Of Two Minds
I am of two minds about what to do right now, I can "pre announce" what I'm working on and then have the ability to blog about it thus getting crucial feedback I need while developing this beast. Or I can wait and "surprise" everyone with a developed system and reap the rewards of mucho linkage and buzz.
Everyone hates pre-announcements. We all get excited about ideas and are disappointed when we can't play. Then later when the thing is finally introduced, we've all seen/heard about the idea before so it's not nearly as interesting. Look at BlogShares for example. Seyed's still working on it, but he dropped a 98% complete system on the world and got that well-earned buzz for his efforts.
However, I'm here in my apartment alone technologically. My wife has wonderfully allowed me this week of vacation to work on this (and I'm going to dedicate May to more family activities) but is not someone I can ask about XML issues. I much prefer working among other developers so when I get stuck either technically (how the hell does this API work?) or philosophically (will a user prefer x or y?) I can then bounce ideas off of someone. That's why I'm itching to tell everyone what I'm doing, so I can get some mental help. I can do the coding, I just need moral and sometimes technical support. That's the other problem with preannouncing, you always get the naysayer or devil's advocate in the bunch, which can be good, but not now.
Additionally, a week in actual productive time isn't a hell of a lot. It disappears faster than you think it will. (Is it Saturday already? What happened to Friday!?!?). So pre-announcing my grand plans, then producing 4% of it isn't going to go over very well either. Probably better to stay quiet for a bit... The stuff I'm working on is super-cool, I promise.
Okay, enough non-sensical rambling. I do have an idea. If you're an expert about Java, J2ME, XML, WAP/XHTML, Jabber, Cocoon, SSL, or any other mobile technologies and are willing to help me out, add me to your Instant Messaging. I'll send you a link to my outline where you can check out what I'm doing and get a sense of what I need. (If you're NOT a techie or don't know what I'm talking about, you're more than welcome to add me to your IM as well, but don't BUG me right now.)
Yahoo: russell_beattie, AIM: russell010, MSN: russ@russellbeattie.com . I'm using Trillian.cc's IM client which only allows group-chat under MSN, so better that system than anything else.
Once I get a decent percentage completed or at least prototyped out, I'll start talking about what I'm doing so these posts make actual sense.
Thanks,
-Russ
Update: Okay, "super-cool" might be a stretch for some. It's super cool to me though... ;-) (See what happens when I build up expectations too much?)