August 28, 2008 | Be the first to comment
At Skydeck we use ONC RPC to communicate between parts of our server infrastructure. ONC RPC is an old, simple, reliable remote procedure call protocol. It fits well with OCaml since it deals in values and functions, rather than objects and methods, and it has a good implementation in Ocamlnet. However, since all of our ONC RPC clients and servers are written in OCaml, it is a little annoying to have to write interfaces using the somewhat clumsy ONC RPC specification language. It’s nice to be able to stay in the OCaml type system from end to end.
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Posted by: Jake
Categories: Announcements, Programming, ocaml
July 29, 2008 | 2 Comments
On Friday TechCrunch invited me to speak at their Mobile Web Wars roundtable. You can view the webcast below, or read Dan Farber’s summary for CNet.
The most interesting thing that I learned was how many more people are willing to experiment with applications on the iPhone compared to any other phone on the market. Skeptics like to point out that of the 3 billion mobile phones on earth, fewer than 10 million are iPhones; they account for only 2% of the phones in America. But Loopt CEO Sam Altman said that the iPhone already accounts for 25% of his users, even though his app is available on every Verizon, Sprint, and Boost phone. And Pandora CEO Tom Jordan claimed that more people downloaded his app for the iPhone in the first few days that the device was on sale than have tried Pandora on any other AT&T phone - and Pandora is pre-loaded on every other AT&T phone.
Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market
July 28, 2008 | 1 Comment
Tell your friends - Skydeck is now in public beta. Anyone in the US can now sign up for Skydeck at http://skydeck.com/signup
Skydeck is no longer restricted to Firefox either. You can use any browser running on Windows XP or Vista, in particular Internet Explorer. (Mac users still have to run Firefox for now. We hear the cries of Safari users and will get to you as soon as we can.)
We announced our public beta at last week’s MobileBeat 2008 conference, where Skydeck also won its first award: Boldest Idea.
Thanks to VentureBeat for organizing a great event, and thanks to the judges for recognizing that what we’re doing is very bold indeed. We want to help everyone in the world keep track of their phone calls, their text messages, and all the people that they call and text. As one of the judges pointed out, while lots of companies say they can help you to lower your phone bill, Skydeck wants to make every call more valuable - by making sure that you never forget a call, you know who you need to call back today, and you know who you really ought to call when you have time (hint: Mom).
And thank you - Skydeck beat more than 50 other companies to qualify for MobileBeat, because you voted for us.
Posted by: Jason
Categories: Announcements, Featured
July 14, 2008 | Be the first to comment
Today we’re launching several new features that make Skydeck useful every single day: daily data, so you can check who called you yesterday and who you need to call back; an easy way to share contact information with people in your network; and the ability to search your network for people that you don’t know.
As always, we wanted you to be first to know. Thanks again for your great feedback and support during this private beta. We’ll be announcing our public beta very soon!
Daily Data
You’ve told us that you love being able to see and sort your calls and text messages in Skydeck, but you’ve also asked us where are the calls you made yesterday, or last week? It’s our most requested feature.
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Posted by: Jason
Categories: Announcements, Featured
July 1, 2008 | 1 Comment
The Skydeck API had only been out a few days when someone began a Ruby binding for it. We’re thrilled that there’s been so much interest already, and look forward to some great applications built against our API.
Of course, we like OCaml here, so we are pleased to announce the release of an OCaml binding to the API. You can find it on our developer downloads page.
As part of our API design we decided to use OAuth, so you can allow applications to access your data without giving away your Skydeck username and password. We are also pleased to announce the release of ooauth, an OCaml implementation of OAuth.
Ooauth implements both the consumer and service provider parts of OAuth (we use it in our server and in the API binding above), so you can use it to implement your own API or to consume the many APIs that use OAuth, such as the Google Data APIs. It is also available on the developer downloads page.
Posted by: Jake
Categories: Announcements, Programming, ocaml
June 19, 2008 | Be the first to comment
Skydeck is happy to say that we are a nominee for MobileBeat 2008: VentureBeat’s top mobile applications competition. Help us win!
If we get enough votes, we’ll be invited to speak at their upcoming conference on July 24, 2008.
VentureBeat is a top technology blog, and an appearance at their conference would give us a great opportunity to promote our service, bring more users to the site, and continue our mission of helping people get the most from their phone and phone bills.
Here’s what you need to do to vote for Skydeck:
1. Click here to register for a voting ID.
2. Once you’re signed up, click here to vote for Skydeck. Skydeck is listed under the “Infrastructure / Service Companies” section.
3. You get 5 votes, but you can only vote once every 24 hours. Please vote today and every day until June 24th, the cutoff.
Thanks for your support!
UPDATE: Skydeck has been selected to present at Mobilebeat! Thanks for your votes, we’re looking forward to the event.
Posted by: Dan
Categories: Announcements
June 14, 2008 | Be the first to comment
Every few years the Valley gets excited about the potential for location-based applications. This time I think the excitement is justified, because of the iPhone. VentureBeat invited me to write a column to explain why.
Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market
June 11, 2008 | Be the first to comment
If you’re curious about how we came up with the idea for Skydeck and what we’re planning to do next, the tech blog ReadWriteWeb published an interview with me today that answers those questions and should raise a few more.
Posted by: Jason
Categories: Announcements
June 10, 2008 | 4 Comments
I don’t write about the iPhone that often - Skydeck’s goal is to support every phone in the world - but it has had an extraordinary impact on the industry and I have a few predictions.
Lots of people have predictions though, so let me review my past performance before I ask you to take me seriously.
Jan 10, 2007 (the day following the launch):
“Forget about the specs, this is all about the user interface.”
Check.
“Don’t blame Apple for going with Cingular instead of Verizon. Blame Verizon… The iPhone and products like it will ultimately force Verizon open.”
Check.
“Fred Wilson thinks that the iPhone will have no impact on sales of the Blackberry and that the market was wrong to sell off RIM. I disagree.”
Check. The two companies are now competing directly. (more…)
Posted by: Jason
Categories: Mobile Market, Phones
June 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
Today we’re announcing three new features that we’re really excited about.
The Network Tab
For most people, the best thing about Skydeck is the way we re-organize your address book around the people that are most important to you (and the people you’ve been neglecting). You could have a thousand names in your address book, but Skydeck knows who belongs at the top of your list.
We call it your true social network: your most important personal and professional relationships. But it’s just the ‘first degree’. Who are their most important connections?
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Posted by: Jason
Categories: Announcements, Programming, Featured
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