If you read this site, you will know the experimentation we do with Groovy and when we first had Piles. Well without the improvements of the second attempt (when we used more accurate data) we have done the same solution as a mobile (phone) application called Tradie, which runs on Symbian S60 smartphones (and IPhones – we just don’t have one :-( )
Why mobile? Well there is no point in getting your shiny notebook all dirty, whilst outside, when your phone can do all the work! It’s a lot lighter too. We called it Tradie because it’s the kind of thing an Aussie tradesman might want to know the answer too, but just doesn’t have the Mathematica skills to address ;-). We even added a metric option (the default) but wanted to show the same calculation as the first post (most of our readers are probably in the Imperial U.S anyway).
Actually (little history here) we had developed a video surveillance mobile prototype as a front end to the Gizzy product. As we recently reported, Gizzy is no more and so our fancy mobile application, which negotiated the Gizzy protocols to acquire video server images, is thus also no more.
Nonetheless, though markets are sour and companies are going under, there is an optimists view of this (I think)! As we had previously posted on the value of by-products, our skills are also a by-product of our work (those of us in ICT anyway). Though revisiting mobile development after over 7 or 8 months was a little stressful, the core knowledge and skills acquired got us going in record time.
I am tempted to take an aside and comment on how hirers acquire staff based on what skills they can evidence (via testing) on any particular day! Such a short sighted view of what constitutes skill and staff value! Not so much looking for a useful skills base but a monkey to jump though hoops methinks. No, I wont make comment ;-)
These are lean times in the ICT world and I will note that an exceptionally talented (and skilled) ex-colleague was unsuccessful with landing a contract. Oh boy does that company not know what opportunity they missed! Didn’t think a more mature candidate could keep up with the technology I am told. Hmmmm.
We’ll keep you posted on more experiments, prototypes and products as we go along.
