1 November 2006
I am a Skyhooker
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Personal .
It has been a while since I have had the time to tend to my blog, mostly due to some changes on a personal level and probably due to some level of internet fatigue. I felt I finally needed to carve some time out and post an update. So, as some of you already know, I am really excited to announce that I have recently joined Skyhook Wireless where I will be leading all of the Product Management efforts. It was a big decision to take the job with them and essentially shelf what I have been doing with BlueTrim, but it was one that I made with a lot of forethought and a lot of sleepless nights.
I met the guys from Skyhook while we were planning BarCampBoston and had the pleasure to consult with them this summer. After getting a chance to get a look under the hood I was utterly impressed with not only the technology and the opportunity, but more importantly the team. From top to bottom the team was great to work with and they were doing and saying all of the right things. There are a lot of companies out there with great technology or a great market, but without the right team in place they are doomed to head to the dead pool.
There was also a great opportunity for me to work on some interesting parts of the web and for me to personally make a big impact – to quell my own entrepreneurial roots this was an important factor. They had a great platform and underlying technology with some great market opportunities and wanted to bring me on board to help evangelize the technology and innovate ontop of the platform to deliver some interesting new services and apps.
I am personally really excited about the opportunities to push segments of the market that haven’t been tapped before like location-aware browsing and the idea of leveraging a user’s current location as context for their browsing experience. In the coming months you will see us delivering new features that will make this more ubiquitious and hopefully you will see it change the way you browse and interact with the people and things around you.
Be sure to check out Loki (a toolbar we have developed using the Skyhook Wi-Fi Positioning System) and please contact me with any feedback you have about your experience. We have some really cool ideas about how to take this location information and deliver it in unique and useful ways — so be sure to stay tuned. Also, we have an SDK available for Windows developers, through the Skyhook Developers Network, to integrate into their apps to test out WPS as a viable technology. If you’re a Windows developer and interested in location, be sure to go sign up and download it.
