Hi all. I know I haven't written much in the last few weeks and not because I didn't have enough to write already. I have been delaying a blog post because there are some things I should announce. Number one, Viamentis is slowly but surely converting into a product company. I guess you must have seen this coming, but I will have more interesting announcements pretty soon.
And probably disappointing news for the Lispers out there is I had to port the Lisp webapp I am working on into Ruby on Rails. It breaks my heart to announce this, because I really wanted this app to go production written in Lisp - it almost did. But there were some bugs, and in the process of fixing them, I was running into more, and not because of lack of tests. Lisp simply needs a kick-ass web framework to really shine in that space. It's a great language, but I was re-inventing too many wheels in the process of making it web-friendly. As a single-person, self-funded company, that is something I cannot afford.
So, as we speak, the app is already ported to RoR, tests written, bugs fixed, and is happily running on production - it is not time to announce it yet, but I think it will be ready in a few weeks for a larger set of audience. Currently I am working on the feedback given by a few of my friends.
In the meantime, we have seen iPhone come and take up the world by storm. Ok, at least the geek world, maybe. No, I don't want to write one more fanboy post about it, no doubt, it is a great phone, and more than just a great phone, as Apple fans want everybody to believe (ok, that includes me :D). I never miss a chance to write about Apple - it is an inspiring company, in many, many ways.
So, this post by GigaOm kinda surprised me. I respect him tremendously. I think he has a very fun job - probably more fun than Mike Arrington - TechCrunch is nice too, but I like GigaOm better - it's flavor and style is more to my sensibilities. But I digress. In the above said article, he posits that high-end iPod sales maybe falling due to the iPhone mania.
Let's see. Head over to apple.com, and you will see iPhone adorning the frontpage. Go to iPod+iTunes menu. It says iTunes is "activating" millions of iPhones. Not iPods. In the section that belongs to iPods. Head over to Apple Store, and you find that the 80GB iPod costs $349. And the iPhone starts at $499. Hmm. For $150 more, you get what is probably the most hyped technology gadget ever, which includes a video iPod, a phone, with a kick-ass browser thrown in. It is almost a mini-mac. So that would lead you to conclude "duh! of course it cannibalizes the high-end iPods". And of course, Apple knows about it too. It's obvious. Apple has stated it before. iPhone is the best iPod your money could buy. Period.