Mapping it All Out

Filed under: development, sphere

I really love traveling, and in fact, I’m in the process of getting ready for a trip in a few days. Aside from packing, I do something for every place I plan to go: Google maps. Sure, I’ll be flying, but I still like to know how far away it is, what destinations are on the road getting there, and on some level, it’s humbling to zoom out and feel really small. Perhaps we can blame it on the satellite imagery. When I was little, I did the same with a road atlas and a highlighter. Now, over the years of wear and tear on that atlas it’s barely legible, but to some extent I can look back at where I’ve been.

When it comes to designing software, it’s good to be able to look back and see where we started from, and look ahead to where we are going. So in this facet, the planning and development stage of software design can be compared to a road trip. Sure, there are road blocks, there are detours, and sometimes, there are faster routes to take. At times, the destination seems so far away, almost unreachable. But, reaching landmarks makes everything worthwhile, and when you pass a few on the road or in development, the end goal becomes that much closer!

SupraSphere is the brainchild of David Thomson, and he started dreaming up a fully unified messaging and communication environment in ‘98 or ‘99. In a figurative sense, let’s put that as our starting off point. Where has the project been since then? Where are we now? And, are we there yet? :)

Programming started in 2001, right after David started collaborating with two friends of his, who both were pursuing a PHD in cryptography; Adam Klivans at MIT and Rocco Servedio other at Harvard. The first usable development version was released in 2002.

December of ‘03 was a monumental landmark, as the first installation took place into a private hedge fund. It is used as trading floor workflow and is a sort of posting board for news items. So anytime a portfolio manager wants to send in a trade into the trading floor, they use SS software to manage it. However, it should be noted that this implementation of SS is quite different than the client that is in development now.

Although it seems an eternity, two years development time could seem like driving through Iowa. SupraSphere continued to progress and evolve. However, another landmark was reached in June of 2006, when Andy Singleton and David started working together and brought the project to Assembla, of which Andy is the president. Development then became that much easier to organize and orchestrate with Assembla’s turn-key project management and development hosting.

That very same month I met a very good friend of David’s who became a mentor to me. in October of 2006, I met David for the first time on a hike up Foss Mountain in New Hampshire, and somehow we ended up talking about software and other computer related ventures. We became fast friends and soon thereafter he showed me a *very* bare bones SupraSphere running on his laptop. I was fascinated by it, and asked him if I could be a part of it somehow.

In April or May of 2007, in my inbox I received an invitation to the desktop client. I installed it, and David and I have been working on SS and Suprablog ever since.

Now, where are we headed after all those milestones and monumental landmarks? I think we are almost there, almost at our desired destination. Won’t you come along for the ride?

Automated “Government” Transactions

Filed under: economy

Most people have some type of experience with automated payments. About ten years or so ago, I remember people starting to talk about direct-deposit of paychecks, and I bet a lot of people get this by now. Many banking and financial services institutions also offer automated bill payment. You can set up your bank account or credit account to pay bills automatically. There are a bunch of “banking 2.0″ companies trying to streamline the process: Making the web into a banking platform.

Another interesting thing happened to me the other day, where I went to send a FedEx package and payed with credit card, and they didn’t ask me to sign. Just like many places (e.g. Starbucks) won’t require you to sign if your purchase is below a certain amount, FedEx also allows you to forgo signing, but for any amount.

What would prevent everything from being automated? Assuming one had enough income coming in, one could setup all services to be paid automatically, and whatever mechanism is used to pay, can be paid by another mechanism. You could walk in to a store, pick something up, and walk out.

The key to this happening is proper notification and threshold management. Credit cards do a pretty good job of notifying people in the case of fraud, but that is only a small part of what is necessary. Strict rules need to be applied as far as setting up automated payments, discontinuing after a certain period of inactivity, and more.

Instead, what we have now is a mishmash of different institutions, each with its own login and policy regarding notification. Why can’t I have a bunch of popups that says “Pay bill?”, and click yes ten times, and be done with it? Then, I can set rules, such as after a certain number of notifications (perhaps after first signing up for a service), it becomes automated, and then just presents the most important ones.

What is strange about this, is that whatever that system is, starts to look like a government entity. However, it’s not particularly clear what form of government (socialism, capitalism, etc.). Someone could lead life subscribing to a bunch of services by different groups and organizations, a “bundle” of public works coordinated by geolocation, and enterprises. Everything beyond basic services would be investment, and it’s just a matter of what kind of investment in what type of enterprise bearing what attributes.