Ten years ago this autumn, I got my first personal cell phone.  Today, I got my sixth.

Ah, the halcyon days of the late 1990s.  It’s somewhat fitting that my first phone was a Motorola MR30, a big candybar contraption with a monochrome screen and no camera.  It made calls, but it didn’t do much else.  I had service through Aeriel, a long-gone company riding the wave of the digital PCS revolution.

Those were the days when cell phones were still novelties.  I was one of only a handful of people in my high school circle of friends to have a cell phone.  I was also one of the only people in the entire school to have a Palm Pilot (the good ol’ Professional model).

As it happened, my mom decided to get a cell phone a few months after me.  She was supposed to get one of the ubiquitious Nokia 5190 phones, but for unclear reasons, the store gave her a far-superior Nokia 6190 instead.  That phone was much better than my own — it had Snake on it!  An agreeable mother and a SIM card swap later, it was mine!  Loved it.

Jump ahead two years to the summer of 2001.  Aeriel had been purchased by Voicestream, which itself was to be acquired by T-Mobile.  The GSM service was spotty down at Rose-Hulman, so I needed a switch.  Enter Verizon and the Motorola StarTAC.

I couldn’t believe how small that phone was.  Moreover, I was amazed by what it could do: I could surf the web (sort of) with the WAP browser.  Amazing!  That was particularly useful a few months later when I, like the rest of the country, was desperately hungry for news in the wake of the September 11th attacks.  I distinctly remember walking around the Rose-Hulman campus under an unusually clear blue sky, hunting through the mobile Yahoo News site for the latest updates.

That StarTAC served me well.  Sure, the antenna broke a few times, but it was solid overall.  Not even a trip through the washing machine could do it in.

Still, three years of service was about enough, and it was time for an upgrade, so in the spring of 2004 I switched to an LG clamshell phone.  I don’t recall what model it was, but I do know that my little brother Wojo had the same model of phone, which I pranked at some point.

About that time, phones with color screens began coming on the market, so when my LG phone broke — at the worst possible time, when I was trying to make calls on the side of the road to deal with an automotive problem — I decided to get my first color phone.  It was a Kyocera KX2, and it was the fall of 2005.

Coincidentally, my little brother Tyler happened to have the same phone.  Maybe it was the appeal of the rotating-face design.  Maybe it was the superior audio quality.  I’m not sure.  What I do know is that phone served me well.  Sure, the camera was garbage, and the web “browser” was slow, limited, and prone to crashing, but the phone did its job.  I liked it enough that I replaced the battery — twice — without replacing the phone.

Four long years later, it’s the present, and today I returned to my roots: Motorola.  Specifically, the Droid.

What an upgrade.  I love it.  I had been resisting the siren song of the iPhone; though I loved the phone, I had no desire to swtich to AT&T.  With the Droid, it’s the best of both worlds: a great handset and a wonderful network.

There are lots of comprehensive Droid reviews out there, so I’ll make my take short: It’s great.

I wonder how it will be upstaged by phone #7?

When releasing something new to the world, like a product or a work of art, there just a few types of reactions from the masses:

1. Love it!  Solves my problems wonderfully.  I will give you whatever amount of money you desire in exchange for it.
2. Hate it! Doesn’t solve my problems.  It looks like crap and works like crap.  It is crap.   It doesn’t even do X, Y, and Z!!  The creator is obviously a clueless, talentless moron.
3. Don’t understand it.  What’s the big deal?  I don’t really get what it’s trying to do.

The group with the positive reaction is in the right market, but since they are being satisfied, they won’t be able to offer much useful advice for improvement.  The good news is that they can spread the word about the virtues of the product.

The group with the indifferent reaction is in the wrong market, as they do not suffer from the problem the product is attempting to solve.  Going to them for advice, unless you’re trying to enter new markets, is going to be a long, hard slog with low returns.

The group with the negative reactions is the most valuable for product improvement.  The group that hates the product has the problem but doesn’t like the solution provided by the product.  They can provide all sorts of reasons why the product sucks, and although one must filter such advice, it can be valuable to receive such brutal honesty.  Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get this sort of feedback.  Friends are notoriously poor sources; they don’t want to risk damaging the relationship, so they stay quiet instead of subjecting themselves to the discomfort of friend-to-friend honesty.  External, impersonal reactions are essential.

My hope is that Blurity!, in its mission of removing blur from photos, finds many people of the first and second persuasions.  The first, to evangelize.  The second, to improve.

According to the “release early” philosophy, the first version of software should be so bad that it’s embarrassing.  I think that this first pre-alpha prototype, version 0.0.1, of Blurity! fits the bill.  It isn’t that great, and I know it.  (That doesn’t mean I’m not proud of it.)

So why release early?  Doesn’t doing so risk damaging the reputation of the brand?  Maybe, but I feedback, and keeping the product close isn’t going to get me it.  With the early release, I can see how real users are actually interacting with the product.  I can show the prototype to different users and validate my assumptions about the market.  Update my assumptions, too.

Having the product out there, live, means that I’m forced to keep on top of updates and bug fixes.  No slacking off.

Finally, there is the tempting possibility of revenue, if only a few dollars.

My startup is going live!  Full details on my company blog.

Last night, I went to the Soap Factory‘s Haunted Basement with some friends.  I tend not to find haunted houses scary, and the Haunted Basement was no different.  The production values were good.  The actors were making a strong effort.  I once again failed to be scared.

The good news is that I didn’t start laughing uncontrollably.  I sometimes find haunted houses to be hilariously funny.

What would it take to make a truly scary haunted house?  Here are some thoughts:

• Beer goggles, like the ones used to simulate various levels of intoxication.  Would lessen situational awareness and severely restrict vision, leading to increased spookiness and impact of surprises.
• Actual ghosts.  Could be difficult to procure.
• Lots of chainsaws, lots of dental drills, lots of needles.  All of them make me squirm.
• Set in a naturally scary location, like an old mental hospital or a spooky forest.  The scarier the environment, the less needs to be added.
• Plainclothes actors (i.e., dressed like normal customers), who would be grabbed by costumed actors and subjected to various simulated gory deeds in front of the true customers.   Would provide a sense of actual danger, assuming that the plainclothes actors were convincing and the simulated deeds were sufficiently unexpected.

I wonder if there are any walk-through haunted houses presently in operation that are actually, you know, scary.

One month ago, I declared my intentions to work on my startup full time.  The response was surprisingly positive, and I felt like I was making the right move.  I still do.

To be honest, I’ve been working on my product for far longer than a month.  The idea is about a year old, the current round of work started in late June, and significant coding started to get done in early August.  The change since mid September has been mostly cosmetic: I no longer split my attention between a traditional job hunt and entrepreneurial efforts.

So how’s it going?  Well… the product is not functional yet.  The web site is in place, the payment system has been integrated, and the IT issues have been addressed, but the heart and soul of the isn’t quite there.  That’s somewhat discouraging, as I would like to be able to push the prototype out and begin getting feedback (as well as some revenue).  The delay is encouraging, too, as it reflects the very significant technical challenges associated with a product of this type.  Barriers to entry are good things.

What's around the bend?

Based on the current state of the project, I anticipate that an early prototype will be stable and useful enough for limited public interaction by the end of October.  Don’t expect a polished product.  Don’t expect a beautiful interface.  Do expect something that shows promise.  Do expect something that has nothing at all to do with any of the current “flavors of the month.” Do expect something that solves an actual problem.

It’s getting closer.  I’m excited!