I'm going to bed now. Yes, it's only 11.34pm.

Cos I haz a job to show up to tomorrow

Wow, well done, Deezee...

You must tell us all about it tomorrow.!

Ah yes!

I'm the Head of Product (well, that's the title) at an early stage startup. We'll be tackling location-based discovery (of events, places, etc)

Location based discovery.  Is that the type of thing which will "discover" that I'm near a particular retail outlet or at some sort of event (like an exhibition perhaps) and then send me something to induce me to go in the store or visit a stand, or something else equally irritating?

Sort of, but not quite. More like if you are some where, and wanna know what's good around you.

I don't like the push services (as you might have gathered from my previous post) I find them to be too intrusive.  However I must say that I do use the "what's around here" services but find that you have to do too much searching.  For example you can be somewhere, find a particular type of restaurant, location and opening hours but you have to spend time calling them to find out if they have any tables free or what's special on the menu etc.  It would be nice for the service you are looking for to be able to respond in the context of why you are looking in the first place.  For example if I use the phone APP to find a local Thai restaurant, before I tell it to go and find, it would be nice to indicate I'm looking for a table for 4 at 8pm or thereabouts and for the restaurants to maintain some sort of interactivity so that if I don't have to waste time confirming with restaurants with no free tables.

hmmmm..... Thanks for that Mr Dent. We are trying to solve the search problem, but I do like that idea of the extra step. Something to keep in mind as the product evolves.

Have a look at making a screen app for a restaurant.  You could host their table booking service and give them a UI to manage table occupancy, menu's and stuff.  Once the basic architecture is sorted, the UI could be adapted for many different business scenario's and if you are hosting the data you could even sell it to other location services providers.

And using a smart view of the future, you could even look to running a data sharing exchange between other companies doing the same thing as you.  Doing something like that would put you in control of the "back-end" and give a second string to growth without being reliant on factors such as how whizzy your app is.

What I'm saying is that if you wait for the product to evolve without having a two or three year vision for the service, your development road-map is always going to be playing catch-up.  But you know all that crap anyway...

I think that the "killer app" will let me find and get what I want without having to open up a browser on the mobile or having enough confidence in the data given for me to be able to complete a transaction.  For example booking a restaurant table, without actually having to call the restaurant, wait for someone to come to the phone, then another wait for someone who understands the writing in the booking diary and finally to find someone who speaks English.

I'll stop now!

Oh one last thing I can now walk unaided, without a stick or pain-killers.

Many people have tried and are trying to solve the problem you're describing.

I think here the issue isn't one of technology, but tech adoption and knowledge.

Oh cool! Yay!

You need me there as a consultant for a few months...

Come on over! Surely you can travel on that foot now

Good on you Deezee, you can do it!

She can, but she needs my help at $5,500 per day

minimum...  I've no idea why we say that (minimum) because no-one is likely to say - "hey c'mon down for $6,000..."

especially as a minimum is quoted .  Blah blah blah blah...

Thanks andro!

And yeah Mr Dent, you sure blew it on the price quote!

hehehe

Probably phrased as "minimum" so you don't get offers that are below the figure you said.

Or to make it sound like there's some sort of bidding war for you.

I don't have a lot to say about this new thing you're doing, 'cause I don't think I have the kind of phone that can tell you anything about my location except maybe by triangulation from the phone masts (and I prefer it that way).

But congratulations 'n whatnot...

Thanks SK!

So is it what you expected it to be? are you enjoying it?

hmmm... yes and no. It's a startup within a corporate, so it's a bit of getting used to.

And the work is picking up. Today I'm feeling good. Yesterday I was full of self doubt.

It's a perpetual roller coaster