In 2016, Facebook announced they would shut down the BaaS company Parse, which they acquired less than 3 years earlier for $85 million. At the time that just did not make sense. In light of Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress, that decision seems obvious. It was the death blow to our app right at the time of finalizing development. Mark stated that they do not share user data with app developers. This was absolutely not the case in the days of Parse, when they had an API to do just that. To be clear, not aggregate data, but rather specific…
My grandfather, Paul Bunnell, passed away last in February of last year. A few of his effects were passed on to me including this old pocket watch. The watch does not seem to work, but I have been told it is fixable. You can see details about this and other pocket watches on this site. It seems to have a cool history and I wish he told me how it came into his possession. The watch was model 1857 and estimated to be produced in 1859 or 1860. So about 160 years old. The total production of this particular watch…
Today wrapped up Dallas Startup Week. I went to the Game Day, which was the final session of the Video Game track. There were several really cool games and gaming technology being demoed and I was surprised how many video and board games are being developed in Dallas. There was one in particular that caught my attention: Scrapped. Scrapped is a game that was developed as part of a project in the SMU Guildhall program. So instead of reading my description of the game, you should download and play the game for free. You can complete the game in one…
It used to be, if you wanted to have something delivered, it was food in the form of pizza. All of the sudden, there are a slew of delivery services popping up that deliver everything from food to alcohol to, well, anything. There are eight services I have tried and I thought I would share my experiences. Favor Favor is the “easiest way to get anything in your city delivered” delivery service. The cool thing about Favor is they will deliver just about anything. The last time I asked, they did not deliver alcohol, but you can get food, groceries…
I had a high school friend that is a teacher that drove for Uber. He told me how much he was making and I decided to drive. I had a bunch of unused miles on my cars lease, so it worked out good for me. Since then, when getting rides from drivers, I have given them some Uber tips. Tips Uber drivers gave me that helped me out a lot. In the middle, I have some Uber rider tips. At the end, I have some stories of crazy rides or things drivers have told me. If you are interested in Uber…
You know what creates jobs? New businesses. I have heard people argue that it doesn’t and that is crazy. I am trying to start a business and it will create 13 new jobs in Texas. And don’t you think the jobs they leave will probably need to replace them? All this creates a greater demand on the workforce, lowers unemployment, the increase in demand on the workforce raises the average income per capita. And the people with new, higher paying jobs? They spend money and all this creates an economic ecosystem. My guess is anyone saying otherwise is vested in…
January 10th was my last day at Sabre after over 9 years. Almost a quarter of my life. I was actually grateful to be laid off because it came with a severance. I say grateful because I had been meeting with Charles Adetiloye to partner and develop Jables with. The layoff just maybe moved things along faster. We applied to Tech Wildcatters and didn’t get in. Soon after they were named one of the top 15 best accelerators in the US by TechCrunch. Their program director said they had over 600 applicants and they only had 15 slots, which made…
