Hollrback, now with beta sauce.

So it looks like Hollrback has launched in beta today.  Huh.  Well, cool :)

For some reason I seem to be the name associated to it, but this has been a long time coming, with many people involved.

I wrote the first prototype code in May of 2009 under the project name “Catch Up Later” and demoed it to some people.  I made a video that Kat Simmons helped me with to explain the concept.

In December of 2009 I met with Timothy Kephart about the new project, and he was really excited and wanted to be a part of it.  Since then he’s been my equal partner making sure he could do everything he could to build something bad ass.

In 2010 Leap Ventures became a partner of Hollrback.  It was exciting to get outside validation and have Dave Milligan, John Gustafson and Jeff Hanson take an active interest in its success.

So many other people have been involved and deserve credit.  Steve Gordon recommended the name.  Eric Downs designed the “two heads” logo.  Christine Pagan has been our #MysteriousDottie cheerleader.  Sarah Riley was there early on when we were writing the first code and deciding how things would be engineered.  James Short had a proof of concept Android client working with our API.  Jennifer Kephart has been there every step with suggestions and support.  Erin Standley designed the web site and color scheme.  Janos Venczak took Erin’s web design and created something that we could apply to an iPhone app.  Peter Popovics is behind the iOS client.  And Chris Larkin has joined us recently to help us put ideas into words.  Am I missing people?  Probably, sorry about that!

I knew from day one when I decided I was going to embark on this project that it was bigger than myself, and it wouldn’t be where it is now without all the people I mentioned, and more.

And where is it now?  Let’s call it private beta.  If you want to try Hollrback, and you’re an iPhone user, head over to the iTunes app store and grab it for free. This will allow you to make connections with other people and manage them through the Hollrback.com web site.  If you don’t have anyone to use it with, post something on Twitter.  I’m sure others would be willing to swap Hollrback Codes with you and pretend like you’ve met in person ;)

I’ll post again soon about some of the reasons Hollrback exists, and what problems I personally am aiming to solve.  But for now, it’s been a long day and I didn’t get much sleep last night :)

Thanks for all the support, everyone.  It’s so very much appreciated.

2010 Year in Review

I was planning on doing the @lasertron Radvent project more than I did, but after the first few I wasn’t able to resonate with it anymore.  They involved things that didn’t make sense to me.  Either making things, or interacting with people.  Christmas parties, neighbors, etc.  I didn’t have any of these and I felt pretty lame.  So instead I figured i’d write this blog post about 2010.

I wish I could say I have a lot of detailed things to talk about that happened in the past year, but I really don’t.  It’s been a year that has been focused on just a couple things, and It’s been a year of removing anything that diluted the focus.

I guess I lost a lot of friends this past year.  I couldn’t tell you exactly why.  Some I’ve purposely cut out as a way to get away from people and/or situations I find distracting or making me unhappy.  Others have quietly slipped away from my life, maybe citing the same reasons, who knows.  Though this year I found I need to step away from unhappiness due to the hands of others.  And I had a really awful Summer that involved some of that.  I even told my parents during a visit this year that they’re not allowed to come back.  I’ll stand by that.  I learned unhappiness due to guilt or association is stupid.

While I say I haven’t done anything exciting this year, it’s not entirely true.  I mean, I went to Seattle to visit the TechStars program for frack sake.  How cool is that?

I also was able to go to South By Southwest for the first time.  Something I’ve always wanted to do.  Just being in attendance and meeting people doing awesome things, and hearing people’s ideas, and watching things in action is really a jump to anything you might be doing.  I’m really looking forward to SxSW 2011, hopefully bringing my own passion and ideas in tow.

I thought maybe this past year would have included me working on more music, but again, my passion and focus was elsewhere, so unfortunately a lot of the tunes I hoped to some day finish is again being pushed into the next year.  Maybe 2011 will see the completion of my mysterious album.  Though I am releasing tracks as they get finished, so I suppose I’ll give myself a little credit there.  Plus I was able to finally put out the music video for “Got Skillz?” all these years later.  Something from 2006 finally online?  That’s pretty cool.

Also being that I left West Corporation at the very end of last year, 2010 was also thus far the entirety of my freelance/consulting work.

For the most part, I can’t complain. I’ve made some neat projects and really done my best. Though the output of the process has been a complete failure. As of this writing 55% of my invoiced total have not been paid. If you think that’s an impressively high number…YES it’s a high number. Some of it i’ve written off as “I’ll never get it, so I’m not going to fight it any longer”, and some of it I’m actively fighting. A lot of that number comes from clients “unable” to pay me due to their client not paying them in some shape or form. And this isn’t just a single client, there’s multiple. So I’m thinking it’s just part of the game. Sometimes you luck out and get paid, sometimes you don’t.  My advice if you’re going into consulting work, only do it if you love it, because you’ll be doing it for free most of the time.

So I don’t know.  Do I have other things to wrap up from the year?  Probably.  I’m just doing this off the cuff.

I hope you’re all having a great holiday season, and I hope to catch up with you all soon in the new year.

Radvent Dec 5 – #Radvent tunage

Create the soundtrack of your year.

Now THIS is more like it!  Though to be honest I feel like I talk about music to people so often I don’t know what to put here that’s worth reading.

It’s actually pretty easy for me to find what I’ve been listening to this past year because of Last.FM.  In fact here is my 12 month chart in detail. However, this year I haven’t really been “into” anything significantly like most years.  It’s certainly been a soundtrack of a year built of previous years and a couple new discoveries.  But unlike years where I can say “I was really into Daft Punk” or “I discovered the new pornographers this year” this year has been a pretty casual listening time.

Of course Nine Inch Nails has been a staple, but there’s nothing new there.  Though I really enjoy any live releases that happen to come out from shows, so there’s generally always been something new to listen to.

Ghostland Observatory came out with a new album this year, “Codename: Rondo” and I’ve given that a few e-rotations.  They ended up pretty high in my list with 119 plays.

Crystal Castles also came out with a new release this year, and I’ve played them a bit.  Well, only 85 times.

I went to see Lords of Acid this year, and around that time I was playing them quite a bit.

Blaqk Audio is an electronic dancey group that I never would have heard of if @andrea_joi didn’t suggest them to me.  They get a pretty constant play rate in my rotation.

If you organize my music by what tracks I listened to the most it gets even a little more broad.  Is that Semisonic’s 2001 hit “Chemistry” way up on the charts?  Yes it is.  And that, my friends, shows you that it’s been kind of a down year when it comes to tunes for me.  (Don’t get me wrong, I really like that song.)

For some reason “Shiny Toy Guns” was a staple this year as well.  But that’s some feel-good, fun time poppy dance tunes that I can’t go wrong with.  So who would blame me?

If you look at albums I’ve listened to the most, I think it’s a pretty good list.  We start with Blaqk Audio’s SexCells, as mentioned before.  A couple soundtracks, including Repo!  The Genetic Opera. And the awesome comedy album by The Lonely Island, Incredibad.

Also as far as albums we have that new album by Ghostland Obervatory I mentioned, The Dance Macbre Remix album by The Faint, Daft Punk’s Discovery, and Battles’ Mirrored.

I’ve heard Battles in previous years, but it was just this year I got their album “Mirrored”, and it’s really great stuff.  Highly recommended.

To close things out I’ll point you to songs that I’ve been recommending, as they are a great example of music I’ve loved at that point in time.  So seriously head over to http://gabekangas.com/musicrecommendations to hear some tunes.

I know this post wasn’t very deep or anything, but hey.  What do you expect?

Below I’ll embed a few sources of tunes probably mentioned above, and you can partake if you like.  Enjoy!

Create a MySpace Playlist at MixPod.com

Radvent Dec 3 – Sexy notes to yourself

Write a letter of love to yourself to read again in one year.
And then some stuff that has to do with getting away from the computer.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m going to ignore the parts of this project that deals with getting away from the computer and doing things.  That’s not really my jam.  Journal, stamps, special pens, beautiful paper, stickers, glue, etc… not things I own.  I write with the tool I’m using right now.  Little buttons and a little screen.  I’m not much for using a pen or paper.  It bugs me enough that I have to sign credit card receipts.  Can’t you scan my retina or something?  It’s 2010, at least pretend that we’re evolved beings.

Anyway.  I think I’ll do this one.  I’ll write a love letter to myself later today.  I’ll save it as a private post here on my blog, and in a year I’ll read it again.  Maybe even let you read it too.

A love letter to myself.  This is going to be hot.  Dirty boy.

Radvent Dec 2 – Organize

Spend 15minutes on a drawer, table or surface & make it pretty.

I don’t do pretty.  See you tomorrow.