Last year my boss at Renesys, Jim Cowie, came to me with a new and crazy idea: building a chat system that leads you to relevant discussions based on the sites you visit. You can check out our latest efforts at babbledog.com.

How does a successful internet data analysis company turn its eyes to a novel consumer webapp? In the words of one friend, “that’s different. I mean, that’s really ass different.” Well, based on Jim’s initial idea, I did a couple of simple prototypes, and it kinda snowballed. It started taking more of my time, and then more and more of other people’s time, and before we knew it the little skunkworks project grew up. We’ve recently opened it to the public (without much hoopla). We’re still working hard to churn out new features and improvements around the clock, and if you’re reading this blog, we’d really appreciate your input.

If you’re at all curious, give the software a shot. It’s a browser extension (for IE or Firefox) and you can get started at babbledog.net/download or just check out some active discussions like election2008 or geeks in boston. If something goes wrong or you get stuck, email, IM, or call me at +1 857-928-3028 and I’ll help you skate around the cracks in the beta.

If you’re a hacker, consider working with us. We’re growing and seeking engineers who can wrangle:

  • web apps in Python and Perl,
  • advanced Javascript/Ajax magic,
  • analysis of large, rapidly growing data sets.

(See? If you call them “hackers” and “engineers” it sounds edgy but still grown-up. How can y’all even comtemplate working elsewhere?)

We’re also looking for:

  • a web UI designer to lead us through the design puzzles of a novel, fast-developing app;
  • a director of marketing to help us build and market an app that people will want to try; and
  • a director of user experience to grow the world’s Total Volume of Love for Babbledog (TVLB) by working with both the user community and the development team.

Renesys is based in Manchester, NH but many of us (including me) work from home all around the country. If you’re interested in any of these opportunities, let me know by emailing shimon@rura.org, or IMing shimonrura on AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, or Google Talk. Or even better, find me as shimon in babbledog.

See you there!

* As you may note, if you are compulsively detail-oriented, I of course haven’t stopped blogging. But I have been less social in recent months as my workload has been much higher. I do love the day job, though, and if you’re the kind of person who actually looked for and read this note and are now trying to deconstruct my title in order to understand its full implications, and wondering whether I really meant to put “my day job” in the place of “the bomb”, and is “the bomb” ominous like the movie or proud like some Jerry Springer guest with 7 lovers, well… stop worrying and email me.