Dipity.com Dipity Blog

This morning Google is set to announce the Open Social API to compete with Facebook’s platform.

Marc Andreessen thinks most social web applications will be published in multiple versions for the various platforms:

Are people really going to maintain multiple sets of front-end pages for their web sites for Facebook, Open Social, etc.?

I think so, yes. I think any web site going forward that wants maximum distribution across the largest number of users will have a single back-end, and then multiple sets of front-end pages:

• One set of standard HTML and Javascript pages for consumption by normal web browser.
• Another set of HTML and Javascript pages that use the Open Social API’s Javascript calls for consumption with Open Social containers/social networks.
• A third set of pages in FBML (Facebook Markup Language) that use Facebook’s proprietary APIs for consumption within Facebook as a Facebook app.
• Perhaps a fourth set of pages adapted for the Apple iPhone and/or other mobile devices.

Interesting.

When it’s just 2 or maybe 3 of you working together on something, day in, day out, it’s easy to be on the same page, have a shared vision and make sure that things are moving. There’s transparency because there is no other option. Double the company from 3 to 6 people, put the team in 2 different places (SF and Austin) and you have to be ‘crisper’ about how you manage what everyone’s doing and plan to talk more then you would normally talk about something.

This past week we put in place what I would call ‘SCRUM-Lite’ or SCRUM– There are a couple of fundamental changes that we’ve implemented such as a daily update meeting (10 min.), a weekly product planning meeting (1-2hrs.) and a bi-weekly all day, all hands product strategy meeting. Additionally we’ve moved to weekly product releases. The goal is to push out new features week to week as well as decide what we’re doing next on a more ‘runtime’ basis so we can course correct as we get more and more feedback from users.

So far it’s working well, few kinks here and there, people are getting used to using the Trac ticket system and supporting it with the wiki when needed. It’s not a ton of structure but it seems to be just enough to keep the wheels moving and more importantly keep the team motivated and put some more momentum behind the product.

Here’s an interesting illustration of a batter’s swing over time, making an intriguing 3D timeline of sorts. Not a bad video either..

From the moframes website:

‘the single frames of a pre-keyed film sequence are arranged one behind the other in a three-dimensional space. In this way a complex movement is being captured in its whole length and turned into graphic information.’

(Via moframes and Designboom)

We changed the name from T1ME to Dipity (from Serendipity). The name T1ME turned out to be a little confusing … booo! Oh well… like time, we move on.

We love the name!