To a software developer, there is nothing more gratifying than seeing your software being deployed and used in the real world. It's a cliché with awesome truth: real artists ship (mugs above!)! Over the last year and a bit, I have been involved in the Raincity SIFT Tool which is an SMS, MMS and RSS text, photo and video social media aggregator (check out the fabulous SIFT and mobile podcast recorded with the incomparable Dave Olson if you want to hear me pontificate about this in a vocal stylee!) developed for New Media BC's Mobile Muse 3 mobile cultural and artistic research platform. Over the last six months or so, SIFT has been deployed and used very very successfully in many many events by Vancouver's Fearless City and the Resort Municipality of Whistler. After the jump: highlights of those events, and more on the people and technology behind SIFT.

SIFT has been used in over half a dozen events primarily by Mobile Muse Showcase Partners, Fearless City and Whistler, here are some highlights:

• Car Free Vancouver 2008
• Mobile Swarm
• Parade of the Lost Souls 2008
• Whistler Film Festival
• Mobile FUSE 2008

SIFT, being a Raincity project, is built on Drupal. In particular the Drupal 5 SMS Framework which Tylor Sherman (RCS alumnus now back at school) contributed greatly to. As well other excellent Drupal modules from the community such as FeedAPI which forms the basis of Placeblogger and many other RCS projects and others' sites on the web.

What's next? Well the SMS Framework continues to thrive. I think there's a great future for old skool archaic but ubiquitous mobile and voice services to be integrated further into the web. Developers shouldn't have to learn arcana about crusty 'ole telco and mobileco protocols and services and should be able to access voice, SMS, MMS, and other mobile, voice and telco services through more modern interfaces like REST. Like the Mobile Muse 3 Platform, twilio, iotum and others are doing for example!

Finally, there's a myth of software being developed by the "lone wolf". In my experience that's simply not true. A lot of great stuff gets started by one person or a very small team but to bring it to production quality and fruition, a larger team is required. The RCS folks who contributed in alphabetical order complete with hockey analogies of their contributions are:

• Ronan Berder (GM of the Shanghai team who helped the Shanghai team execute in the third period)
• Richard Eriksson (Ran the zamboni to allow the other players to shine on the ice!)
• Audrey Foo (Last minute cleanup of the rink including feedapi and other housekeeping)
• Steve Krueger (Theming for first and second periods)
• Niall Morgan (Third period theming from an RCS up and coming rookie)
• Boris Mann (Coach and GM for the first first two and a half periods)
• Tylor Sherman (Youthful Star centre up from the minors for the first two periods)
• Roland Tanglao (Yours truly: assistant coach for the first two and a half periods, GM and coach for the last half period)
• Harry Wang (Star winger for the third "UI revamp" period)
• Makara Wang (China's 'great one', who polished off Drush, YouTube, SMS and MMS and other tech opponents in the third period with aplomb and gusto that would make Don Cherry proud!)