2008 looks like being a busy year for Future Platforms; so, once again, we're looking for development talent to join our engineering team. We're after solid Java skills (with J2ME a very welcome bonus), an ability to communicate effectively and an enthusiasm for all things mobile; in the immediate future we'd consider contract or permanent applications.

You'll be working on mobile-related software projects for a broad range of startups (Trutap, LocoMatrix, and a couple of others I can't name right now), established content owners (like the BBC, EMI, Puzzler Media, or Heinemann publishing), and a host of marcomms agencies. We're a small business (there's 15 of us last time I counted), but have been running for nearly 8 years now and have a good reputation in the world of mobile. You'd be working closely with our absolutely cracking design team, in a friendly environment with some smart people (and me).

On top of our service work, we also have some internal products which we actively develop, and we actively budget time for our staff for personal development and R&D. And as we're a small company, you'll get a chance to contribute to all aspects of the business: strategy, development tactics,
business development and so on. If you're reading this site I've already bored you with endless posts about how we approach the problems of developing software :)

If you're interested, send a CV to recruitment@futureplatforms.com. We shan't be using recruitment agencies to fill this vacancy, and will actively avoid using any agencies who I even suspect have contacted us after reading this post.

Another new face at Future Platforms: Rebecca Cottrell is joining our design team, headed up by Bryan Rieger. I could write some pith about how our paths crossed, but she's beaten me to it and blogged it more eloquently than I would've.

I didn't make it to the last Mobile Monday London, but two things really struck me about the presentation from David Wood of Symbian:

1. The fragmentation slide: "it's always quicker to release a device-specific solution than put that functionality into the (re-usable) platform and then to a device", "suppliers dislike helping their competitors", "suppliers don't like source code changes made by their competitors". Anyone know of a Googly response to this, I'm sure this slide was aimed at them?
2. The Lean/Agile emphasis at the end of the slide, explicitly calling out Toyota as an example to be learned from. I'm quite surprised, even for a relatively developer-focused event like Mobile Monday, to see a large business like Symbian make this approach part of its offer.

...so I'm listening to the excellent Long Now Foundation podcasts whenever I travel from A to B without something specific to think about or do (i.e. walking to work, to class, etc.) - and they're absolutely excellent, thoroughly recommended.

This evening, Brian Eno talking about how the Long Now Foundation were approached and asked to think about storage of nuclear waste. He relates the tale of the Yucca mountain storage facility, designed to last for 10,000 years - and how they reckoned this was the wrong approach. 10,000 years is far too long a timescale to think sensibly about doing something so risky and it would be better to work out how to store waste reliably for 100 years - with the aim of coming back then to rethink the problem with new technology.

And my brain's thinking "hmm... don't plan the whole thing out in advance, but do a chunk, then come back to it and replan... what does that remind me of".

Either I'm an incurable saddo, or there's a theme here. (erm, or both).

Whatever, hopefully I'll be the top result on google for "Agile Nuclear Waste Storage".

Not that I've actually tried it yet, but JoikuSpot looks gorgeous - head-slappingly obvious in retrospect (and only in retrospect) like many fantastic ideas and I suspect, genuinely disruptive. Leaving aside the irony that this positions 3G as the bearer of the "wi-fi-everywhere dream" peddled for nearly a decade now... I wonder what this'll lead to, particularly once JoikuSpot or a competing product offers not just HTTP but full internet access, and flat-rate data is more prevalent? What would the mobile equivalent of FON be like? How would it differ to accommodate speed, pricing and availability fluctuations?

Imagine an MVNO which piggybacked not just onto one large operator with whom it has a Big Commercial Agreement in place, but all of them, quietly and unobtrusively...