Mobility & Entrepreneurship
My thoughts on the mobile industry, startups and You, Inc.
Dinner with Roberto Ierusalimschy
Feb 16th
Last night, February 15th, 2012, I had the pleasure of having dinner with the co-creator of the Lua language, Roberto Ierusalimschy. Roberto is a visiting professor at Stanford and is currently teaching a class in programming in Lua. The last time Roberto and I had dinner was in Rio de Janeiro, near PUC University, during the summer of 2010. I was visiting Rio during the World Cup, thought the games were all being played in South Africa, and took time out to meet with Roberto and dine with him.
Back then, at that dinner, we were joined by his wife, daughter and family friends. This time, it was just me and him, and a lot has happened since that dinner. I remember showing him some of the apps that had been created with Corona back then, and last night, I showed him some of the new and immersive games done in Corona. He pretty much wants me to give him a list of the games so he can install them on his iDevice. So, some of you, may get a promo request from me to give to Roberto, so he can install your app on his iDevice. How neat is that.
Aside from catching up in both the world of Ansca and personal, Roberto is looking forward to meeting Corona developers at a future meetup I plan to put together here at our HQ in Palo Alto. So if you are in the Bay Area, keep an eye out for the invitation to our meetup to meet with Roberto.
Link to Roberto’s page at PUC >>
Carlos.
Afternoon Coffee with Dr. Brian Barsky.
Feb 7th
Yesterday, Monday the 6th of February, I had the pleasure to sit down and enjoy a cup of cappuccino with one of the most influential figures in the field of splines and its used in Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling. I had coffee with Brian Barsky, co-author of the book “An Introduction to Splines for use in Computer Graphics and Geometric Modeling”.
It was a nice afternoon and could not have asked for a better bay-area day. No clouds, sunny and by the time we met for coffee, the sun had began to set in. The UC Berkeley campus was a block away from where we sitting and by the time we got our drinks the action on the street was happening with students filling up the sidewalk with murmurs about classes, school topics and where to catch dinner and planning for the day ahead.
But inside the coffee shop it was different. It was relatively quiet. And after we got our coffee’s, we sat and managed to chat for about two hours, perhaps a bit longer, on topics ranging from splines, digital/film photography, to mobile devices and its use in medicine, and other technologies that will carry us into the future.
To transcribe the over two hours of talk would do injustice to our chat, but having coffee with one of the giants in a field of computer graphics, which has given us the special effects we see today in movies, and its use in other fields is purely amazing. Dr. Barsky was very effusive, and he glistened while taking about current and future technologies and how we can use those technologies in the mobile world to bring the world closer than what it is now.
Thank you Dr. Barsky for allowing me to enjoy a cup of coffee with you while we talked about “splines” and other topics.
Barsky’s book
To learn more about Dr. Barsky, visit his web site >>
Coincidentally, Dr. Tony DeRose, who is now Research Group Lead at Pixar Animation Studios >> was Dr. Barsky’s PhD. student.
Carlos.
The Top 10 ReadWriteWeb Quotes of 2011
Jan 5th
And guess whose quote is number one?
Yours truly.
It became too much of a tangle. At the end of the day the focus on what was important was lost, and what is important are the developers.
Link: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_readwriteweb_quotes_of_2011.php
This is in reference to Adobe killing off Flash for Mobile devices. Read that article here >> Ex-Flash Manager: Adobe Ignored SmartPhones Until It Was Too Late.
Nice way to start the 2012.
C.
Inc Magazine Covers Ansca…
Nov 21st
Inc Magazine reached out to me a few weeks back and asked for a story of how we got to where we are today. Here is the resulting article.
Read Article >>
Thanks,
Carlos
More Adobe Flash Coverage…
Nov 15th
Obviously, the news last week was Adobe’s announcement of them discontinuing support for the Flash plugin for mobile. Once again, I, along with Ansca, got media coverage. The two most important pieces are
Read Write Web “Ex-Flash Manager: Adobe Ignored Smartphones Until It Was Too Late“ >>
and
Wired “Adobe Had It Coming: The Long, Slow, Goodbye of Mobile Flash” >>
Aside from Adobe killing Flash Mobile, it also laid off about 750 people. Some of them are friends of mine, colleagues, people I bumped into while both at Adobe/Macromedia and I can’t fathom how it must feel to be laid off a week prior to the ThanksGiving holiday. Godspeed.
Carlos
Los 10 Mandamientos para Empresarios
Oct 26th
Tenia rato de querer tener mi presentacion de los 10 Mandamientos Para Empresarios en Español por mucho tiempo. Gracias a Gissela Peralta de Paraguay que escribio un blog sobre mi que me hizo realizar la importancia de la presentacion para los lectores que no hablan ingles, sino, el idioma “Castellano 
”.
Para mas informacion sobre el blog de Giessela, vean el link de “Maestros del Web”.
Three years ago….
Oct 4th
That’s right. Three years ago nobody knew who the hell we were. I would tell people I had started my company and it was a mobile company and nobody had a clue as to what I was working on, let alone understand the market the way Walter (my co-founder) and I did.
We started the company in mid 2008. We started the tireless and sleepless nights of VC funding in 2009. And Finally on 09/09/09 we got funded at the tune of $1 million dollars.
That was in 2009. During most of 2010, again, nobody knew who we were. We had a shit of a website, hardly any apps, no traffic whatsoever, no active developer community, and we were burning cash just like a normal startup so the future never seen brighter.
Then in 2011 things turned around, thanks to 14-year old Robert Nay, from NayGames, who wrote Bubble Ball. The mainstream media picked the news of a 14-year-oldtumbling Angry Birds (seasons) off its number one perch on the iTunes AppStore and suddenly, not only was he on the spotlight, thanks to a Good Morning America Segment, we were on the spotlight too. We were the technology that was used to topple the fowl juggernaut and used by a precocious 14-year-old with hardly any formal gaming and programming background.
Then the rest like they say, its history. We had another Corona SDK app, Blast Monkeys, by Yobonja, hit the number one spot on the Android Market during the summer, and the Amazon Appstore has featured several Corona SDK apps on their store.
Yet today, I have received numerous e-mails and tweets from non-Corona developers as to how I feel as Adobe Flash finally catches up to us. Really? Seriously? Three years ago nobody knew Ansca and our Corona SDK framework and today, I am receiving flak by Flash developers telling me that we are doomed and that Flash is far superior to Corona SDK and that I must be shitting in my pants as one twit mildly put it.
So, let me get this straight, Adobe being a $3 billion dollar company, with a team of about 200 developers for their Flash/AIR product finally catches up to us? And I should be shitting in my pants?
I think it is the other way around. I like to think of it as a bunch of rebels, pirates, good for nothing bunch of mavericks, running a puny startup funded to what would amount to be what Adobe spends in toilet paper in a day has given the Adobe Flash team a run for its money.
And I got news for you, if you think that I am afraid of Adobe. Hell, I used to work there, and the one thing I know is that we will out perform, outwit, out shine and outdo them anytime, anywhere, anyplace. Aside from having a weak CEO, Adobe’s other big flaw is corporate bureaucracy also known as corporate bullshit. And here at Ansca, we have none of that, and the only proof that needs to be highlighted is the fact that it was our developers who nominated us to the Dow Jones/Venture Wire FastTech 50.
And our commitment is to our developers, that’s our number one priority, to give them the best tool for the job. No Bullshit.
We are a fifteen people startup, and we gotten noticed by some of the most discerning Flash users, and made it into the Adobe Compete email alias. Hell yeah. Bring it.
So three years ago….
Carlos.
Most Innovative Startup!
Oct 2nd
Imagine my surprise when I read the email that we had won Dow Jones/VentureWire Most Innovative Startup from the FastTech 50 list.
Best part, it was voted by our users. Our developers basically elevated us to the top and I couldn’t be more proud of our developers and of course our team over at Ansca for their hard work, dedication and indefatigable commitment on making our Corona SDK that much better and the de-facto industry standard when it comes to 2D mobile gaming frameworks. Yes, I sound like an infomercial, but our developers have chosen, and having our developers vote us into the FastTech 50 is something noteworthy and to be proud off.
Read more about what I had to say over at my company’s blog.
Carlos
Inc. Magazine writes article on Ansca and our Corona SDK
Sep 21st
Ansca’s Simplistic Mobile-App Publisher Rises in Popularity.
Read article at Inc Magazine Online
Also on the article, Noam Dromi, screenwriter for the Warner Movie “Dolphin Tale” says “Without Corona, the “Dolphin Tale” app wouldn’t have been possible”.
Watch the movie trailer with the “Fling A Fish” game play at YouTube
Carlos