Tag Archives: New Technology

So Long! And Thanks for all the Fish!

Everyone,

I want to thank you all for making the last 9 years at Sabre/EDS/HP an experience that I will never forget. It has been a whirl wind of activity which lately has seemed to be a blur as we have taken the Transportation SOA from a concept and turned it into reality.

Several memories stand out, which I’d like to share and hopefully give those of you who worked with me a chuckle as you remember the good ole times

  1. No, BAASIC was not responsible for the baggage debacle in the new Denver Airport when it opened.
  2. There is no room for weekends and Holidays when you are working a pursuit.
  3. Phoenix AZ is really hot, no matter what time of year you are there, especially when you are trying to merge two airlines and meet an unbelievable deadline.
  4. It is always hard to shove an Elephant down a 16K network connection.
  5. Yes, I always love to name my projects after annoying cartoon characters.

To all the developers, remember my motto “Make it work, Make it work right, Make it fast, Make it pretty and Make it maintainable” following it will always remind you to take things in small steps, which I have found to be the key to tackling anything in the development world.

To all the managers, look for the developers who are excited to dive in, work hard and take on new technology, for there you’ll find the next group of developers who will always make you successful.

Again, I want to thank everyone, without you I’d still just be coding in a cubicle and not the success I am today! I’ll miss you all and I hope our paths will cross again in the future!

Best Regards,

Jim Lavin

A Test of Mobile Streaming Video Phone Applications

I just spent the last three days driving to Portland, OR from Dallas, TX and I tried to use QIK.COM’s streaming video client for my Samsung Blackjack II Windows Mobile 6 SmartPhone to record the trip and share with my friends and family. It turned out miserably! Most of the time when I thought I was sending video, I’d end up with a single second or two and nothing more, even though it showed I was recording the entire time. I don’t know if it was lack of signal, Internet congestion or just a bad configuration. While looking for tuning advice on the web I came across livecast.com, who also has a similar application, but includes GPS integration with Google maps.

 

So, I have 2000 miles to drive over the next week to get back to Dallas, TX and nothing much more to do but play around and I thought it would be a great test of the two applications to see how each one fares in the wide open spaces of the great American west. As I drive back I’ll be logging my trip using both applications and posting the results for everyone to see via my twitter account at http://twitter.com/jimlavin.

 

Now I don’t plan to pit the two applications head to head, but provide a fair and balanced perspective of how each works in several different environments. Since I’ll be traveling back via interstate, the bandwidth should be great and I hope to have 3G capabilities during most of the trip. Each night I’ll post an update of how the day went, hopefully you’ll know better than me, since you’ll be able to see it live at the following locations:

 

http://qik.com/lavinjj

http://www.livecast.com/live/Default.aspx?lavinjj

 

Until, then see you on the Bleeding Edge