After an interesting development route, PhotowalkIdeas is now available in the iTunes App Store. This is RKIL's first consumer product, and it targeted at photographers who are looking for ways to improve their ability to see ideas and concepts.
RKIL has a number of other iPhone apps under development, and expects to release several in 2010. In addition to consumer apps, a number of specialized apps are being developed under contract.
After an interesting development route, PhotowalkIdeas is now available in the iTunes App Store. This is RKIL's first consumer product, and it targeted at photographers who are looking for ways to improve their ability to see ideas and concepts.
RKIL has a number of other iPhone apps under development, and expects to release several in 2010. In addition to consumer apps, a number of specialized apps are being developed under contract.
Over the years the question has been asked quite a few times, and like any good name, there is a story behind it.
A number of years ago while with Up & Running (an Ottawa Mac based reseller that I sold my shares in 1991), we were looking at buying a company. It has some people, locations and agreements that we were very interested in. During negotiations our lawyer was quite adamant that he thought it was not a good match for us. After a few hours of discussions he used the phrase, "guys, the company is road kill".
He was right, so we did not buy the company, however the name stuck. When we formed byDesign in 1991 we used Road Kill International Limited as the cover name for the new company, and when we split up byDesign in 1994, I modified the name to Road Kill Infomatics Ltd for the development arm that I took over.
The RKIL logo has a juggler with three balls in the air, and we have been asked more if there is some symbolism for those balls?
When RKIL was formed in 1994 as a spin out from byDesign for software design and development, we were looking for a logo that would explain what RKIL was all about. The first choice was Moof, the cow/dog that was famous from its placement by Apple in their printer dialog boxes, which adopted by Mac developers under the name Clarus as a poke at Apple's Claris software division. We gave it an RKIL spin, by inverting her and giving her an information super highway make over.
We switched to the first variation of the juggler after early in 1996, when the three balls represented Macintosh, Windows and UNIX, our three development targets. The colored version was red for Apple, blue for IBM and yellow for HP.
We have had friends and clients send us variations on the logos which include moving balls, 10 balls, and the humpty dumpty version with the broken balls on the ground.
What we prefer to think of the balls now are the the axis of project management, time, budget and deliverables. As the old project joke goes, pick two.
The first RKIL site in 1996 to advantage of our new high speed ISDN line with a 56k connection to the Internet, and made use of a Macintosh SE running AUX, Apple's first version of UNIX. The site had half a dozen pages, no way of tracking, was tough to update, and was a miracle in technology. That was then.
In 1998, the site was upgraded to take advantage of updates to Lotus Notes that allowed us to publish data bases to the web. With the use of embedded HTML, Javascript and other Web technologies the site could be updated easily and quickly. The site was hosted one of RKIL's Domino servers, and connected to the Internet with a 1Mb DSL connection. The Notes based site lasted all they way to 2009 with a few face lifts along the way.
In 2009, the site was migrated to Squarespace.com to take advantage of faster connections with remote hosting and the ability to link to social media. The transfer was relatively painless, and we are hoping that the new features will make the site more interesting. Your feedback is always welcome.
