Experiences at Openwave

Started with continuing my visual basic automation work I'd started at Avogadro (which was acquired by Openwave.) Progressed to C++ automation/unit tests, eventually to software development work in C++ on a device platform.

#1 - Working with an incredibly talented group of people rarely found. #2 - Developing an industry as part of Phone.com/Openwave
#3 - echo #1 & #2

The good news is that I telecommuted two days a week. The bad news is that three days a week, I rode a streetcar, train, and bus to/from work. I don't recommend it.

I worked with Sam McKelvie on a project called Waplets, which was essentially AJAX for mobile browsers.

Waplets was an application model that provided async, offline, and push support for mobile browser apps, which retaining the simplicity of the web application model. For instance, we were able to duplicate the Java ESPN gamecast application in a fairly simple and easy to understand app.

State and view were decoupled and rendered on the client using JSP style templates plus scripting. Application manifests allowed all of the resources required by an application to be reliably downloaded and cached. Scripts could register themselves to handle push events on the client with application specific logic and presentation....

One of the projects I worked on was ICQ integration for the wireless IM project. Since the ICQ spec is of course not published, I spent a lot of time wallowing in packet sniffing dumps and poking around other peoples' reverse engineering efforts. It only took a few days to memorize what my ICQ UIN looked like......

I spent more time than I care to remember on the app development team for V7. I also helped write a good amount of its skinning infrastructure.

One of the really cool things about Openwave was how broad the global reach of the company was, considering its relatively small size. At any given time, I could IM with other employees in Hong Kong, Japan, France, UK, South Korea, a half-dozen locations within the US, Brazil, Venezuela ... we had people everywhere. And I got to travel to a lot of these places too. ...

Foosball
The infamous pyramid

Being able to work with cool new Japanese and European phones that wouldn't make it the US for a year or three, if ever. Using these phones as my default cell phone always made for fun show-and-tell situations at social gatherings.

1. Heather at Pegasus Coffee
2. The view
3. Don Listwin's all-hands meetings