBOX support is coming later (Windows first) and that this will be a "closed-community" type thing, whereby games will only run on your XBOX if you are a (paying) member of the community. Still, it's a first step and an interesting space to watch.
Posted by Matthew at 07:18 AM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2006
Cocoon GetTogether
The early bird registration for this year's Cocoon GetTogether is up and as Andrew points out - with a cool visual representation of who's signed up. Unfortunately I've not had much time recently to keep up with the project - but that is something I plan on changing - "real soon now".
Posted by Matthew at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)
Backing up to S3
Yesterday, I signed up for Amazon's S3 and installed Jungle Disk. I really wanted a simple way of backing up some stuff from my laptop - just "in case". So far, things work as advertised and using Jungle Disk is really simple - which is just right for me.
Posted by Matthew at 09:48 PM | Comments (1)
August 12, 2006
Show me the log in
37signals have written some pretty neat applications and I use Backpack for managing my ever increasing need for lists. However, even though 37signals stress the simplicity of what they write - why do they make it so hard to actually log in to the Backpack application? I think the "log in" link is really difficult to find on the home page - at least when I quickly want to check my lists out.
Posted by Matthew at 06:11 PM | Comments (0)
August 11, 2006
Pasta and fish - Part I
Scenes from an Italian restaurant
Back in February of 2005 two middle-aged guys met in a small Italian restaurant somewhere in Germany to discuss work and life in general over plates of pasta and fish. Both of the guys had around 20 years of IT experience each and at one time, the older guy had been the boss of the younger one. After working together at the end of the eighties, the older guy went on to join several large corporations, ending up at Microsoft. The younger one joined a startup software company of 5 people, where he remained for the following 15 years.
On that fateful evening, back in February 2005, the two discussed what it would be like to throw their experience and areas of expertise together to build something new. Something challenging for both of them.
Their first idea was a flop.
- To be continued.
Posted by Matthew at 05:17 PM | Comments (1)
Nebulous fear
Zefrank on yesterday's news. Spot on.
Posted by Matthew at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)
August 10, 2006
SAP is the company to watch
As Open Source and Web 2.0 make inroads into the enterprise, it is interesting to see how "traditional" enterprise software vendors are reacting. SAP is already showing signs that it may be further ahead than most people probably expect from the Walldorf based company.
Posted by Matthew at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2006
Vacation reading roundup
Apart from reading through 2 Kathy Reichs books ("Cross Bones" and "Monday Mourning"), I also used my vacation to re-read "The Secrets of Consulting" by Gerald Weinberg. Frank recommended this book to me years ago and even though I think I read through it back then, it was well worth reading again. I'm sure a lot of Gerald's advice is going to come in handy soon.
Posted by Matthew at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2006
Rhodes
Back from our 2 week vacation in the sun. We had a great time and this year we spent less time lazing by the pool and more time exploring the island.
I've put some pictures up on Flickr.
Posted by Matthew at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)