Bytes Bite

Much has happened this week. I started at Expedia,  John Mckerrell finished up his stint with Multimap, Google announced some financial results and promptly dropped about $50.00 of their share price (seems like even the big G is not going to be spread this economic downturn), Expedia announced their purchase  Veenere.com (a hotels distributor in Europe) and I finally got an iPhone.

Week one at Expedia has been about on par with what week one at Multimap was. Kinda boring, kinda interesting, kinda scary, kinda fun but like it was at the end of week one at Multimap the opportunity for learning is immense.

iPhone usage is going strong and growing each day. I am yet to put money down for any application from the App Store and am not sure how long that will last. I am very keen to get some games. Super Monkey Ball will be the first one I suspect. . My only grudge with the device is its lack of speed. Starting and shutting down applications can take a while and at times feels no different to my Nokia N73. Applications do crash a lot and for such a high end device its not acceptable. One can only hope (and I am quite certain) that fixes are on their way from Apple. Perils of buying so quickly after launch. Still the best thing evaar.

I will be moving on from Multimap to Expedia. I am finishing up at Multimap next week and starting up at Expedia the week after. Its an interesting time for me to making the change given the promise of some exciting work thats around the corner for the team here at Multimap. I am sad to leave a very talented and interesting bunch of guys behind. I am sure our paths will cross again in the future, I only hope its not too far away.

Looking forward to starting at Expedia as it will provide the opportunity to return to doing Java Development on the server side as well a whole host of design and architecture work which I have been craving for. The project I will be working on is potentially game changing for Expedia, but more on that in a few weeks time.

In between the two jobs I am headed out to Limerick, Ireland for the SOTM conference organised by OSM group. If you are coming along please do drop by and say hello.

Multimap (and Microsoft) are partners of the BBC Hack Weekend called ‘Mashed 08‘. For information about how to get tickets head on over to Multimap Blog.

Hope to see you all there.