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.

It was great to sit down with DaveO on the podcast and talk over a wide arc of experiences I've had in the past 4+ years. In case it wasn't clear from the audio (I do have some extended liner notes on my personal site), I'm finishing up my time at Raincity Studios.

After the sale of Bryght back in November / December and 6 months of transition work, I've moved on to work on my new startup, Bootup Labs, full time.

That's not to say that I'm leaving Raincity Studios behind completely. I'm still an advisor to the company, focusing especially on products and services related to hosting and the Bryght Light service. We've got some new services that I'm really excited about seeing launch, from server hosting in Canada to Aegir mass hosting for all VPS customers to some interesting computing integration.