2008 In Review

December 31, 2008

It’s the last day of 2008, and I have been thinking about what I have done this year.

• Chesspark added many new features, fixed many bugs, and tried several huge experiments. We explored the freemium model as opposed to straight subscriptions, we launched WuChess as a branded site in cooperation with RZA, and we’ve spun it off under new management as we pursue a new project.

• Stanziq was born from a combination of our vision of the new real time Web and many ideas we had at Chesspark. The world needs a real time search engine.

• My team and I created and then released the code for Speeqe, a Web 2.0 style group chat application based on XMPP. It’s time for IRC to die.

• I learned some new languages. I have spent quite a bit of time with Erlang this year, and I’m looking forward to solving more problems with it in 2009. I’ve also hacked some Ruby for the first time. I’ve been picking up a bit of Emacs Lisp and learning about Haskell.

• I experimented with both Bazaar and Git heavily to replace my use of Subversion. I ended up picking Git and have been extremely happy.

• I renewed my commitment to XMPP by joining both the XSF board of directors and council.

• I finally achieved a long time goal of blogging more, which I hope to continue.

• Most important (to me at least), I gained a new family member - my son, Jasper. He puts a smile on my face every day, and something about constraints he imposes has increased my productivity.

I’m sure there is stuff I have forgotten. I find it remarkable difficult to remember how much time has passed since various events. The last four years with Chesspark seem like they all happened in the last year.